Roscoe Mitchell Quartet, Live at "A Space" 1975

I missed the Roscoe Mitchell Quartet's Live at "A Space" 1975 album when it first came out on vinyl. With Delmark's reissue series of the Sackville recordings I can hear it now (Sackville 2080) with the addition of 20 extra minutes. I am glad of that, certainly.

The quartet was one of the seminal if short lived groupings of AACM musicians dedicated to a chamber, new music sort of presentation. Of course before them was Anthony Braxton's trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Leroy Jenkins. The Art Ensemble of Chicago live in the first decade of their existence and even after that were known to devote some of their live sets and parts of their albums to more abstract, less rhythmic compositions-improvisations of course, and this quartet was a more intense exploration of that territory as Roscoe conceived it. The initial studio album on Sackville gave us a good listen to what they were doing. Live at "A Space" 1975 expands and elaborates that.

In the quartet was of course Roscoe on saxes, the legendary Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, a young and very much upcoming George Lewis on trombone in his recorded debut, and Spencer Barefield on guitar, a sensitive, attuned musician who plays an important role in the group but on this live date an extraordinarily spare one.

The bonus additions to the CD release include a version of Trane's "Naima" and versions of "Dastura" and "Nonaah". The pieces here from the original vinyl release are "Tnoona," "Music for Trombone and B-Flat Soprano", "Cards", and "Olobo".

The music gives us another look at the quartet in a live setting. George Lewis sounds quite inspired but then so does Mitchell and Abrams. There are moments of excellent interplay, such as the three-way version of "Cards", there are solo moments where group members have a chance to express something on their own--with Abrams and Lewis turning in some especially excellent moments, and there is the whole advanced vibe of the group and its abstractive expressiveness.

All of it is most definitely worth hearing, even if you know the studio date. The quartet did not exactly get on the top-40 charts in those days, and of course that was because they were too good! The CD shows you why.

Delmark Now Distributes Sackville Records; Roscoe Mitchell's "Quartet," 1975

Good news for modern jazz appreciators: selected titles in the legendary Sackville Records catalog will now be available through Delmark. It involves the avant jazz catalog and, so I hear, may eventually include unreleased recordings.

In keeping with the welcome turn of events I'll be looking today at one of the early Sackville masterworks, Roscoe Mitchell's 1975 live recording Quartet (Sackville SKCD2-2009). I've had this recording on vinyl since it first came out, so I view it as an old friend. For the purpose of today's article I have to step back a few paces and try to hear it like it was a new experience. I must say that it sounds as fresh today as when I first heard it.

It's a bassless-drummerless ensemble that operates in a zone that does not stress rhythmic periodicity. So one could say that it is in a kind of "new music" realm--not classical necessarily, but the kind of chamber composition-improvisation that Roscoe and his AACM associates would so successfully explore during this and successive periods. Do not expect a swinging version of "Odwalla," then. It is a difference that makes a difference and distinguishes this on the whole from a typical Art Ensemble date from the era. That is not to say that the music is any more--or any less compelling. And it IS compelling.

This is a quartet of some definite significance. There's Roscoe on soprano, alto and tenor sax, Muhal Richard Abrams, piano, George Lewis, trombone, and Spencer Barefield, guitar. Mr. Barefield is quite effective on this and one can only regret that he has been somewhat underexposed. The rest of the players all should know of course. The four have a rapport that comes out of common dedication and mutual respect.

There are four pieces on the recording; three by Mitchell ("Tnoona," "Cards," and "Olobo") and George Lewis's "Music for Trombone and B-Flat Soprano." All are in the high realm of the keenly expressed compositional-conceptual-improvisational mode for which Roscoe and company have become so deservedly known. It is a high point of the era and an interesting contrast to the Art Ensemble brand of excellence that was flourishing at the same time.

If this album is less touted than some more-or-less similar endeavors of the '70s, I believe it is because the Sackville recording has not been as readily available as some of the others over the last 35 years. With Delmark now involved in getting this out that I hope will change.

Needless to say this one is most heartily recommended.

George Lewis & Marina Rosenfeld's "Sour Mash:" Modern Electronic Music

We have come quite a distance from the early days of electronic music and musique concrete. In the early fifties, unless you were working on the mainframe computers programmed for synthesized sound, you had a couple of mono tape recorders, an oscillator or two, a microphone to sample sounds and a splicing block where the composer painstakingly and slowly assembled a work from the bits and pieces of magnetic tape he or she had created.

The personal computer, sequencers, MIDI and all the rest have revolutionized electronic music, and of course the innovations that seemed so startling back in 1958 have been readily absorbed into modern day pop, rock and hip-hop music.

Thankfully though there is still vitally creative composition happening in the electronic field.

With that in mind we turn to a recent release of a composite electronic work by Marina Rosenfield and George Lewis, Sour Mash (Innova 228). This is a collaborative effort by the two. Marina is a sound artist of growing reputation; George made his name originally as a trombonist in the avant improvisational area, one of the most important trombonists of his generation, and has increasingly turned to electronics.

Sour Mash consists of one short and one longer construction by each composer. The pieces are then combined together in a second, double version. Sour Mash is being made available as an LP and as a CD. Marina and George think of the recorded result as something open-ended. For example, turntablists are welcome to work with the music and remix it in whatever way they see fit.

There are processed sounds and electronic sounds in the works. The sound events tend to flow more than punctuate. They are noise and tone soundscapes, as it were. I have listened a fair number of times to the music and I must say that I found myself only gradually entering the insular sound world at hand. The first few listens left a rather neutral impression, then I began to grasp what was happening. The music doesn't so much articulate memorable motifs as it creates an ambiance. I find it a fascinating listen.

George Lewis, 1977: Shadowgraph

George Lewis recorded one of his first albums, Shadowgraph, in 1977. It was released on Black Saint in 1978. Now I suspect that everything that could be said has been said about this album. Nonetheless my blogs are in part an odyssey of my listening experiences in time, and if I do not address some of that there will be an imbalance, a lack of representative things I do listen to that perhaps nobody seems to send to me in the form of promo copies. So. . .

I am not sure why or how I missed this release when it first came out, except to say that 1978 began a long and somewhat distracting (to the music) journey I took in educational enlightenment and, later, protracted wage slavedom, which wasn't so bad because I managed to eat every day and pay the rent.

So there we are. Shadowgraph has an impressive lineup of musicians: Lewis, Douglas Ewart, Leroy Jenkins, Abdul Wadud, Anthony Davis, Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell...many of them prime AACM cats, all of them important Afro-American improvisers and most of them also important composers of the music.

The four pieces put down onto tape and assembled for the album are in the free-form chamber improvisation-jazz mode. Lewis introduces electronics in addition to his trombone and tuba, and everyone contributes. It is wonderfully subtle music. It sounds to me like one of the gems of that year, certainly. The sound color sculpting on this one is just superb, as is the very intelligent utilization of space by everyone involved.

Now if someone tells you that the '70s were a bust for "Jazz," play them this one and then send them packing. The fact is that the '70s were incredibly important years for the music. And George Lewis was right there in a central position. He's a fabulous trombonist, sure, but a composer-conceptualist of the very highest sort as well.

Perhaps my quick take on Shadowgraph will not satisfy those looking for detailed musical description. Well that's been done. This posting serves mostly as a reminder that one should not miss this recording if one has serious designs on understanding improvisation and its development in our era.