Ornette Coleman's deceptively simple blues gets a high-energy, extended treatment in this 2018 recording from tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown's Standard Sessions series. At nearly 240 beats per minute, the tempo pushes the 12-bar blues form into rapid-fire territory, and the three soloists respond with some of the most expansive improvisation in the entire Standard Sessions catalog. Lefkowitz-Brown opens with nine choruses of tenor saxophone, building an extended narrative over the blues changes in F. Pianist Steven Feifke then delivers a remarkable fifteen-chorus solo — by far the longest piano feature in the series — that traces a full arc from spare, exploratory ideas to dense, rhythmically charged passages. Drummer Michael Piolet caps the solo section with a five-chorus drum solo that brings a different textural dimension to the performance. The cumulative effect is a recording where the simple twelve-bar form becomes a canvas for sustained invention, each soloist using the repetitive structure to develop ideas across an unusually large number of choruses. Coleman's original melody, with its angular, folk-like character, sets up the improvisations without constraining them — fitting for a tune by the father of free jazz, even in a straight-ahead swing context.
