We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration

Track List

Variations and Sketches from the Bamboo Terrace

  7:49

Bell Song

  6:38

We Are On The Edge

  10:15

I Greet You With Open Arms

  6:18

Chi-Congo 50

  9:42

Jamaican Farewell Part I

  1:26

Villa Tiamo

  1:24

Saturday Morning

  4:34

Jamaican Farewell Part II

  1:40

Mama Koko

  7:40

Fanfare and Bell

  6:48

Oasis at Dusk

  8:13

We Are On The Edge / Cards

  15:28

Oasis at Dusk

  9:01

Chi-Congo 50

  2:33

Tutankhamun

  19:29

Mama Koko

  11:09

Saturday Morning

  5:15

Odwalla / The Theme

  8:03

We are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration is a commemoration of a half-century of magical music making from The Art Ensemble of Chicago, a band that has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since forming in 1969. It has also long served as the flagship ensemble of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the august Chicago-based organization that also fostered the careers of members such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith, among many others. Now led by the surviving members Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye, the album is also a loving tribute to the band’s three original members who have passed: Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and most recently,Joseph Jarman.

The greatness of the Art Ensemble has always been the shared commitment of its original members to the total realm of African diasporic music: what they have long-termed “Great Black Music—Ancient to the Future.” Also important are the group’s disparate musical and artistic personalities, comprised of jazz, advanced compositional techniques, theatrical performance, poetry, Pan-African percussion, all tied together with improvisational flair, a taste for the absurd, and the exploration of pure sound and space. It is this open-mindedness – absorbed from the basic tenets of the AACM – that has made the band one of the most important in the history of music.

At 50 years, The Art Ensemble is probably the longest-running aggregation in jazz. Other combinations that come readily to mind, such as the Modern Jazz Quartet or Harry Carney’s involvement with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, fall short of this milestone. The band agreed long ago that as long as one member of the group is left standing, it will still be The Art Ensemble. This is in no way to say that the group will always have to sound like the original Art Ensemble – which is, of course, impossible to pigeonhole anyway since the band was always developing and growing – but that it is a philosophy of music-making, one that has been honed over its entire history, that will be passed on. Not content to rest on their laurels – it would have been far easier and more commercially-minded to assemble another quintet to attempt to create some caricature of the original band – Mitchell and Moye have recruited a diverse group of fifteen highly-individual talents who bring their own approaches to the Art Ensemble aesthetic. They range from trumpeters Fred Berry and Hugh Ragin, who have performed with Mitchell for over five and four decades, respectively, to bassist Jaribu Shahid, for about as long, to singer Rodolfo Cordova-Lebron, who is a current student of Mitchell’s at Mills College. For Moye, his relationships with percussionist Enoch Williamson and Titos Sompa date back to the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. Now residing in Marseilles, France, Moye regularly performs with the Senegalese Dudù Kouaté, a master of the Wolof griot tradition. With clear intent towards representation, Mitchell and Moye’s engagement of musicians such as Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), Christina Wheeler, Silvia Bolognesi and Jean Cook – women who are without peer as improvisers and performers – help bring a whole new perspective to the music.

We are on the Edge is comprised of two discs: a meticulous studio session and the capture of a rousing live set at Edgefest, the annual experimental jazz and creative new music festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The group converged in Ann Arbor in October 16-20, 2018 for five days of rehearsals and recording, all culminating in their headlining performance. Many of these musicians had never met before, but they all came together under the aegis of Mitchell and Moye to help carry forth the powerful Art Ensemble ethos. The sheer breadth of the ensemble’s collective expression is staggering, ranging from Mitchell’s art songs and through-composed pieces, Moye’s percussion workouts, and, of course, collective improvisation. Particularly powerful is the contribution of Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), who, to prepare for the recording, was given nothing more than some old Art Ensemble recordings to listen to and the directive from Mitchell to “just be you.” Working from just the kernel of some ideas that she scribbled down on her way to Ann Arbor, she largely improvised the rest over accompaniment from the band. Cellist Tomeka Reid observes: “Instead of counting in, Roscoe says before starting a set, ‘Ready! Go!’ He then trusts everyone on stage to listen and to contribute in their own way. No set is ever the same; you just meet on the other side.”

Mitchell and Moye are now 78 and 72, respectively, but one would never guess by their outlook. Mitchell, who was recently named to a prestigious United States Artist Fellowship, is about to retire from his teaching position at Mills College, is most excited when you ask him about his upcoming projects, gushing about a dizzying array of performances, commissions, collaborations, composition ideas, and musical studies and inventions. There is, of course some wistfulness when looking back, particularly with the passing of Joseph Jarman earlier this year, but the overwhelming feeling is anticipation of what is coming next or, as Moye always says, “focus and forward motion.” It’s a clarion statement that Mitchell and Moye are intent on ushering The Art Ensemble of Chicago forcefully into its sixth decade. As Moor Mother declares: “We are on the edge!”