Outstanding album (and a little piece of history)
Paul Allaer | Cincinnati | 04/02/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I like jazz, although I'm not a super-fan, but when I saw this album was re-issued in a remastered edition, I just had to pick it up. Ornette Coleman recorded this live album at the famed New York Town Hall on December 21, 1962 (yes, now more than 46 years ago, wow), which in and of itself makes this a little bit of jazz history.
"Town Hall 1962" (4 tracks; 47 min.) starts off with a blasting and delightful "Doughnut" in which the trio immediately stretches out in a 9+ min. free jazz piece. The interplay between David Izenson on bass and Charlie Moffett on drums is fascinating. Next follows the short and slowly brooding "Sadness". After that we get a complete deviation, namely "Dedication to Poets and Writers", a 9 min. string quartet piece that can only be described as a modern classical chamber music piece, quite intruiging (although the applause from the audience at the end is tentative, as I can only imagine they did not expect anything like this from Coleman, who wrote this but did not play on it). The last track (the original Side B) is the 23+ min. "The Ark", which picks up where "Doughnut" left off: a free jazz improvisation that explores the boundaries of that style, just beautiful. Coleman's alto sax solos are nithing short of mesmorizing.
In all, this is an unbelievable album from start to finish. The remastered sound is outstanding, I mean, it's really unbelievable that this was recorded in 1962. Highly recommended!"