Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz group that grew out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the late 1960s. The ensemble integrates many jazz styles and plays many instruments, including "little instruments": bells, bicycle horns, birthday party noisemakers, wind chimes, and various forms of percussion. The musicians would wear costumes and face paint while performing. These characteristics combined to make the ensemble's performances both aural and visual. While playing in Europe in 1969, five hundred instruments were used.

History

Members of what was to become the Art Ensemble performed together under various band names in the mid-sixties, as members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). They performed on the 1966 album Sound, as the Roscoe Mitchell Sextet. The Sextet included saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, trumpeter Lester Bowie, and bassist Malachi Favors. For the next year, they played as the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble. In 1967, they were joined by fellow AACM members Joseph Jarman (saxophone) and Phillip Wilson (drums) and recorded for Nessa Records.

All of the musicians were multi-instrumentalists. Jarman and Mitchell's primary instruments were alto and tenor saxophone, respectively. Additionally, they both played other saxophones ranging from the small sopranino to the large bass saxophone, as well as the flute and clarinet. In addition to trumpet, Bowie played flugelhorn, cornet, shofar, and conch shells. Favors added touches of banjo and bass guitar. Most of them dabbled in piano, synthesizer, and other keyboards, and they all played percussion instruments.

They were known for wearing costumes and makeup on stage. Member Joseph Jarman described part of their style:

So what we were doing with that face painting was representing everyone throughout the universe, and that was expressed in the music as well. That's why the music was so interesting. It wasn't limited to Western instruments, African instruments, or Asian instruments, or South American instruments, or anybody's instruments.

In 1967, Wilson left the group to join Paul Butterfield's band, and for a period the group was a quartet without a full-time drummer. Jarman and Mitchell served as artistic directors at the cooperative summer camp Circle Pines Center in Delton, Michigan, in August 1968, during the same week that the Democratic Convention was in Chicago. After a farewell concert at the Unitarian Church in Evanston, Illinois, in fall, 1968, the remaining group traveled to Paris. In Paris, the ensemble was based at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier. In France, they became known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The impetus for the name change came from a French promoter who added "of Chicago" to their name for descriptive purposes. The new name stuck because band members felt that it better reflected the cooperative nature of the group. In Paris, the ensemble was based at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier and they recorded for the Freedom and BYG labels. They also recorded Comme à la radio with Brigitte Fontaine and Areski Belkacem but without a drummer until percussionist Don Moye became a member of the group in 1970. During that year, they recorded the albums Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass and Les Stances a Sophie with singer Fontella Bass, who was Lester Bowie's wife. The latter was the soundtrack to the French movie of the same title.

Fifty years on

Lester Bowie died of liver cancer in 1999. Malachi Favors died in 2004 of pancreatic cancer. Joseph Jarman died on January 9, 2019, of respiratory failure.

As of 2017-2019 Mitchell and Moye remained active, with new and previous collaborators as guest under the name Art Ensemble of Chicago - 50th Anniversary Large Ensemble. They released an album in 2019:

• Roscoe Mitchell – saxophones;
• Famoudou Don Moye – drums, congas and percussion.

Guests:

• Babu Atiba – african drums and djembe
• Fred Berry – trumpet, flugelhorn
• Silvia Bolognesi[de; it]– double bass
• Brett Carson[de] – piano
• Jean Cook – violin
• Steed Cowart – conductor
• Rodolfo Cordova-Lebron – voice
• Dudu Kouaté – African percussion
• yuniya edi kwon – viola/violin
• William Lang - trombone
• Nicole Mitchell – flutes
• Moor Mother – spoken word
• Erina Newkirk – soprano vocals
• Junius Paul[de; gl] – double bass and objects
• Hugh Ragin – trumpet, flugelhorn and piccolo trumpet
• Tomeka Reid – cello
• Stephen Rush - conductor
• Jaribu Shahid – double bass
• Abel Selaocoe – cello
• Simon Sieger[de] – trombone
• Baba Sissoko – African percussion
• Titos Sompa[de] – vocals, congas, mbira, bells
• Christina Wheeler – voice, array mbira, autoharp, q-chord, theremin, sampler, electronics
• Enoch Williamson – congas, djembe and percussion

and another in 2023 with a smaller ensemble of 20 musicians – The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris.

Discography

Further reading

• Steinbeck, Paul. Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Shipton, Alyn. A New History of Jazz. London: Continuum, 2001.

Films

• 1982 - Television documentary broadcast by Channel 4 in November 1982.
• 1982 - Live From the Jazz Showcase: The Art Ensemble of Chicago (directed by William J Mahin, the University of Illinois at Chicago). Filmed at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase in Chicago, November 1, 1981.

External links

• – official website, but not updated since before 2004, retrieved May 21, 2019
• - current webpage as of 2019, maintained by Art Ensemble's European booking agency, retrieved May 21, 2019
• - Discography at Discogs
• discography (archive), retrieved January 11, 2005
• biography on the AACM site, retrieved January 11, 2005
• return to Mandel Hall after 32 years – report by Seth Sanders in the University of Chicago Chronicle, April 29, 2004, retrieved January 11, 2005
• interview at Furious, retrieved January 11, 2005
• photos, live in Salzburg/Austria 2006
• portraits by Dominik Huber at dominikphoto.com