The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz group that grew out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the late 1960s. The ensemble integrates many jazz styles and plays many instruments, including "little instruments": bells, bicycle horns, birthday party noisemakers, wind chimes, and various forms of percussion. The musicians would wear costumes and face paint while performing. These characteristics combined to make the ensemble's performances both aural and visual. While playing in Europe in 1969, five hundred instruments were used.
Lester Bowie was an American jazz trumpet player and composer. He was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and co-founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Woody Herman Shaw Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer, arranger, band leader, and educator. Shaw is widely known as one of the most important and influential jazz trumpeters and composers of the twentieth century. He is often credited with revolutionizing the technical and harmonic language of modern jazz trumpet playing, and to this day is regarded by many as one of the major innovators of the instrument. He was an acclaimed virtuoso, mentor, and spokesperson for jazz and worked and recorded alongside many of the leading musicians of his time.
Julius Arthur Hemphill was a jazz composer and saxophone player. He performed mainly on alto saxophone, less often on soprano and tenor saxophones and flute.
The Black Artists Group (BAG) was a multidisciplinary arts collective that existed in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1968 to 1972. BAG is known for the convergence of free jazz and experimental theater.
The Human Arts Ensemble was a 1970s musical collective operating in St. Louis, Missouri. Members explored free jazz and loosely associated themselves with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the Black Artists' Group (BAG) collective. It was formed in 1971 with the idea that performers could perform in the ensemble, without restrictions as to the performer's race. Additionally, public funding had ended for musical associations that were suspected of having connections with radical organizations. It disbanded in 1977.
J. D. Parran is an American multi-woodwind player, educator, and composer specializing in jazz and free improvisation. He plays the soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass saxophone, as well as the E-flat clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, piccolo, alto flute, bamboo flute, Native American flute, bamboo saxophone, and nagaswaram.
Joseph Bowie is an American jazz trombonist and vocalist. The brother of trumpeter Lester Bowie, Joseph is known for leading the jazz-punk group Defunkt and for membership in the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.
Donald Moye, Jr., known as Famoudou Don Moye, is an American jazz percussionist and drummer. He is most known for his involvement with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and is noted for his mastery of African and Caribbean percussion instruments and rhythmic techniques.
Loft jazz was a cultural phenomenon that occurred in New York City during the mid-1970s. Gary Giddins described it as follows: "[A] new coterie of avant-garde musicians took much of the jazz world by surprise... [T]hey interpreted the idea of freedom as the capacity to choose between all the realms of jazz, mixing and matching them not only with each other, but with old and new pop, R&B and rock, classical music and world music... [S]eemingly overnight new venues - in many instances, apartments or lofts - opened shop to present their wares." According to Michael Heller, "lofts were not an organization, nor a movement, nor an ideology, nor a genre, nor a neighborhood, nor a lineage of individuals. They were, instead, a meeting point, a locus for interaction." Heller stated that "loft practices came to be defined by a number of key characteristics, including (1) low admission charges or suggested donations, (2) casual atmospheres that blurred the distinction between performer and audience, (3) ownership / administration by musicians, and (4) mixed-use spaces that combined both private living areas and public presentation space." Regarding the music played in these venues, Michael J. Agovino wrote: "This was community music. Part of the point was that, free of the strictures of clubs, the music could be anything, go anywhere, go on for as long as it wanted." David Such stated that "the cutting contests, personality cults, and vices that characterized the jazz scene of the 1940s and 1950s were mostly missing." The scene was reviewed and documented by Giddins, Peter Occhiogrosso of the SoHo Weekly News, Leroi Jones, Robert Palmer, and Stanley Crouch.
Charles Wesley "Bobo" Shaw was an American free jazz drummer, known as a prominent member of the Human Arts Ensemble and Black Artists Group. He was born in Pope, Mississippi, United States.
Baikida Carroll is an American jazz trumpeter.
James Emery is an American jazz guitarist. He grew up in Willoughby, Ohio and Shaker Heights, Ohio. Emery plays archtop guitar, semi-acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and soprano guitar.
Otherside is an album by American jazz saxophonist Oliver Lake featuring a quintet and a big band, which was recorded in 1988 and released on the Gramavision label. The big band pieces were commissioned by the Jazz Coalition with funding from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities New Works Program.
Floyd LeFlore (1940–2014) was a jazz composer, trumpet player, and poet from St. Louis. In 1968, LeFlore helped to found the Black Artists Group (BAG).
In Paris, Aries 1973 is a live album by the Black Artists Group, featuring saxophonist Oliver Lake, trumpeters Baikida Carroll and Floyd LeFlore, trombonist Joseph Bowie, and drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw. The album was recorded in 1973 in Paris, and was initially self-released in very limited quantities. It was reissued in 2011 in a limited edition of 500 LPs by Rank and File Records, and was remastered and reissued on LP by Aguirre Records in 2018, with extensive liner notes by Julian Cowley, again in a limited edition of 500 copies.
H.Con.Res.57/Treasure Box is a live, 4-CD album by multi-instrumentalist Alan Silva. It was recorded on May 24 and 27, 2001, at the Uncool Festival in Poschiavo, Switzerland, and was released in 2003 in limited quantities by Eremite Records. On the album, Silva is joined by a large ensemble known as the Celestrial Communication Orchestra. The performances marked the first occasion on which Silva's choice of musicians was completely unrestricted in terms of budget or geography.
Culmination is an album by multi-instrumentalist and composer Sam Rivers. It was recorded during September 1998 at Systems Two Recording Studio in Brooklyn, New York, at the same sessions that yielded the album Inspiration, and was released in 1999 by BMG France. On the album, Rivers is joined by members of the Rivbea All-star Orchestra: saxophonists Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, Chico Freeman, Gary Thomas, and Hamiet Bluiett, trumpeters Baikida Carroll, James Zollar, Ralph Alessi, and Ravi Best, trombonists Art Baron, Joseph Bowie, and Ray Anderson, baritone horn player Joseph Daley, tubist Bob Stewart, bassist Doug Mathews, and drummer Anthony Cole.
Ntu: Point from Which Creation Begins is an album by saxophonist Oliver Lake. It was recorded in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1971, and was released on vinyl in 1976 by Arista's Freedom Records imprint. On the album, Lake is joined by fellow musicians associated with the Black Artists Group: trumpeters Baikida Carroll and Floyd LeFlore, trombonist Joseph Bowie, guitarist Richard Martin, pianists Clovis Bordeux and John Hicks, bassist Don Officer, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw, and percussionist Don Moye.
Red, Black & Green is a live album by the Black Artists Group-affiliated band known as Solidarity Unit, Inc., led by drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw. The group's sole release, it was recorded on September 18, 1970, at the BAG Room in East St. Louis, Illinois, and was initially issued on LP by Shaw's Universal Justice Records in 1972 as part of the BAG Live Concert Series. On the album, Shaw is joined by saxophonist and flutist Oliver Lake, trumpeters Floyd LeFlore and Baikida Carroll, trombonist Joseph Bowie, guitarist Richard Martin, pianist Clovis Bordeaux, bassists Kada Kayan and Carl Richardson, and percussionist Danny Trice. In 2008, the album was reissued on LP in remastered form and in limited quantities by Eremite Records.
