Name: Organic Music Theatre: Festival de Jazz de Chateauvallon 1972
Brand: Don Cherry

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

BF023LP

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-09-02

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

769791978003

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Total Cap

2 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Don Cherry

Genre GB

Jazz

Label GB

Blank Forms Editions

Blank Forms is an American non-profit organization based in New York City. They are dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists in the field of experimental music, performance, dance, sound art, and other interdisciplinary art practices. Led by Artistic Director Lawrence Kumpf, Blank Forms works tirelessly to provide a platform for these artists to showcase their unique talents. With a diverse Board of Directors including David Grubbs, <a href="https://discogs.com/artist/2235539">Robbie Lee</a>, Nadia Berenstein, Margo Somma, Marina Rosenfeld, Alexander Lau, Josiah McElheny and more; as well as a distinguished Curatorial Advisory Board consisting of renowned figures such as Charles Curtis, Bill Dietz, Kim Gordon and others - Blank Forms Editions is at the forefront of promoting boundary-pushing artistic expression.
The label's commitment to nurturing talent within the experimental arts community has made them an influential force in the industry. Through their dedication and support for emerging artists across various disciplines, they continue to push boundaries and challenge traditional notions of what constitutes art. With their headquarters located in New York City - a vibrant hub for creativity - Blank Forms Editions serves as a vital catalyst for innovation within the experimental music scene.
*Please note that all references to individuals or

Don Cherry was an American avant-garde jazz trumpeter, born on November 18, 1936 in Oklahoma City. He had a prolific career and is best known for his long association with Ornette Coleman. Cherry's musical influence extended beyond his own work, as he was the father of Jan Cherry, David Ornette Cherry, and Eagle-Eye Cherry, and stepfather to Neneh Cherry.
Cherry's innovative approach to trumpet playing helped shape the avant-garde/free jazz movement. His unique style combined elements of traditional jazz with experimental techniques, pushing the boundaries of the genre. Throughout his career, he collaborated with numerous renowned musicians and left a lasting impact on the world of jazz.
Despite his untimely death on October 19, 1995 in Malaga, Spain, Don Cherry's legacy continues to inspire aspiring musicians and jazz enthusiasts worldwide. His contributions to music will always be remembered and celebrated.

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In the late 1960s, the American trumpet player and free jazz pioneer Don Cherry (1936–1995) and the Swedish visual artist and designer Moki Cherry (1943–2009) began a collaboration that imagined an alternative space for creative music, most succinctly expressed in Moki’s aphorism “the stage is home and home is a stage.” By 1972, they had given name to a concept that united Don’s music, Moki’s art, and their family life in rural Tagårp, Sweden into one holistic entity: Organic Music Theatre. Captured here is the historic first Organic Music Theatre performance from the 1972 Festival de jazz de Chateauvallon in the South of France, mastered from tapes recorded during its original live broadcast on public TV. A life-affirming, multicultural patchwork of borrowed tunes suffused with the hallowed aura of Don’s extensive global travels, the performance documents the moment he publicly jettisoned his identity as a jazz musician, and represents the start of his communal “mystical” period, later crystallized in recordings such as Organic Music Society, Relativity Suite, Brown Rice, and the soundtrack for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. The musicians in Don Cherry’s New Researches, hailing from Brazil, Sweden, France, and the US, converged on Chateauvallon from all over Europe. The five-person band—Don and Moki Cherry, Christer Bothén, Gérard “Doudou” Gouirand, and Naná Vasconcelos— performed in an outdoor amphitheater and were joined onstage by a dozen adults and children, including Swedish friends who tagged along for the trip and Det Lilla Circus (The Little Circus), a Danish puppet troupe based in Christiania, Copenhagen. The platform was lined with Moki’s carpets and her handmade, brightly colored tapestries, depicting Indian scales and bearing the words Organic Music Theatre, dressed the stage. As the musicians played, members of Det Lilla, led by Annie Hedvard, danced, sang, and mounted an improvised puppet show on poles high up in the air. The music in the Chateauvallon concert aspired to a universal language that would bring people together through song. In a fairly unprecedented move, Don abandoned his signature pocket trumpet for the piano and harmonium, thereby liberating his voice as an instrument for shamanic guidance. The show opens with him beckoning the audience to clap their hands and sing the Indian theta “Dha Dhin Na, Dha Tin Na,” and the set cycles through uplifting and sacred tunes of Malian, South African, Brazilian, and Native American provenance—including pieces that would later appear on Don’s albums Organic Music Society and Home Boy (Sister Out)—all punctuated by outbursts of possessed glossolalia from the puppeteers. “Relativity Suite, Part 1” notably spotlights Bothén on donso ngoni, a Malian hunter’s guitar, prior to Vasconcelos taking an extended solo on berimbau. A vortex of wah-like microtonal rattling, Vasconcelos’s masterful demonstration of this single-stringed Brazilian instrument is a harbinger of his work to come as a member, with Don, of the acclaimed group Codona. The sounds of children playing on the ensemble’s achingly tender rendition of Jim Pepper’s oft-covered beacon of spiritual optimism, “Witchi Tai To,” lends the proceedings an especially intimate, domestic glow. Given the context of the star-studded international jazz festival, the concert’s laid back, communal vibe feels like an attempt by the Cherrys to show Don’s jazz audience that he was moving on. At the same time, however, Don was extending a warmhearted invitation for them to come along for the ride.

Organic Music Theatre: Festival de Jazz de Chateauvallon 1972

Music GB