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.
The times were starting to catch up with Sea Level on the band's third Capricorn album, On the Edge, released in 1978. The preceding year's sophomore release, Cats on the Coast, featured a seven-member band with Sea Level's original foursome of keyboardist Chuck Leavell, percussionist Jaimoe, bassist Lamar Williams, and guitarist Jimmy Nalls supplemented by newcomers singer/songwriter and saxophonist Randall Bramblett, guitarist Davis Causey, and drummer George Weaver…
n is played out in Turkey and Germany. The characters travel between these countries and so travel through their own lives. Akin tells the story in calm pictures, unagitated and slow-paced. The emotional key to the film is death which is faced by each protagonist in a different way. Thus those initially uncommunicative people slowly begin to uncover themselves.