LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Don Cherry: Music
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In 1963 Cherry helped to found the “New York Contemporary Five” along with saxophonists Archie Shepp and John Tchicai. As Cherry began touring more and more overseas he acquired a desire to travel to other countries and to study their native music. Don spent the rest of the 1960‘s gypsy fashion wandering the world playing in the bands of Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri and Carla Bley soaking up all the different kinds of music he could find along the way. It was at this time that he began promoting “World Music” at jazz festivals experimenting with music from China, Japan, Brazil, India, Tibet, Bali, and North Africa. He became an expert on playing the Brazilian berimbao, the Balinese gong, horns made of bone and percussion instruments of all kinds, Chinese ceramic dishes, wooden, bamboo, plastic and metal flutes as well as instruments from many other countries. He ... made and played instruments of his own.
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By the dawn of the 70s, Cherry was touring Europe, Asia, and Africa regularly and becoming versed in the musical heritage of a variety of countries. He began learning to play many different instruments, including wooden flutes and the doussn'gouni, a kind of cross between a guitar and a sitar. It was at this time that Cherry began to play the Pakistani pocket trumpet, a miniature trumpet of approximately 8" in length. He began to play the instrument extensively, and it became his favorite. The tone was quite unusual, as was Cherry's facility to play a flurry of notes without appearing to break a sweat, a la Miles Davis. But his sound was a bit more refined, sweeter, and even more laid back than Davis' (!) partly because of his unusual choice of instrument.
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Interesting side note: Cherry ... has the student orchestra perform a piece inspired by cosmic minimalist Terry Riley. The results are strikingly similar to Riley’s own experiements with a different Swedish teen orchestra back in 1967, released as Olson III. In both situations, the kids start out tentative, unsure about the material, until halfway through they commit themselves, building to an intoxicating fever pitch. Both performances enact a real-time drama of discovery. Riley noted at the time: “The music is not conductable. Everybody has to join it themselves.”
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This 1966 date finds avant-jazz titan Don Cherry further exploring the mercurial musical sensibility he'd developed to near perfection in Ornette Coleman's band and on his early solo releases like COMPLETE COMMUNION. Where Is Brooklyn?, as with COMMUNION, is a quartet date, this time featuring saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, bassist Henry Grimes, and drummer Ed Blackwell. The tracks are shorter than on other albums excepting the album's closer, Unite, which tops out at almost 18 minutes, and while that might suggest a more focused approach to song structure, that isn't necessarily the case.
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Cherry died October 19, 1995, of liver failure caused by hepatitis, with his family around him at his stepdaughter Neneh's home in Spain. But he liked to say, "There are only beginnings, there is never an end. Music never stops. It's you who is stopping it. It's you who is ending."
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