The Art Ensemble of Chicago — Columbus, OH, February 3, 2024
On Saturday night, I was able to go to a concert I hadn’t thought I’d ever get to hear. The long-running, immensely influential Art Ensemble of Chicago performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio on February 3. The fact that we can still hear the groundbreaking and ever-evolving sounds of AEC after more than fifty years is such a privilege. The performance on Saturday showed AEC in the midst of another development, departing from their characteristic, free freakout style of avant-garde jazz towards a more minimal, spacey sound.
In recent years, the Art Ensemble of Chicago has been growing and transforming into another era of its “Great Black Music.” The group released its fiftieth anniversary record, We Are On the Edge, in 2019, which featured eighteen musicians as part of the ensemble. Saxophonist and co-founder Roscoe Mitchell is as optimistic as ever about the future of the ensemble. He told Rolling Stone in 2019, “Hey, I’m more excited about music right now than I’ve ever been in my life. There’s so much going on. I would like to be a part of that. So, yeah, I’m trying to keep one foot in front of the other in terms of what’s going on musically here. I think that this group comes from all the work that has been done previously in the past, with the beginning of the AACM [Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians] and the members of this group that are second-generation AACM members and other musicians that I’m putting together.” The performance I heard on Saturday definitely felt like a group that was honoring its past as much as it was heading into the future, truly “Ancient to the Future.”
The ensemble on Saturday was certainly not as large as the group that recorded in 2019, but featured many of the same individuals. Mitchell and percussionist Famoudou Don Moye are the original members still performing in the group. Joining them was poet Moor Mother, violinist yuniya edi kwon, bassist Junius Paul, and pianist and brass player Simon Sieger. In true AEC style, all members contributed to the percussive elements of the performance in some way.
Moor Mother has had an active career as a poet and experimental musician, known especially for her work as part of the Black Quantum Futurism collective based in Philadelphia. Junius Paul, a bassist with strong ties to Chicago, has collaborated with many ensembles, including others organized by Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye, and is also known for his work with Makaya McCraven. yuniya edi kwon is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York with influences ranging Korean folk timbres and the AACM, and is currently an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Simon Sieger cites Moye as a mentor and draws his influence from free jazz and midcentury avant-garde composition.
This concert was my first time seeing the Art Ensemble of Chicago live, so many of my perspectives are based on those first impressions. On the way home, Jon Lorenz, Alex York, and I discussed the performance, both of them having seen AEC before, so their experiences helped give me a little context for what I witnessed on Saturday night.
The performance started with a gradually growing drone, the texture starting with Mitchell and building until a high point. I felt myself getting lost in the drone, most compelled by the little shifts in timbre that occurred as members joined in the texture. The drone felt like a centering force, a sonic cleanse to prepare for the rest of the concert, removing my ears of the sounds of the day and the scattered thoughts in my head.
Going forward, the pieces AEC performed ranged from the sparse and abstract, to the dense and rhythmic. Some pieces purely featured percussion and Moor Mother’s poetry, others were close to a modal jazz style. One felt like an early seventies Sun Ra moment, with Junius Paul on a burbling synthesizer. Each member definitely had an opportunity to lead a piece, with standouts including Paul’s abstract string bass bowing and yuniya edi kwon’s ethereal solo during a particularly cosmic piece. One of my favorite aspects about the ensemble’s sound was how seemingly disparate instrumental timbres blended at certain moments into one tone. There were times when the high register of the piano merged with the stratospheric range of the violin, the growl of Mitchell’s bass saxophone became one with the robust tone of Sieger’s tuba. It was moments like these, and many others, when it truly felt like the ensemble was one instrument.
The Art Ensemble of Chicago on Saturday was also a presentation of contrasts and extremes, differences in range and texture played with and explored. The instrumentation of the ensemble that evening included primarily instruments on opposite ends of the spectrum of register. There were the highs — violin, sopranino sax, bells — and the lows — trombone, tuba, bass saxophone, string bass. The only pitched instruments that could bridge that gap were Sieger’s piano and organ. This often created a fascinating chasm between sounds, and ultimately highlighted the eccentricity of these instruments that represent extremes.
All in all, the AEC exhibited mesmerizing artistry. There were moments where I just had to close my eyes and let their intricate, beautiful sound wash over me, and others where I watched intently as they communicated with one another through the music, communing over pitches, timbres, and rhythms. Sometimes they each stood far apart on the stage, whereas other moments brought them in a tight-knit circle. I loved the little glimpses of human life that sparked in their performance — Mitchell leaning over and slipping on his round, thick-framed glasses, Sieger picking up music that fell over, with Mitchell’s “Thank you sir,” getting picked up in the microphone. It was in these fractions of a second that I felt so grateful to have had the opportunity to hear such a legendary ensemble in the history of jazz and the avant-garde. And I’ll definitely want to hear it again.
– Hannah Blanchette
February 10, 2024 | Blog