The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

Since its inception in 1969 (and a sensational heyday, peppered with cult-classic recordings, that lasted roughly from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s), the Art Ensemble of Chicago has proved to a wider public that free-improvised jazz can be joyous, swinging, theatrical - the very opposite of an introvert's private pursuit.

The quintet, fronted by two saxophones and a trumpet, could be as wild and raunchy as a blues band (under the influence of anarchic former blues trumpeter Lester Bowie); as investigative as a European free-improv outfit (thanks to Roscoe Mitchell's input on saxes and theory); as challengingly soulful as anything to emerge from the 1960s black American avant-garde (Joseph Jarman's taut lyricism) and as Africanised as a drum-choir field recording in the work of its rhythm section.

But after the loss of Bowie at only 58 in 1999, and Jarman's 10-year sabbatical, the band became more severe and in some ways less colourful. It was effectively the Roscoe Mitchell trio, with Malachi Favors Moghostut on bass and Famoudou Don Moye on drums.

This tribute disc dedicated to Lester Bowie is no cosy reprise of old Art Ensemble favourites, or of Bowie's more popular incarnations. It offers an uncompromisingly powerful set, the centrepiece of which is a long, outer-limits soprano saxophone marathon from Mitchell. The saxophonist scythes his way through circular-breathed sections over Moye's racing drumming in a virtuoso improv performance that gradually mesmerises you with its density and headlong inventiveness.

But if this is a set of narrower dimensions than Art Ensemble listeners may be used to, it's nevertheless a performance of considerable disguised power. The African-drumming effects of the long percussion opening, with the elephantine honk of the bass sax reverberating through a waterfall of percussion noise; the lyricism of the opening of Suite for Lester (which also embraces a classical flute section, an engagingly galumphing dance theme, and an odd, Coltrane-like episode played staccato and on top of the beat; the spacey, moonscape finale - it all adds up to an audacious and heartfelt disc.

Perhaps it only lacks a little of the warmth and open-handedness of the man to whom it is dedicated.

(https://www.theguardian.com)