Art+ensemble+of+chicago

We are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration is a commemoration of a half-century of magical music making from The Art Ensemble of Chicago, a band that has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since forming in 1969. It has also long served as the flagship ensemble of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the august Chicago-based organization that also fostered the careers of members such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith, among many others. Now led by the surviving members Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye, the album is also a loving tribute to the band’s three original members who have passed: Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and most recently, Joseph Jarman.

Recorded at a 1980 concert in Munich, Urban Bushmen not only provides an excellent summation of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's work since 1966, but also substantiates the group's reputation for putting on intense and inspired shows. The album centers around three extended pieces: reed player Joseph Jarmen's "Theme for SCO," the group's "Urban Magic," and reed player Roscoe Mitchell's "Uncle." Over the course of these multi-part "suites," the group effectively blurs the lines between jazz and free jazz, deftly working through New Orleans' marches, turbulent hard bop, highlife/reggae rhythms, and minimalist sound sculptures; while Jarmen, Mitchell, and trumpeter Lester Bowie come up with consistently varied and surprising solo/tandem contributions.

Reunion is a live album recorded at Centro Rai di Produzione Radiofonica in Rome in January 2003 by the Art Ensemble of Chicago and released on the Italian Around Jazz label. It marked the return of Joseph Jarman to the group and features performances by Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors Maghostut and Don Moye with Baba Sissoko…

The previous Art Ensemble of Chicago ECM album Nice Guys vaulted them to the top of improvised music groups in the U.S. and worldwide, paving the way for similar bands to be more accepted into the mainstream of modern music. Where "Full Force" generally lives up to the title, there's also a palpable diverse approach, producing more than enough potent music brimming from the sinews of these brilliant musicians to uphold their burgeoning cache.

Alone among the first eight albums of the ECM Rarum series, the Art Ensemble of Chicago edition is a group effort, with surviving members Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, and Don Moye offering only a brief greeting in the booklet. There were only four Art Ensemble of Chicago albums over only a half-dozen years (1978-1984), so listeners get two tracks from the initial offering, "Nice Guys" and "Full Force," and one apiece from Urban Bushmen and The Third Decade.

Art Ensemble of Chicago with Cecil Taylor - Thelonious Sphere Monk (1991) [MP3] {DIW-846}
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© 1991 DIW / Disk Union Japan | DIW-846
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative

Here, a grand convergence of sound sorcerors. From the American Midwest comes The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell, bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut, and percussionist Famoudou Don Moye), representing the pan-idiomatic forces and open mysteries nurturing the Jazz avant garde -and so much more- into the here and now. From the American Northeast comes guest Cecil Taylor, grandmaster of the acoustic piano and a principal purveyor of that very avant garde for a good half-century going strong. The result, this early 1990 tribute to/extension of the legacies established by the legendary Thelonious Monk, is a towering achievement.

This recording, comprised of two complete Art Ensemble of Chicago albums – Les Stances a Sophie with singer Fontella Bass from 1970 and People in Sorrow from 1969 – offers two very different sides of the group's sound from this key period in their development. Recorded in France and released on the Nessa label in the United States, the two discs show how much in command the AEC were of their strengths even at that early date, though for the record it should be noted that with the exception of Don Moye and Lester Bowie, the trio of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors had been playing together since 1965. Living in self-imposed exile in France, the band explored the complete historical continuum of jazz and moved the free jazz boundary further to the left.

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Phase One (1971) {America Records–Universal 067 866-2 rel 2004}
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© 1971, 2004 America Records / Universal Music France | 067 866-2
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative

By 1971, the Art Ensemble of Chicago had become true denizens of the city of Paris and its environ. Regularly playing and recording, they were able to delve deeply into their Great Black Music aesthetic and explore not only the boundaries of free jazz, but also the intricate demands of African folk forms in improvisation. Dynamic, long a part of the AEC's M.O., had become a dominant methodology for the group, as had textural interplay, and nowhere are these more evident than on Phase One. Issued in 1971 on the French America Records imprint, this set has been reissued over a dozen times on LP and CD.