The Art Ensemble of Chicago Albums (35)
'Fundametal Destiny: Live at Frankfurt Germany Jazz'
Release Date 9/18/2007
Tracks 4
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What The Critics Say
This previously unreleased concert is unusual, for it teams the Art Ensemble of Chicago with pianist Don Pullen. While the lengthy "People in Sorrow" mostly stays in one spot as it builds in intensity and passion, both "Song for Atala" and "Fundamental Destiny" give Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, and Roscoe Mitchell opportunities to stretch out on fairly straight-ahead pieces. Pullen adds to the group's rhythmic excitement, particularly on the title cut, and would have been a logical addition to the Art Ensemble if they had ever added a regular pianist. This live recording, while not flawless, has enough bright moments to make it easily recommended to Art Ensemble collectors. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
'Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City: Live at Iridium'
Release Date 7/25/2006
Tracks 12
Label Pi
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What The Critics Say
This pair of 2004 concert recordings, Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City: Live at Iridium, could be said to be by the "New" Art Ensemble of Chicago. With the death of Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors, the future of the group was in serious doubt, even with the return of Joseph Jarman. Trumpeter Corey Wilkes and bassist Jaribu Shahid, however, have proven to be excellent successors, inspiring Roscoe Mitchell and Jarman to play at their best. Some of the music on this two-CD set is almost hard bop although a bit eccentric; other selections meander a bit in sound explorations or percussion displays, and others find the group pushing ahead. The Art Ensemble of Chicago was always at their most intriguing live, so a concert recording is the next best thing. Not everything works, but the group never loses your interest, being coherent, constantly creative, and quite unpredictable. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
A classic, with spicy and frenetic solos one moment, comic overtones and clever melodies and rhythms the next. The Art Ensemble at this point were becoming stars overseas, and finding the going increasingly tougher in America. It's outside or avant-garde jazz with soul, heart, and funk. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
You either love or hate these guys. If you believe that jazz is the sound of surprise, then these fellows occupy a special place in your heart. If, like others, you believe jazz is to be taken seriously and played only by men in suits, then this record will drive you batty. True to form, the tunes here have the loose kinetic swing that drives their early records, Ornette-ish funk and Miles-ish bop fractured by the hoots of whistles and the occasional yelp. Beyond everything else, though, is the undeniable fact that these gentlemen are sterling musicians and everything is done for a purpose, exactly when they want it to happen. A wonderful record by a bunch of really great guys. ~ Rob Ferrier, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
After trumpeter Lester Bowie's death in 1999, it looked as if the Art Ensemble of Chicago was finished. With multi-reedist Joseph Jarman having left the group in the early 1990s, the unit was down to a trio consisting of multi-reedist Roscoe Mitchell, bassist Malachi Favors and drummer Don Moye. However Jarman soon rejoined the Art Ensemble and the group continued to work. Favors' death in early 2004 was a major blow, but the band, with different bassists, has not died. Sirius Calling is Favors' last recording and it features the quartet on 14 originals. The music is as adventurous as ever, ranging from Mitchell's circular breathing feature on the title cut and a few whimsical moments to group improvising. One misses Bowie's sense of humor and sound, and a few of the percussion pieces (particularly "Taiko") seem aimless and meandering, but the interplay between the four musicians, the mood variation (which ranges from jubilant to introspective sound explorations) and the wide range of tonal colors (Mitchell and Jarman play many different instruments) usually keep the concise music continually intriguing. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Recorded in 1969, Live in Paris follows two studio albums that the Art Ensemble cut for BYG/Actuel during the same year -- A Jackson in Your House and Message to Our Folks. What Parisian audiences must have made of the band with its wild makeup and costumes can only be debated, but the music contained on this double-CD reissue of the original double album is stellar (the LP was issued on the Arista Freedom label in the United States in 1974 and this set was originally issued by Charly in the United Kingdom in 2002). Each CD features one composition, divided into two parts, in keeping with the LP releases. "Oh, Strange," by Joseph Jarman and Lester Bowie, begins with a very short, bluesy jazz theme that is augmented almost immediately with all manner of percussion instruments, which multiply until they literally take over, leaving Jarman and Mitchell, who knottily play a folk song variation on the opening theme that is articulated over moans, groans, and droning baritone and tenor saxophones. Dynamics and tension begin to gradually shift as notions of tempo, and even striated harmonics, are laid waste in the din. But this far from unlistenable noise; in fact, perhaps now in the 21st century more than ever before, the freewheeling improvisations of the Art Ensemble make a kind of syntagmatic sense. On the other monolithic piece here, "Bon Voyage," written by Bowie, the Art Ensemble is accompanied by the composer's then-wife, singer Fontella Bass, who recorded "Les Stances à Sophie" with them later (Famoudou Don Moye was not yet a member of the ensemble). Bass uses her rhythm and blues grit and gospel dynamics and control to improvise alongside the bandmembers, who have to make plenty of room for her contribution. There is a wondrous tension at play in the oppositional fields of male and female energies here. Bass swoops, glides, hollers, moans, and sings her way into the maelstrom of space. This is the finest live recording by the Art Ensemble, and documents the first tour of a legendary band that created new standards not only for improvisation but for performance as well. Now that Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors Maghostus have left this world, reissues like this help listeners to remember how enormous their accomplishments were. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The death of the AEC's colorful lab-coated trumpeter Lester Bowie in 1999 was a huge blow to the veteran avant-garde band but not a fatal one, for the surviving members -- Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors Moghostut, and Famoudou Don Moye -- decided to carry on as a trio. The CD also marks the group's return to the ECM shelf after 19 years elsewhere -- and in turn, the group receives probably the most stunning, precisely etched recorded sound of its existence. Yet despite the retrospective nature of some of the selections, there is no overt nostalgia or compromise in the AEC's aesthetic stance, probably figuring that Bowie would have wanted it that way. "Sangaredi" leads off the disc with one of the AEC's more treasured percussion jams, a tribal ritual that picks up speed, with Mitchell's bass saxophone honking away, culminating in the grand clash of gongs. The trio merges Bowie's "Zero" with Mitchell's "Alternate Line" into a relatively straight-ahead walking-bass carpet for Mitchell's tenor to tread upon. "Tutankhamun" dates back to the AEC's early years in Paris, with Mitchell working his way toward a whirling North African-flavored solo on soprano against the free interplay of his colleagues. From this point on to the close, it's all collective improvisation, the threesome playing free and wild, yet with absolute empathy and telepathic precision. This stimulating homage to the AEC's beloved trumpeter was recorded in 2001 but not released until nearly two years later, by which time reedman Joseph Jarman had rejoined the band full-time. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
How strange that there are two studio albums by the Art Ensemble of Chicago issued in 2003, both without Lester Bowie, on two different labels. The ECM album is a tribute to the late Bowie and is made up of the surviving members of the working Art Ensemble -- Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, and Don Moye -- and the album at hand is a reunion of sorts with composer and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Jarman, who retired in the early '90s. While the former album is on the group's American label, ECM, and is a formal tribute to Bowie, it is the latter that more formally encapsulates the Art Ensemble's classic vision of free improvisation, non-Western folk traditions, and jazz as one in the same brew. And yes, Bowie's hard-swinging humorous presence is missed, and to the band's credit, they've made no attempt to fill the void on either recording. The Meeting is not, however, a reacquaintance with Jarman. His composition, "Hail We Now Sing Joy," a hard bopping, scatting tribute to Buddha Shakyamuni, opens the album and creates a space where his trad jazz roots and Bowie's ongoing sense of history are melded by the band, which negotiates the territory with great verve and taste. "It's the Sign of the Times," written by Favors, revisits with deeper wisdom, expansive texture, and more pronounced dynamics the territory the Art Ensemble explored on its first album, People in Sorrow, in 1967. Each member solos for an extended period before the band comes together in a final movement that encapsulates all the varying themes. Almost 19 minutes in length, it's a portrait of the Art Ensemble as individuals coming together to form an inseparable bond and commitment to the creation of sound as music; the pace is slow and purposeful and the expressionism created by the unit is out of this world. "Tech Ritter and the Megabytes" is one of those beautiful Mitchell pieces that is a space-age nursery rhyme (à la "Snurdy McGurdy and Her Dancin' Shoes"). Only four and a half minutes in length, it offers striated interwoven melodies along the shimmering harmonic edge of the blues. Three of the remaining four selections are group improvisations broken only by Mitchell's title composition of fat R&B and swing-styled horn lines. Of these, it is the dreamy percussion and woodwind-oriented "Wind and Drum" that is the most moving as it walks the line of spatial relationships to silence, lyric, and non-determinate unfolding. The sense of play that the AEC does so well is what drives "The Train to lo," the album's closer. Bells, whistles, basses played as drums, and sopranino saxophones create lines of communication along attenuated rhythms and faltering interludes that nonetheless create more space for dialogue as they wander in and out of the mix. This is a glorious reunion album, one that delights as it provokes. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Reese and the Smooth Ones'
Release Date 4/9/2002
Tracks 2
Label Get Back
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What The Critics Say
Recorded when the Art Ensemble of Chicago was in Paris and between drummers (Don Moye would not join up until 1970), this English imported LP has a continuous piece featuring trumpeter Lester Bowie, reed players Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman and bassist Malachi Favors all playing plenty of "little instruments" (which include various horns, gongs, logs, bells, sirens, whistles, steel drums, marimba, and banjo, among others) in addition to their mainstays. The episodic music continually holds one's interest, and overall, it makes a unified (if unpredictable) statement. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
