When you fall in love with an Impressionist painting, you do not have to respect it. You see the primitive olive trees of Matisse or else the straw chairs of Van Gogh, and respect is only an afterthought. Because first - there is love. You do not really have to think about the time and the sheer effort that Ingres put into his meticulous gowns of pure silk. And then, later, you delve deeper and in some dusty gallery you see the early drawings of Van Gogh and Matisse, and realise they could paint your classical still life as well as any Flem from the 16th century.
Now, suddenly, there is respect, and you may try to find some use for it.
Speaking of music, free jazz is very similar to an Impressionist painting. Albums like Coltrane's Ascension or Coleman's Science Fiction attack your senses the way Gauguin did (the latter was once called a 'virgin with savage instincts'). But then again, you will never forget that Ascension was released just one year after A Love Supreme, and Coltrane's free jazz was an experiment, a discovery.
Ornette Coleman's story, however, is quite different, and a fascinating interview with Charles Mingus from some old issue of the New Yorker magazine featured this intriguing story. Once, during some jazz festival in the 60s, Mingus and friends pushed Coleman into the corner, gave him the saxophone and instructed him to play "Willow Weep For Me" and to play it straight. Classically. The punch line of the story was that Coleman couldn't. Not without a free interpretation, not without putting a spin on it.
Having first read that story, I was forced to ask myself if it in any way diminished my love for the man who recorded The Shape Of Jazz To Come. And the truth is, it did not, because in art as well as every day of the week - love trumps respect.
