Monday’s announcement of the Pulitzer Prize in music (warm congratulations, Jennifer!) inspired me to pull out the CD that won the 2007 prize for Ornette Coleman: Sound Grammar.

I was struck by how tuneful the album is, even to the point of quoting other melodies. There are certainly plenty of edgy moments here, but if you only know Coleman from Intro to Jazz class, where he is the token scary, inscrutable avant-gardiste, this record presents a rather different picture. Listen to the hauntingly folk-like, archaic quality of Sleep Talking,  a meditation on the opening notes of Rite of Spring. Who do you think of as a saxophonist who would quote “Beautiful Dreamer” and “If I Loved You” in a blues solo? Maybe Dexter Gordon? how about Ornette Coleman?

The instrumentation of the album - Coleman is accompanied by two basses and drums - seems odd, but the two basses actually work out better than one might expect. Usually one is playing arco, the other pizz. The high register arco bass serves as another frontline instrument, often sounding in the alto sax register. The harmonic specificity of a keyboard or guitar would unhelpfully tie down Coleman’s pitch language, and the absence of a chordal instrument gives more sonic space for the two basses.

I posted a while back about the treatment of rhythm on Vijay Iyer’s Historicity - Coleman’s approach can be similarly rich. A common strategy here is to have pizz bass and drums playing at a furious tempo while Coleman lopes along at a more moderate speed, not precisely half time, but still feeling right.

Sometimes Coleman’s flexible treatment of intonation is merely gamey instead of expressive. And the last track on the album includes a freakout section for the two basses that overstays its welcome. But I can see why this disc won a major award.

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update: read Jennifer Higdon’s remarkably gracious comments about the Pulitzer here.