A Quote by Paul Bley

Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal.
Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk
As a trumpet player, I was playing Xenakis, Lindberg: very challenging, technical, atonal, and I enjoyed it.
There's a steady forward march of a creative process that some of us stay with and don't give up - that should be an admirable thing - from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to Miles to Ornette and some people who are not even known today - some kids coming up - people who are out to change the world.
I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.
Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.
Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.
But Charlie, Charlie, how can we ever really know anything? Charlie, what or who is God?
Even if I don't see Brooklyn I have to see Anomolisa, because it's Charlie Kaufman. No one is doing things that they should't be doing more in cinema than Charlie Kaufman. This is how I look at it: he had an incredible story that was going to resonate regardless, but just shooting that movie is too easy for Charlie Kaufman.
When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.
I'm glad [Ornette Coleman] is such an individualist. I like the firmness of thought and purpose that goes into what he's doing, even though I don't always like to listen to it. It's like living in a house where everything's painted red.
Charlie Christian showed me a lot, and was a great help, but even then, I realised that if I was going to make it, it was no use copying Charlie
I want music to move me, and I don't think it can do that without at least a link to tonality. It's the tug between atonal and tonal which makes music poignant.
Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he's thinking about in the world - which is a whole universe upon universe - and translates this into music.
I'd listened to [Ornette Coleman] all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving baby.
It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'
I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play.
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