Before he moved to New York and became a key drummer in Miles Davis’ powerful electric lineup, circa Bitches Brew, Jack DeJohnette played drums all over Chicago in the early 1960s. This was the same period during which future Art Ensemble of Chicago saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman were studying music at Woodrow Wilson College, and when a pianist-educator named Muhal Richard Abrams was leading rehearsals of what he called the Experimental Band, over at the C&C Lounge on the city’s South Side.
In 1963, DeJohnette introduced Mitchell to Abrams. Two years later, with DeJohnette off in New York, Mitchell attended the first meetings of a new collective cofounded by the pianist: the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (or AACM). Inspired by the freer approaches to jazz improvisation suggested by Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, as well as by Western-classical and world-music performance practices, members of the association pledged fidelity to no genre, focusing their goals instead on the composition and performance of original pieces—no matter the form. "Write whatever you want," Abrams once told a member, "and we’ll look at it."
Though DeJohnette is better known in mainstream jazz circles for his distinguished career as a bandleader—and for his participation in outfits with Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny—he hasn’t lost touch with these exploratory, avant-garde titans. Their communion can be heard on Made in Chicago, DeJohnette’s latest album for the ECM label. Recorded live in 2013, it reunites the drummer with both Abrams and Mitchell, and includes another AACM luminary in the bargain: the saxophonist-composer Henry Threadgill. Over the course of a 70-minute set, each heavyweight contributes an original composition (Mitchell even gets two). Along with the younger Larry Gray on bass, this wrecking crew’s concert closer is a brief, jointly improvised piece. This excerpt comes courtesy of ECM.
Abrams starts off with a minimalist riff on the piano, and is joined first by Mitchell’s horn (on the left channel) and Threadgill’s (on the right), before DeJohnette’s drums—playing free, but with an undeniable pulse—help the piece achieve liftoff. The freewheeling bash of that track is just one joyous texture on a master-class album that keeps things consistently intense and stylistically diverse.
Mitchell’s frenetic 1977 piece "Chant" kicks off the set with a four-note theme that Abrams references during a piano solo, before DeJohnette and Mitchell take over for an extended (and explosive) duo passage. On the slower, more sombre Abrams composition that follows, "Jack 5", Threadgill deals out piercing blues licks from his alto, while DeJohnette picks his spots like the master that he is—dropping stray percussion blasts that have the cumulative force of any recent 15-minute black-metal track you might care to compare his playing against. And then the drummer plays some danceable, funk-adjacent groove, all on his own (just in case you forgot his discography as a sideman includes On the Corner).
Mitchell busts out a bass recorder for his chamber-music style composition "This". Later on, DeJohnette’s composition "Museum of Time" provides him with the opportunity to stray a little closer to standard swing (and also gives Threadgill time to show how mesmerizing he can sound on the flute).
As much as any 70-minute set can, Made in Chicago feels like a balanced, contemporary introduction to the many-sided history of the AACM. Some of its textures clearly reflect the fact that, like many other AACM members, Abrams, Mitchell and Threadgill have all written contemporary classical music in addition to perfecting their improvisational languages. Chamber music pieces by all three will be performed as part of an all-AACM gig at New York’s Roulette on March 19, along with works by the pianist Amina Claudine Myers, the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, and the late violinist Leroy Jenkins.
Smith has also enjoyed a productive stretch of late, with his chamber-music-meets-jazz ensemble opus Ten Freedom Summers—a massive work that draws its animating spirit from icons and phenomena surrounding the Civil Rights movement—being selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer in composition, back in 2013.
A recent recording issued by the Other Minds label shows the trumpeter in dialogue with the Del Sol String Quartet (as well as drummer Anthony Brown) on another extended composition, titled Taif: Prayer in the Garden of Hijaz.
The pianist in Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers group, Anthony Davis, likewise received some overdue attention for his orchestral work, last year, when the Boston Modern Orchestra Project recorded an album of his hybrid, modern-classical-meets-improv scores (Like DeJohnette, Davis has never been a member of the AACM—though his discography suggests a coterie of
mutual influence, and a respected-affiliate’s status.) On it, they played Davis’ best known orchestral work, the Balinese-inflected piano concerto Wayang V, with the composer in the soloist role—and then added two additional, meaty items.
Notes from the Underground, written in 1988, has a swing feel buried beneath all its polyrhythmic complexity. Even better is the four-movement You Have the Right to Remain Silent, composed in 2007. Its use of the "Miranda rights" text—dully chanted by orchestra members—has the feel of political commentary, given the rote joylessness of the articulation. (It’s as if these words have lost all hope of being meaningfully expressed.) In the piece, it’s up to the clarinet and kurzweil players to give a sense of what the right to make noise is all about.
Davis and Smith—not to mention Abrams, Mitchell and Threadgill—have all shared productive relationships with Anthony Braxton, another exponent of the AACM’s longevity and creative impact. The saxophonist-composer’s famously large (and ever-expanding) discography includes solo saxophone albums (such as For Alto) as well as operas (one of which will be issued on Blu-Ray, later this year) as well as pieces for multiple symphonies (or, in another case, for 100 tubas). This anniversary of the AACM is as good a time as any to take the plunge into Braxton’s world; you can check out videos recorded during two recent Braxton gigs, below. The first is an entire set, captured during the saxophonist’s early-winter European tour, while the other is an excerpt from a performance in Alabama, last month.