Acclaimed soloist and First Prize winner at the 2017 Tárrega International Guitar Competition, Alejandro Córdova has chosen a programme that presents five acknowledged masterpieces of the guitar repertoire, while also paying tribute to the great Andrés Segovia—an inspiration to composers such as Manuel Ponce, whose Sonatina meridional evokes the lyrical warmth of Iberia. Covering a wide range of techniques and expressive forms that reveal the guitar’s sheer versatility, the distinctive Spanish moods and rhythms of Torroba, José and Tárrega are further contrasted by Johann Kaspar Mertz’s deeply eloquent Elegie.
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 Art Ensemble of Chicago has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since 1969, and has 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. The greatness of the Art Ensemble has always been the shared commitment of its original members – Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, and Famoudou Don Moye – to the total realm of African diasporic music: what they have long-termed “Great Black Music—Ancient to the Future.”