|
|
The son of avant-garde jazz / world music legend Don Cherry, David Ornette Cherry is making his own very unique mark in the music world. David writes, arranges and improvises invigoratingly fresh and thick, sweet-textured jazz and world music. The melodies that arise from David’s jazz, classical, African, world music background speak of our human experiences through the language of sound.
David also collaborates with writer/storyteller/choreographer Susan Banyas to present No Strangers Here Today, a spoken word and music presentation about the Underground Railroad. Multiple day residencies for David’s music workshops/classes and Susan’s dance and storytelling residencies are available.
 |
| David Ornette Cherry |
This is an introduction to a project that we are interested in performing on your music series 2010. David Ornette Cherry is Nominated for the Portland Music Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Jazz.
David Ornette Cherry with ORGANIC ROOTS featuring hit new CD - Organic Journey: on the right path
Organic Journey marks the fifth and final CD in David Ornette Cherry’s “Organic” series, recordings that have spliced together David’s musical roots and the new branchings he continues to explore. Fittingly, here David enlists collaborators old and new; family and friends from his Los Angeles community, and musicians from his present home, Portland. The CD offers aretrospective tribute to mentors (his father Don, tabla master Tarinith Rao with whom David studied at Cal Arts in 1979‐80) and inspirational figures (Fela Kuti, Langston Hughes). Simultaneously, Organic Journey presses forward into a new day (Black President, New Groove towards peace). In the present that unfolds between past and future, we are already underway, “on the right path,” as we discover new soundtracks for familiar tropes of travel (Going My Way, Pack Your Bags, Coming Out of the Tunnel).
From his nine‐year journey of Organic CD’s, David has assembled a palette of sounds, instruments and textures, resonant with historical and geographical and historical touchstones. Here, David leaves
soloing to his collaborators; he lays down sonic environments that create the feel, the vibe of his vision. Organic Journey combines and remixes organic elements with sophistication, elegance, and soul, injecting them into the electronic soundscapes of today, so that new musical generations can trace them back to their original sources. Instrumentation implemented here includes the oud, blues guitar, organ, sentir, sitar, accordion, and Native American flute, not to mention the raw human voice. Throughout the recording, percussive complexity is created by drawing on African and Indian drum textures in particular.
The conclusion to one stage of musical development simultaneously signals the genesis of the next. The process is organic: as David’s father Don was fond of saying. There are no endings. Only beginnings.
David’s sense that he is “on the right path” is born of humility, not hubris. Just now, he feels, he is gaining a deeper connection to and insight into music. Knowledge brings awareness of what one does not know – but such realizations are themselves assurances that one is indeed on the right path. The right path leads into the unknown. An aura of mystery pervades this recording. My wife Anita dubbed the music on this CD “mysterious jazz.” Let these tunes’ rhythms of travel. Of propulsive motion punctuated by pregnant pauses, embark you on the organic journey, and keep you on the right path.
The foundation of the performance is my composition in three movements, ENSEMBLE FOR IMPROVISORS, which is inspired by Don Cherry's Blue Note years from the recordings Symphony for Improvisers and The Complete Communion=" sessions, also the Organic sessions in the 70s(Brown Rice). The music is an extension of that form.
|
|
|
