Roscoe Mitchell Music

Roscoe Mitchell continues to be an astounding post-Coltrane sax player on this album with pianist Matthew Shipp. Some of the improvisations often remind me of Xenakis's more pointilistic sound mass compositions. Both musicians create swirling, dense textures which emerge organically from the sum total of their lines. Very nice and thick. On other tracks, there is a more subdued feel and a thinner texture, reminiscent of Webern. Quiet and slow done very nicely.

Mr. Mitchell seems to have the upper hand on the younger Mr. Shipp in terms of technique. While Mr. Shipp can create quick lines and dense textures, I think he could stand to alter his tone color and dynamic level more often than he does. In the end, though, this doesn't hurt this album too much.

One of the elements that make the music of the AACM in Chicago unique is that so many of the composer/performers in the group resist stylistic boundaries. Roscoe Mitchell is a definate leader in this, along with Anthony Braxton and George Lewis. This album is dedicated to music by Mitchell that combines notated sections and approaches to improvisation to create marvelous chamber compositions which rival anything coming out of more traditional new music composers. The album consists of music for a small ensemble of Mitchell on winds, piano violin, and on most of the pieces, Thomas Buckner, the formidable contemporary baritone. Mitchell has chosen to set a wide variety of challenging poems to music, including poems by E. E. Cummings, Lord Byron, and Joseph Jarman. Also included is one of Henry Threadgill's compositions based on a poem by Thulani Davis. These are interspersed with Mitchell's instrumental ompositions. All in all this is an impressive CD.

What impresses most about this disc is Mitchell's deft way with a vocal melody. He knows the voice intimately, despite a lack of documented vocal music on his resume. The word setting is careful and exquisite...the poems are always audible, and yet the vocal line increases the meaning of the poem rather than being a distraction, the mark of a great writer of art song. What also impresses is the near impossibility of telling the difference between notated and improvised sections in the music. The relationship between material is so seamless that the improvisations seem to flow directly out of the basic material.

Perhaps this is why Mitchell's music gets short shrift by the new music establishment. It is threatening to those who believe in total organization to hear results that are so similar, based on skillful improvisation. Of course, a subtle racism also plays into this. Mitchell and Braxton have both reported recieving patronizing responses by many in the new music community when they've tried to interest them in these works. (Braxton reports getting dissed by the man himself, Pierre Boulez, during the early 70s in Paris.) And also, despite nearly 40 years of experiments in improvisation in classical music, most non-jazz musicians still just don't get it. (Morton Feldman gave up his graphic scores after a while, when too many performers kept playing triads instead of the complex harmony that Feldman was interested in.) It's too bad, because musicians like Mitchell show us all a way out of the various stylistic traps that have hemmed in composers in the late 20th century. The merging of composition and improvisation is perhaps the most exciting development of the last 40 years, and one that could have enourmous repercussions for music in the next century.

"First Look" is a powerhouse meeting of two iconic Chicagoans. Bassist Tatsu Aoki, founder of the Asian American jazz festival, and onetime president of Asian Improv Records, joins forces with legendary multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell, founder of the famed Art Ensemble of Chicago and charter member of the AACM. With decades of playing experience behind them, these two draw from an endless well of ideas to enrich this sublime studio session.

Veering from the austere and ceremonial opening and closing pieces, "In" and "Out" to the tumultuous "Dot," the duo embraces a myriad of emotions on this varied record. Opening with a bass vamp accompanied by Mitchell's delicate bell-like percussion, "In" gradually unfolds to reveal a tender flute solo at its center. Mitchell's alto arrives on the second piece and is his dominant horn for this intimate set, instead of his usual soprano. His playing ranges from the supple and breathy phrasing of a master to the overblown intensity of his earliest recordings. Mitchell has lost none of his fire in his fifty plus years playing, no small feat for as vigorous a musician as he.

Aoki acts as supporting figure, percussionist and melodist. When not holding down modal vamps or dueling episodically with Mitchell's tart, spastic alto, or bowing his instrument with lyrical intensity, he is hand drumming. The album's conceptual centerpiece, "The Journey" is a case in point. Beginning with a ceremonial percussive introduction, it slowly takes on the form of a bluesy bass ostinato with Mitchell's playful alto taking the lead. As the piece intensifies, Aoki switches back to percussion, dropping sporadic accents while Mitchell locks into a circular breathing tour-de-force that takes the tune out with a dissonantly minimalist mantra.

Aoki's achingly beautiful arco bowing can be heard to best effect on "Glide." With a melancholy but optimistic line, Aoki supports a delicate but earnest series of long tones from Mitchell's alto that are as heart-rendingly intense as his companion's ruminations. On the other end of the spectrum, "Dot" finds the two sparring in jabs and feints, fitful bass runs interlock with sputtered and frenzied alto blasts, back and forth they go, like boxers. Similarly intense "Yoshihashi" begins with a clarion call from Mitchell's keening alto and a forceful driving bass line before locking into the vamping structure. The album ends, much as it began, with "Out," all delicate percussion and flute.

Despite a few intense workouts, "First Look" is actually a rather measured and regal affair. Mitchell is the consummate searcher and Aoki a solid, but inventive collaborator. More than just a simple conversation between two masters, "First Look" is a stately and intriguing meeting of like minds.

bulls are running down the aisle crashing into and smashing everything. the customers run out of the store. so i'm standing in the china shop music store looking confused. the manager comes up to me and asks me why did i ask him to play that piece. the only answer i have, because i like it.

the music doesn't start out like bulls loosed. composition/improvisation is music true to its title. the first movement opens with strings and craig taborn on piano, a piece evocative of the french impressionism of debussy, building to german concert music, followed by the introduction of horns by the third movement, modern music, maybe what stephen hartke or john corigliano, american composers, might had considered. and then the bulls give signs of restlessness, solos accelerate faster and faster, both drummers become involved and craig taborn joins in the wild improvisation. personally, i listened to the way craig taborn stitched his way through the improvisational section of the 3rd movement.

jazz improvisation gained its first popular name with coltrane's sheets of sound. the music as textural, probably perceiving improvisation as a piece of fabric does help as a way of listening, or of tolerating a listening of improvisational music. particularly with roscoe mitchell's well structured work, where disordered is followed by the ordered.

from the fourth movement on, underlined by moody strings, the horns solo, and then join the piano in duets.

according to the linear notes the nine movements are from two separate performances reassembled for the recording. that's just information, the recording is put together masterfully, everything works. a bullfighter's luxuriant cape in the hands of a master matador.

This music on this CD is unique even within the expansive musical history of Roscoe Mitchell. Or maybe I don't know his work in the area of modern classical as well as I thought.
In any case, prepare yourself to deal with some powerful, majestic and beautiful music. Throughout this CD Mitchell and his fellow musicians are amazingly patient and sensitive. They create music of great tension and gravitas and unleash solos of great beauty supported by superb orchestrations. This is the work of a collection of truely masterful instrumentalists/composers uniting to explore the vision of one of their own.
Let's start with a more complete listing of the personnel than Amazon provided above: Mitchell wrote the compositions and plays soprano sax, Evan Parker on tenor and soprano, Anders Svanoe on alto and baritone, Corey Wilkes on trumpet and flugelhorn, John Rangecroft on clarinet, Neil Metcalfe of flute, Nils Bultmann on viola, Philipp Wachsmann on violin, Marcio Mattos on cello, Craig Taborn on piano, both Jaribu Shahid and Barry Guy on standup bass and both Tani Tabbal and Paul Lytton on drums and percussion.
These musicians are drawn from Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and Mitchell's own Note Factory ensemble. Parker and Mitchell created the amalgamated group for a performance in Munich back in September of 2004. The group rehearsed both Mitchell's pieces and works by Parker for live performances.
The music on this CD is drawn from several of those performances and consists of portions of Mitchell's title composition. Which leads to my one major complaint- I want the whole composition. Why on earth was this edited? Have or will the Parker pieces come out?
My other complaint is with the printed material. The title indicates three seperate composition/improvisations. The CD has nine sections: what belongs to what? (Anyone who knows the answers please feel free to educate me in a comment.)
The music transcends any and all such limitations and complaints. Some of these musician (Guy, Mitchell, Wachsmann, Mattos) have lived for years in the broad area of overlap between modern classical technique/composition and that of jazz. Many of these musicians have worked together for decades (Parker-Guy-Lytton, Mitchell-Tabbal). There are literally hundred of years of musical experience in this group and it shows.
The CD starts off with a grave bowed cello (I believe) from Mattos which leads to a composition that would have been at home in early 20th century Europe. I have never heard any of Mitchell's compositions for the violin family before but I will now seek them out. His use of the string players throughout is deeply satisfying. Metcalfe's flute tone is a thing of beauty and his work is essential to the group sound.
The third track contains two satisfying full-group sections that sound improvised seperated by some nice soli. Indeed, great soli abound on this CD. Wilkes tears it up several times, Svanoe has a nice baritone feature on the seventh track, Taborn playing is the center of the eighth track (listen to the way his touch creates the tension toward the ending of this track), Parker plays mightily throughout and so on.
On note on the improvs: apparently each of the three pieces uses a different improvisational framework. Mitchell is quoted in the liner notes:
"I devised three methods of improvisation...One method involved each player getting a part and also six cards with scored improvisation on them. One piece used a limited number of notes, and I asked those players to use only those notes for improvisation. And for the third piece, I asked players to select their information from the composition and construct improvisation based on that."
This is where I would have liked better notes. It would be nice to see a section of one of the scored improv cards. It would be nice to know which type of improv was used on each track.
Back to the music. The final track starts off with a long theme statement by Wachsmann(Bultmann?)with the other strings slowly entering. Then the other musicians join in to create a final atmosphere of great tension. A wonderful end to a wonderful CD. Now when will a complete version be released?

A Transatlantic Art Ensemble, bringing together 5 members of Roscoe Mitchell's Art Ensemble of Chicago and Note Factory with 9 members of Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble? This ECM disc has been eagerly awaited for years now, since it was recorded in September of 2004. The unusual summit meeting took place as part of the "Unforeseen" symposium for improvised music in Munich, curated by the Munich Kulturreferat and the musicology department of the Ludwig Maximillian University, which examined real-time creativity for a week, with lectures, workshops, and commissioned works by Roscoe Mitchell and Evan Parker. The two composer/improvisers assembled the 14-piece ensemble, which performed Parker's music on September 10th, and Mitchell's music on September 11th...

...a great concept, but only sporadically compelling in execution. The music quite consciously straddles the line between contemporary classical composition and free jazz/improvisation. For the most part it sounds like chamber music -- all 14 musicians seldom play in unison. The one major exception is the Globe Unity Orchestra-like free-for-all in Part III, which begins sounding like a Muhal Richard Abrams composition, and then gives way to an extended Parker tenor solo, eventually joined by the rest of the band in a standard free improv blow-out. The strings (Philipp Wachsmann on violin, Nils Bultmann on viola, Marcio Mattos on cello and Barry Guy and Jaribu Shahid on bass) play a crucial role throughout in establishing a more classical-sounding timbre than one would expect from a Mitchell/Parker summit. Percussion (Paul Lytton and Tani Tabbal) is muted with a few dramatic exceptions. Woodwinds (Mitchell, Parker and Anders Svanoe on saxes, John Rangecroft on clarinet, and Neil Metcalfe on flute) are prominent throughout, intertwining with the strings to create a Second Vienna School (Schoenberg/Webern/Berg) soundscape. Corey Wilkes on trumpet and Craig Taborn on piano are also both prominently featured. (According to the ECM site, Parts I, II, V, VII and IX derive from C/I No. 2, Parts IV and VIII from C/I No. 1, and Part III derives from C/I No. 3.)

I'm curious about the Evan Parker performance the night before -- does it sound roughly similar? I suspect that the answer is no, and I hope ECM releases a companion disc soon. The problem with a one-time gathering such as this is that the musicians do not have time to develop an understanding of one another, develop a common language, and spur one another to their best efforts. While the playing is fine, it mainly sounds hesitant, perhaps too a result of the constraints imposed by Mitchell's compositions/frameworks for improvisation. Only Part VIII really takes off into some unpredictable intensity. There are many other passages of lovely chamber music, and I'm sure there are other listeners who will find this more compelling.

For all interested in Roscoe Mitchell's recent music, I recommend NINE TO GET READY (ECM, 1999) and SONG FOR MY SISTER (Pi Recordings, 2002) with the Note Factory, and TRIBUTE TO LESTER (ECM, 2003), with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for more concentrated and compelling works (see my reviews of all three). And see my reviews of all four of the ECM recordings by Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble.