His performing trio became a quartet with the addition of Haden in 1967; after that, Haden, Redman, and Blackwell were his most frequent sidemen. And as Coleman cut down his touring schedule, he presented conceerts in his home, Artists House, on Price Street in Manhattan, sometimes performing there himself, other times introducing other musicians to his audiences.
When his quartet played at a Lisbon, Portugal, jazz festival in November 1971, Charlie Haden dedicated his „Song for Che“ to „the Black people’s liberation movements of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea“; the audience cheered at length, and Redman and Blackwell gave the raised-fist salute. The police canceled the day’s second concert but then changed their minds and let it go on. Nonetheless, as the quartet was boarding their plane the next day, Haden was arrested and was released only upon the intercession of the American cultural attaché. (S. 53)
[…]
He completed his twenty-one movement Skies of America in 1971, and the next year conductor David Measham recorded it with the London Symphony: Coleman improvised on alto throughout much of the work’s second half. These Skies are often clouded; movements in long, held tones turn into fast, jagged sections; „Foreigner in a Free Land“ features some of his very harshest alto playing, and „The Men Who Live in the White House“ includes his unaccompanied solo. His melodies are gay, or they are troubled and disturbeing, and what lingers in the music is the floating feeling of light, dark, and the turning earth. […] he said Skies is „the way I play.“ (S. 54)
[…]
In the Skies of America liner notes, he first mentions his „Harmolodic Theory, which uses melody, harmony, and the instrumentatione of the movement of forms.“ Later he said harmolodics „has to do with using the melody, the harmony and the rhythm all equal,“ and Don Cherry described harmolodics as „a profound system based on developing your ears along with your technical proficiency on your instrument.“ Just because harmolodics is a system, it can’t be defined in a simple sentence or two, but the word stands for what Coleman taught his first groups back in the 1950s: a wide knowledge and experience of ways to join Free lines into an ensemble music. Needless to say, harmolodic improvising demands great skill of listening and response; Coleman says it took years to teach his system to his first band, and again it took years to train his Prime Time band.
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aus: John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958, New York, 1984, Chapter 2: Ornette Coleman: The Birth of Freedom, S. 31-58
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