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.

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.

Like the Art Ensemble of Chicago's outstanding '70s work, THE THIRD DECADE features scintillating chemistry between trumpeter Lester Bowie, multi-faceted reedmen Joseph Jarman and Roscoe E. Mitchell, bassist Malachi Favors, and drummer Don Moye, while demonstrating the Ensemble's unique, texture- and space-conscious approach to free jazz. The music here is surprisingly tonal, without sacrificing any of the group's trademark improvisatory energy or rhythmic and dynamic flexibility.

Originally comprised of saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, trumpeter Lester Bowie, bassist Malachi Favors, and later, drummer Famoudou Don Moye, the Art Ensemble of Chicago enjoyed a critical reputation as the finest and most influential avant-garde jazz ensemble of the 1970s and '80s. Whether or not that reputation was wholly deserved is, in retrospect, subject to debate the World Saxophone Quartet and the Cecil Taylor Unit may well have been more influential.

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…

Art Ensemble of Chicago with Cecil Taylor - Thelonious Sphere Monk (1991) [MP3] {DIW-846}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 340 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 148 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 12 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 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.