Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, introduced the Ornette Coleman Quartet to the stage of the Royal Festival Hall on the closing night of the London Jazz Festival yesterday, speaking of Ornette's “graciousness” during the ten days of Meltdown, which the composer and saxophonist curated in 2009.

Before the four members of the quartet began to play, Ornette (pictured), joshed that there was to be “no sleeping”, and then with Tony Falanga on double bass, Primetime's Al MacDowell on electric bass guitar, and Denardo Coleman on drums, proved it, opening with a slashing punky burst.

The format was essentially that of many Ornette concerts in recent years with a few staples, a slightly wonky version this time of Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No 1’, ‘Peace’ from the classic album The Shape of Jazz To Come, ‘Ramblin’, and an early attempt at ‘Lonely Woman’ that somehow morphed via the main refrain of ‘Summertime’ into something entirely different.

The pattern of the performance followed a typically original and sprawling Ornettian Harmolodic logic with trumpet and violin episodes solidly steered home by Falanga and MacDowell. Their work together was fascinating in the almost extra sensory perception of the frequent disappearance of any harmonic floor that required great transpositional control and creative reinterpretation by the two bassists. Denardo, whose default fast near-funk scamperings can become stale on an off night, here reacted quickly and interestingly to the fertile imaginative expanses opened up by his father especially when ‘Lonely Woman’ was fully realised as the encore. The quartet received a big and fully deserved standing ovation. A concert that lived up to every expectation and a fitting way to close a festival that this year pushed artistic boundaries in every way.

– Stephen Graham

Photo: Tim Dickeson