The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians enters the second weekend of its 45th anniversary celebration tonight, and continues through Sunday with a series of noteworthy events. (For more info about the AACM, see last week’s column on their Chicago roots and international impact.) After that, the commemoration moves to Poland, of all places. But one thing at a time.
Much of this weekend’s activity centers on Roscoe Mitchell, an icon of American music and a founding member of the AACM, who returns to his hometown Chicago from Mills College in California, where he has held the prestigious Darius Milhaud Professorship in Music since 2007.
Tonight brings Mitchell to Hyde Park, where he first collected the artists who would become the Art Ensemble of Chicago – the group most responsible for exporting the AACM’s music beyond Chicago in the 1960s and 70s. Originally called the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, the Art Ensemble actually grew out of Mitchell’s sextet, which in 1966 recorded the very first album to feature AACM musicians (Sound, on Chicago’s Delmark label).
In his solo work, Mitchell has investigated the saxophones with an almost clinical rigor, extending the instruments’ expressive capacity by leaps and bounds. On the other hand, he has also created some of the most accessible music under the AACM rubric, with his own bands and in several of his many collaborations with other musical adventurers. At 70, he remains a marvel, and a self-renewing and still vital artistic presence.
Mitchell will perform a couple of times this weekend, but tonight he presents a lecture entitled Creative Composition. You won’t find many artists better qualified to speak on the subject – or to speak on any subject, for that matter. Mitchell long ago emerged as one of jazz’s most articulate statesmen, able to combine science and poetry when discussing his music and the larger concerns of art, whether it be with interviewers, concert-goers, or students.
The Mitchell lecture takes place tonight at 7:30 at Goodspeed Hall, 5845 South Ellis on the University of Chicago campus, and admission is free.
Friday night, Mitchell leads a band called New Experiments as part of a double-bill at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E. Chicago). The band’s rather extraordinary all-star lineup comprises a multi-generational snapshot of the AACM. Saxist and pianist Ari Brown is an important second-generation member of the organization; flutist Nicole Mitchell, the current AACM president, represents the current class of veterans in their 40s and 50s, while drummer Mike Reed – whose own bands and albums have earned widespread acclaim – is still only 35.
The group rounds out with one of the AACM’s younger members, the incandescent cellist Tomeka Reid (who despite the note on her Facebook page, is not “86 years old”), and one of the city’s most durable artists, bassist Harrison Bankhead, renowned for his yeoman collaborations with a host of AACM musicians, notably the late Fred Anderson, over the last three decades).
The music starts at 7:30 with the premiere of a new band, Renée Baker’s Brass Epiphany, led by the eponymous AACM violinist. Baker brings a classical and well-practiced technique to her playing, which is not all that unusual among jazz violinists; it certainly comes in handy in her role as principal violist with the Chicago Sinfonietta and in the numerous other classical settings in which she performs.
But Baker also boasts a jazz-centric rhythmic command – much rarer among string players – that gives her playing an unusual and welcome authority; and in her solos (notably with Nicole Mitchell’s various Black Earth ensembles), she delivers a fluid torrent of ideas. In the last few years, almost under the radar, she has ascended to the top ranks of modern jazz violinists in stealth mode: the stealth virtuoso.
Baker has also crested a creative wave as composer and bandleader: Brass Epiphany is the second new group to be unveiled by Baker this season. True to its name, it includes seven trumpets and three trombones (along with two saxophonists) – most of them drawn from the deep current pool of young emergent improvisers – along with what appears to be a 10-piece string section. In other words, we’re talking about a full-fledged, new-jazz chamber orchestra. No one’s heard them yet, but I’m expecting good things.
But wait – there’s more! Check back tomorrow for a rundown on the weekend component of the AACM festival.
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