Ornette Coleman: Dickie Landry Remembers

Dickie Landry, saxophonist, composer, photographer, artist, long-time New Yorker and friend  since 1968, was not at the Ornette Coleman memorial at Riverside Church on June 27, but he sent me the following text from Lafayette, Louisiana where he now lives--to which he returned after several decades in New York.

From Dickie Landry:

"I first met Ornette in December 1968  at the Village Gate.  I had driven into the city that day.  I stopped at Smith's Diner on 2nd Ave and 13th St. to make a call and have a cup of coffee.  Walked out to the car and all my clothes and saxophone were gone, stolen.  I booked into the Broadway Central Hotel, roach-infested to the max. (The Kitchen was established in the hotel's kitchen).  Reading in the newspaper that Ornette was playing at the Village Gate,  I went and  introduced myself.  We talked for a while then he asked, "Your accent, where are you from?"  I said, "Lafayette, Louisiana." He replied, "I was beat up in that town once" (true story). I said, "I got beat up in NYC today".  He said "What happened?" I told him about my tenor saxophone being stolen. Without hesitation Ornette wrote down his phone number on a piece of paper and said, "if you need a saxophone while you are here, please call, I will lend you one."  We had been friends ever since.

Since Food (artist-run restaurant) was next door to his loft on 131 Prince, I would see and hear him practice every day. I had a solo concert at Leo Castelli Gallery one night  and I noticed he was sitting on the floor.  His comment when I finished, "I cannot believe that  you have been in my backyard for five years and I didn't pay attention. What are you doing tomorrow?" and asked me to start coming to rehearsals.

Several years ago Bob Wilson wanted Ornette and I to work together on a production in Taipei. Because I knew Ornette, I was asked to go ask him if he was interested.  I had four meetings with Ornette.  He agreed, but Bob's office waited too long to finalize the project with him and he moved on with his own concerts.  Bob asked if he could use pre-recorded music. Ornette agreed and said, "As long as Dickie Landry picks out the music."

Stream, Willow, July 4 2000

Photo (c) copyright Liza Béar 2000

This photo was taken in  2000 with a 35mm Contax 2000 in Willow, New York, under the shadow of Mont Tremper, at one of Dee Dee Halleck and Joel Kovel's  annual July 4 parties. When I sent the photo to a friend in Munich, Germany, she said it epitomized summer for her.

Cecil Taylor Piano at Ornette Coleman Tribute

New York, June 27, 2015

Cecil Taylor played a sublime piano tribute to Ornette Coleman during today's celebration at Riverside Church, Manhattan, New York. 

Filmed by Liza Béar.

Arrival photo, Tangier, Morocco, 1951

Rare family photo: Deplaning in Tangier, 1951 

  Robert (waving), Liza (age 9, wearing hat),  Eliane (in suit), Pierre (age 4, school uniform)
We were visiting my maternal grandmother, Wanda Castro, who lived at
21 rue Rembrandt, overlooking the corniche.
June 9 2015 would have been my mother's 99th birthday.

Black Hole of Procrastination

Where Sheep May Safely Graze Pt 11

Where Sheep May Safely Graze (contd)

New York, May 23--It's not only a tranquil Memorial Day week-end in the city, but awards time at the 68th Cannes Film Festival and Iceland's Rams (Hrutar) by Grímur Hákonarson has just been awarded the top prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. As the film's story goes, two brothers who hadn’t spoken in 40 years reunite in a remote Icelandic valley to save their rams.

Meanwhile, closer to home on Mulberry Street, sheep are also being honored in a more low-keyed fashion, without fanfare or fashion police. As I cross the street from the public library side, three sheep are being bundled out of a van from Hudson, NY and promptly set to graze the delicious fresh long grass in Old St Patrick's Cathedral cemetery, their needs perfectly suited to the task at hand. Says the Monsignor, "They'll be here for two months to keep the grass trimmed."  Literally. After all, we the people in New York give short shrift to the metaphorical use of the phrase "mowing the grass" and the practice to which it refers of obliterating people, buildings and neighborhoods in the Gaza strip.

Asked whether this was the return of the lambs named Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh which had been brought in for St Francis Festival of the Animals last Fall, Monsignor said no, these were new sheep and had been given cartographic rather than scriptural names: Mulberry, Mott and Elizabeth.  Nor did their  visit coincide with an event on the ecclesiastical calendar. " We just like to keep things pastoral," the Monsignor smiled.

A Woodpecker Is Hard To See

A WOODPECKER IS HARD TO SEE
New York, May 2, 2015--Faster than a drum roll, a downy woodpecker drills into  a plane tree's broken branch in M'Finda Kalunga community garden at Chrystie and Rivington on a Saturday afternoon, one of the three times a week  when the garden's open. Of course, the woodpecker could also be drilling when the garden's not open, which is the rest of the time. Once, roosters crowed in the garden until humans moaned about being woken at dawn. Now hens lay eggs and the roosters have been relocated upstate, but have visiting rights. Other such recordings are at the Urban Nature playlist on my YouTube channel, nothingofficial.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL263403CEBEFC751A

This video is dedicated  especially to all those rhapsodising over  the new Whitney's inaugural exhibit (which I haven't seen yet)  and over the nautical properties of the museum's "airy, spacious, light-filled",  architecture, as though it's about to raise anchor, become unmoored and sail down the Hudson into the sunset, bearing an art cargo. Robert Smithson did something else with his public art project  Floating island, but that's another story..