TV Reviews : A Look at World Music, Don Cherry Style

The third segment of the seven-part “Birdland” series, airing at 7 and midnight tonight on the Bravo cable channel, concentrates on Don Cherry, an eclectic and controversial figure who came to prominence 30 years ago in the original Ornette Coleman Quartet.

In recent years, Cherry has drawn on a broad variety of sources that reflect his extensive travels, his interest in world music rather than jazz per se, and his taste for exotic instruments and unconventional sounds.

In the course of the program he moves unpredictably through many functions: He sings, hums, chants, claps, plays a bamboo flute, a melodica, a Malian hunter’s guitar known as the doussn’ gouni, and occasionally returns to his original vehicle, a pocket cornet. It is on this horn that his technical deficiencies are most evident: Lacking the range, facility and technique required for cornet improvisation, he rarely achieves any sense of melodic continuity or creativity.

He is, nonetheless, a fascinating figure with a ready smile and the ability to draw his sidemen into diverse areas. The group, known as Multikulti, includes Peter Apfelbaum on piano, synthesizer and tenor saxophone; Hamid Drake on drums; and Bo Freeman on electric bass.

The compositions, mostly by Apfelbaum or Cherry, sustain enough of an interest level to ensure that the performances, whatever their validity as world music, are never dull.