"Play is the free spirit of exploration, doing and being for its own joy."
Stephen Nachmanovitch,from the book, "Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art"
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Artwork by Gyula Németh
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John Rockwell of the New York Times called them, "the premier avant-garde free improvisational ensemble of the day." Kevin Whitehead of NPR said they "fostered a style of quiet and spacious improvising with a misterioso atmosphere." The Village Voice reported, "they played everything and they played nothing (the longest rests on records ever); they revealed technical aplomb while developing a methodology that put their skills in question." Dominique Leon, writing for Pitchfork Media, added, "step forward, have patience, and be ready for anything."
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"Theirs is simply positive music-making that is loads of fun and possesses much to admire." Tyran Grillo, record review
This record required me to rethink everything that I thought I knew about music. Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors Maghostut, Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye of AEC played traditional jazz instruments: trumpet, saxophones, drums, and acoustic bass, but they also banged on gongs, rattled cans and cowbells, hummed into kazoos, sounded party noisemakers, squeezed bike horns and made bird calls to add a texture to their soundscapes. They have performed with more than five hundred instruments, including found objects.
Lester Bowie didn't just play trumpet; according to trombonist Craig Harris, he "used parts of the trumpet that most people don't deal with: the low tones, the pedal tones, the growls and smears. He used whispers in his playing and taught [Harris] how to play soft."
Lester Bowie didn't just play trumpet; according to trombonist Craig Harris, he "used parts of the trumpet that most people don't deal with: the low tones, the pedal tones, the growls and smears. He used whispers in his playing and taught [Harris] how to play soft."
"The way we look at it, everything is a sound. A chord is just the name of a sound. They say C is a pitch; it's the name of a sound. So is a cat's meow a sound, so is a motorcycle, so is anything." Lester Bowie in an interview with Lazaro Vega
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Roscoe Mitchell |
Just as composer John Cage taught people to "reconsider [their] expectations and assumptions" about music, the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago explored the possibilities of communicating with sound. Saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell told jazz reporter Ted Panken, "Sometimes, I don't really hear like a scale, per se. I might hear one note, and then the next note with a whistle or a whistle with a kind of wind instrument, or a whistle and a bell."
The spirit in which AEC expresses its music may be contemplative or celebratory. Over decades of recording and playing live, its musicians have woven a kaleidoscopic quilt with African drums and chants to midway sounds, tent revival redemptive cries, evocations of both Mingus and Mancini, marching bands, New Orleans jazz funerals, and fragrant elements of funk, hip-hop, reggae, street corner serenades, sprawling improvised magic and silence. "Music is fifty percent sound and fifty percent silence," Mitchell said. "So, when you interrupt that silence with a sound, then they start to work together."
Great Black Music: Ancient To The Future
The Art Ensemble of Chicago embody the motto, Great Black Music: Ancient To The Future, of the nonprofit Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
AACM formed in 1965, as an organic progression of the Chicago avant-garde music scene that had spawned the Experimental Band years earlier. The Experimental Band contained a who's-who list of some of today's top jazz musicians, including not only Muhal Richard Abrams, Jack DeJohnette and Henry Threadgill, but also three young players: Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman and Malachi Favors. When Lester Bowie moved from his hometown of St. Louis to Chicago, he quickly fell in with them.
"I never met so many insane people in one room." Lester Bowie
The Art Ensemble of Chicago embody the motto, Great Black Music: Ancient To The Future, of the nonprofit Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
AACM formed in 1965, as an organic progression of the Chicago avant-garde music scene that had spawned the Experimental Band years earlier. The Experimental Band contained a who's-who list of some of today's top jazz musicians, including not only Muhal Richard Abrams, Jack DeJohnette and Henry Threadgill, but also three young players: Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman and Malachi Favors. When Lester Bowie moved from his hometown of St. Louis to Chicago, he quickly fell in with them.
"I never met so many insane people in one room." Lester Bowie
The four men--Bowie, Favors, Jarman and Mitchell--formed the group, Roscoe Mitchell's Art Ensemble. According to author Gerald Brennan, Mitchell's music was already pointing "to a new path for jazz at a time when the prevailing free jazz was being increasingly seen as a dead end."
In 1969, they moved to Paris in order to dedicate themselves to their art form. Soon after, drummer/percussionist Famoudou Don Moye joined them, and they became the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
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Famoudou Don Moye |
"When I joined the Art Ensemble, we would rehearse eight hours a day, every day, and afterwards sit down and have a home-cooked meal in a home environment with the kids and the dog running around; just normal shit."
Famoudou Don Moye (Village Voice article by Greg Tate)