Tag Archives: jazz
My Dinner With Ornette
“I’m interested in bringing instant enlightenment.”
I met Ornette Coleman for dinner on a late fall evening in a fashionable restaurant in downtown Boston. He was in town to meet the press a week before a December 15, 1984 concert at Berklee Performance Center with Prime Time, his “double” band featuring two guitarists, two bassists and two drummers. Ornette was relaxed and in a good mood. We were seated in a cozy spot on the upper level of the candle-lighted restaurant and all he had to do was put up with my questions while we ate and drank.
I was in a better than good mood. This was a dream come true situation for me.
Abbey Lincoln
“….I never got any offer from the Americans. They figured I was dangerous or something.”
May 14, 1996
By phone from her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan
Abbey Lincoln was more than a remarkable singer and songwriter: She was a remarkable person, who made a mark as a civil rights activist, actress (starring opposite Sidney Poitier in “For Love of Ivy” in 1968) and, most notably, fiercely independent musician.
