Air Ship

Prime Time: Ornette Coleman (alto sax), Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix (electric guitar), Jamaaledeen Tacuma (bass guitar) and Denardo Coleman and Calvin Weston (drums). From the album Of Human Feelings (1982).

Bern Nix was an American jazz guitarist who played and recorded with Ornette Coleman from 1975 to 1987 in tandem with Charlie Ellerbie in the Coleman’s Prime Time group participating in its most relevant albums. He began playing guitar at age 11 and studied at Berkley College of Music. In 1985 he formed The Bern Nix Trio with which he recorded Alarms and Excursions in 1993 and continued to perform with it until his death in 2017. He also played with John Zorn and made the soundtrack for the documentary A James Lord Portrait. In addition, he published a solo album entitled Low Barometer and recorded Negative Capability with his Bern Nix Quartet in 2013.

Denardo Coleman is an avant-garde American jazz drummer who started playing drums at the age of 6 and recorded several albums with his father Ornette Coleman from 1966. He has always been a controversial musician. His followers consider him a genius and a visionary, while his detractors don’t understand his abstract, radical and cerebral work. He also belonged to his father’s group Prime Time during the 1970s and made significant contributions to electric free jazz. In 1985 he participated in Pat Metheny’s Song X album with his father, Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette. In addition, he has done an extensive work as a producer, has been part of his mother’s group The Firespitters and has played with Jamaaladeen Tacuma, James Blood Umler and Geri Allen.

The theme consists of a phrase repeated several times in different tonalities and with some variations. Coleman makes a fluid and inspired solo using different motifs while Ellerbee and Nix also interpret their respective adventurous speeches. The result is an assemblage of colorful sentences that together form an unusual but congruent combination. They are like children exploring the possibilities of the sound universe doing all kinds of mischief until the group re-exposes the theme.