Art Ensemble of Chicago – We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (Pi, 2019)
Fifty years after the Art Ensemble of Chicago first became an internationally known force in avant-garde music, co-founder Roscoe Mitchell has no plans to make any major changes to the group’s working method, which unifies musical strands ranging from deep blues and heavy funk to rigorous composition, ritualistic soundscapes and beyond under the tagline “Great Black Music — Ancient to the Future.”
“We worked on our music and we kind of let the other stuff fall in line on its own, and that’s worked up to this point,” the 78-year-old says, speaking by phone from his current home in California. “The Art Ensemble always said that if it gets down to just one person, then that’s the Art Ensemble, so I’m just gonna stay with that kind of thinking.”
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba