Word: musics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...group of musicians which it actually describes. The designation "Art Ensemble" may strike us as parodic, but any irony reflects only our own cultural conditioning. The work of the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC) is, in its way, every bit as creative, disciplined, and sincere as the classical music for which we ordinarily reserve the word...
...Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future" is the AEC motto. The members of the Art Ensemble are quick to deny any racial or elitist intent--the motto is meant to acknowledge and affirm the singular course of American black musical development. The group's radical conception of musical performance has as its obvious source the improvisation and spontaneous creation which are characteristic of jazz, blues, and Afro-American folk music. These are musical values that have no counterpart in the mainstream of Western culture. But classifications like "jazz" or even "music" seem to narrow to contain the Art Ensemble...
...SPECTRE of the 60s raised by that hackneyed term is not inappropriate, for the AEC's unique concept of American music has its origins in the artistic and cultural ferment of that era. Our popular culture has conditioned us for the epehmeral, but the emergence of the Art Ensemble as a tangible force in jazz is in fact as much a culmination as beginning. The AEC has worked together for over fifteen years, and during that time they have released over 20 albums, as well as an equal number of records under individual Art Ensemble members' names. Great Black Music...
Saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, and bassist Malachi Favors were founding members of the AACM; trumpeter Lester Bowie joined when he came to Chicago shortly afterward. These four players became the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The original name was the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, but the group's musical philosophy was deeply influenced by the collective ideal of the AACM, and when they went to Europe in 1969 they adopted a name that more accurately suggests the active role each member takes in the AEC's music. With the addition of percussionist Don Moye...
...MUSIC ITSELF shows an unusually broad range of expression. The Art Ensemble has chosen a musical language which accepts and draws on both the multitude of musical experiences that have shaped the styles of its individual players and the roots of jazz itself. One thinks of avantgarde jazz in terms of raw rhythmic energy and screeching atonalism, but the Art Ensemble's musical vocabulary evokes swing, calypso, bebop circus music, rhythm'n blues and a host of other influences side-by-side with the visionary innovations of a Coltrane or an Ayler. It's not simply a case...