Speak out

Charlie Haden

Where: Chicago Jazz Festival, through Sunday in Chicago's Grant Park at Lake Shore Drive and Monroe Street

When: Haden performs with the Jazz Institute of Chicago Jazz Links Students at 3:30 p.m. today on the Heritage Stage; Haden and his Liberation Music Orchestra perform at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Petrillo Music Shell; and the bassist hosts a jam session at 3:30 p.m. Sunday on the Jazz on Jackson Stage

Tickets: Free

Phone: (312) 744-3315

More: For the complete schedule, see www.chicagojazzfestival.us. For information on Charlie Haden, visit www.charliehadenmusic.com

People love Charlie Haden's music.

But not everyone loves his politics.

"There are some festivals that won't hire me," says the bassist, a wonderfully expressive musician/composer/bandleader who played with Ornette Coleman's seminal quartet of the late 1950s and 1960s and who serves as headliner and artist-in-residence for this year's Chicago Jazz Festival, which runs through Sunday in Grant Park.

A passionate human rights activist, the politically outspoken Haden was arrested in 1971 while on tour in Portugal for dedicating his "Song for Che" to anti-government rebels in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau. Over the years, his political stance -- reflected in his Liberation Music Orchestra (with which he performs at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Petrillo Music Shell) -- has cost him.

A multiple Grammy Award winner who has collaborated with such luminaries as Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny, Haden's latest LMO release, 2005's "Not in Our Name," failed to earn a nomination. Haden says he knows why, implying that it has to do with his criticism of U.S. foreign policy, which in a post-Sept. 11 climate has landed some artists, most notably the Dixie Chicks, in hot water.

But not once has he considered tempering his stance. And as ardently as he embraces causes, Haden embraces music. Shifting easily from mainstream to free jazz, the 70-year-old has incorporated Latin, folk, world and West Coast cool into ensembles ranging from duos to big bands.

Hailed for his sparseness and subtlety, Haden has been described by AllMusic.com's Chris Kelsey as a musician who never plays "two notes when one (or none) will do."

As for his signature style, Haden credits it to his early exposure to country music. From the time he was a toddler, he sang with this parents' band on their country and western radio show, first in Iowa and later in Missouri.

"The harmonies in country music are really based on simplicity," he says. "That's where I got my notions for harmony, melody and simplicity."

He started playing the bass in his early teens, and after a bout with polio cut short his singing career, he devoted himself to the instrument.

"I listened to a lot of radio as a kid, a lot of classical music -- Bach, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff," he says. "(The bass) always intrigued me. When the bass dropped out, the bottom dropped out. When the bass came in, it lifted (the composition) like a 747. When the bass came in, it sounded more majestic."

He also listened to Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton, often skipping school to check out their latest releases at the local record store. Turning down a scholarship to Oberlin College, he headed to Los Angeles in 1956, where he played traditional jazz with the likes of Pepper and Gordon. Eventually he hooked up with saxophonist Coleman, trumpeter Cherry and drummer Higgins, who shared his unconventional approach to improvisation.

"I don't see a distinction between avant garde and traditional jazz," says Haden, who helped break new ground as part of Coleman's legendary quartet. "It's all about a beautiful melody. It's all about wanting to play something new that's never been played before."

"Each one of us brought something new to the improvisations," says Haden of his tenure with Coleman. "There was no chordal instrument in the band, no piano, so I had to be both the piano and the bass. That's how I learned about listening. I changed tonal centers when he changed tonal centers."

From 1967 to 1976, Haden played with pianist Jarrett (who Haden first knew as a soprano saxophone player). Jarrett played piano in a way no one else did, says the bassist, who says Jarrett's band featuring drummer Paul Motian, percussionist Guilherme Franco and saxophonist Dewey Redman, was among the best.

The year 1969 marked the first version of the LMO, Haden's experimental big band featuring pianist/composer/arranger Carla Bley. Since then he has resurrected the ensemble several times, mostly to respond to such polarizing issues as U.S. involvement in the wars in Vietnam, El Salvador and Iraq.

Haden calls the releases a reminder to "always keep in check the administration in charge and make them adhere to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."

"The way things are now, it's anything but," he says.

During the early 1980s, he played with guitarist Pat Metheny, with whom he produced 1997's roots-inspired, Grammy-winning "Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories)."

After 20 years in New York, Haden and his wife, singer Ruth Cameron, spent the 1980s living in Los Angeles. There, in 1986 at Cameron's suggestion, he put together Quartet West featuring pianist Alan Broadbent, saxophonist Ernie Watts and drummer Larance Marable, who replaced original drummer Higgins. Drummer Rodney Green now plays with the quartet, which plans to tour Europe and release a compilation in the fall.

For all his contributions as a band leader and sideman, Haden remains an impassioned but modest musician.

"You cannot be anything else but humble when you're playing music. There's no yesterday and there's no tomorrow, there's only the moment, and in that moment you can see your insignificance."

An educator as well as a performer, he established the jazz studies program at the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 to emphasize improvisation.

"It's important to learn scales and study harmony and theory," he tells his students. "But the most important thing if you're going to be an improviser is to learn about the spirituality of improvisation."

"None of us know where we are or how we got here," he says. "It's that not-knowing and the vulnerability and fragility of that that makes for beautiful art."