Times Square

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).

Times Square is probably the most famous commercial junction, tourist destination and entertainment center on the planet located in Manhattan, New York. Brilliantly adorned with advertising screens and luminous signs, it’s known as “The Crossroads of the World”. Therefore, it’s a very busy pedestrian area where you can find the most popular shops, several museums and around 40 theaters where Broadway musicals are represented every night, both the great classics and the latest productions. It’s also where the traditional countdown of the arrival of the new year has been carried out since 1907 with the attendance of hundreds of thousands of tourists and New Yorkers.

It was called Longrace Square until the New York Times moved its offices to the adjacent 42nd Street in 1904. From then on, restaurants, theaters and luxury hotels were built. However, in the 1930s it became a dangerous place with drugs, crime and prostitution until in the 1980s a redevelopment project was implemented in Midtown Manhattan, which included Times Square. In the 1990s the mayor’s office closed the pornographic cinemas and sex shops, and the New York State bought the nine historic theaters on 42nd Street. The opening of Times Square in 2011 completed its 30-year transformation.

Again Tacuma and Calvin are in charge of setting the pace and Coleman exposes twice a long repetitive atonal theme that ends with a brief more elaborate passage. He then begins with a broken solo playing with different futuristic dance motifs and later interprets longer phrases. His discourse is surprising and attractive, and he is always accompanied by the two guitarists who each follow their own path. Tacuma also makes a good contribution and the group is firmly supported by Calvin. To end, the group re-exposes the theme only once.