Art Ensemble of Chicago
The Art Ensemble of Chicago grew out of the AACM in the late 1960s, when Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman and Malachi Favors joined forces and, in Paris from 1969, added the drummer Don Moye. Under the motto "Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future" they integrated styles spanning the whole history of jazz and beyond, from marches and blues to free improvisation, and made theatre of it with face paint, costumes and silence.
Message To Our Folks (LP)
2001 Italian re-issue on 180g vinyl on Get Back of the 1969 album on Byg's "Actuel" series.
People In Sorrow (LP)
1978 Japanese re-issue on Odeon's "Jazz All Time Favorites 1800" of the 1969 album.
Les Stances A Sophie (LP)
Rare 1970's re-press on Nessa of the 1970 album with the soundtrack to the Moshé Mizrahi film.
The Paris Session (2LP)
Original US edition on Arista/Freedom of the 1975 2LP compilation with tracks from Tutankhamun and The Spiritual recorded in 1969, plus two previously unreleased tracks.
Art Ensemble of Chicago, Archie Shepp, Clifford Thornton, Grachan Moncur III, Sunny Murray, Burton Greene
History Of Jazz: Vol. 10 (LP)1970 French compilation on Byg's "History Of Jazz" series with tracks from several albums released in 1969 on the label's "Actuel" series.
People In Sorrow
Remastered LP edition. Finally back in print! Originally released by EMI's Pathé Marconi imprint in 1969, People in Sorrow — a 40-minute work by the four-piece lineup of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, and Malachi Favors — has long been unavailable on vinyl and CD, and then only in hard-to-find European and Japanese issues. It is arguably the finest and most ambitious of the 14 studio albums recorded by the Art Ensemble of Chicago during their 23-month sojourn in France, which laun…
Reese and the Smooth Ones
Reese and the Smooth Ones was captured during the same revolutionary Paris session as Message to Our Folks, but stands apart as a two-part, 40-minute odyssey of unchained invention.
Dreaming Of The Masters Suite
1991 release ** "During the late '80s and early '90s, the Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded a number of albums for the Japanese DIW label. While a couple of these releases were fine additions to their catalog (notably, Dreaming of the Masters, Vol. 1 and The Art Ensemble of Soweto), the majority found the band treading water, breezing through tunes and structures long a staple of their repertoire but rarely either breaking new ground or playing with inspiration. Dreaming of the Masters Suite is a…
Urban Magic
2003 release ** "A lesser-known set from the Art Ensemble Of Chicago – a CD originally packaged with an Italian magazine, now presented here on its own! The performance is from 1997 – and the group features Lester Bowie on trumpet, Roscoe Mitchell on reeds, Malachi Favors on bass and percussion, and Don Moye on assorted percussion – all in a style that shows all the relaxed, confident modes of the group in their mature years. The ensemble's almost more compelling here than on some of their bette…
Message to Our Folks
** CD digipack. Comes in a deluxe matte laminate gatefold sleeve & printed inner wallet. Original 1969 BYG album. Digitally mastered from BYG tapes by Nick Robbins. 16-page booklet with photos & exclusive liner notes by author John Masouri ** 'A Jackson in Your House' is the first of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s renowned trio of albums for BYG's Actuel series. This album is The Art Ensemble’s most celebrated release and finds the American avant-garde jazz collective at their most sensational, m…
Nice Guys
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Nice Guys is an album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded in May 1978 and released on ECM the following year—their debut for the label. The quintet features trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophinists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell and rhythm section Malachi Favors Maghostut and Famoudou Don Moye.
Tutankhamun
2023 stock. Tutankhamun, the 1969 album by avant-garde jazz pioneers Art Ensemble of Chicago, features performances by Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, and Malachi Favors Maghostut. As the AllMusic review states, 'This landmark album is one of the most influential free jazz recordings in the '60s avant-garde canon.' Previously out of print for over three decades, Tutankhamun has been remastered for vinyl at Infrasonic Mastering and pressed on audiophile-grade vinyl at Pallas in Germ…
The Spiritual
The Spiritual, a free jazz album recorded by the Art Ensemble of Chicago in 1974, finds the group of stellar musicians at their creative peak. With various types of percussion, though the absence of a traditional drummer, the ensemble is able to create vivid, freeing compositions without the confines of conventional structure. The quartet, consisting of Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, and Malachi Favors, explore the depths of avant-garde jazz through a means that has yet to be touc…
Full Force
The previous Art Ensemble of Chicago ECM album Nice Guys vaulted them to the top of improvised music groups in the U.S. and worldwide, paving the way for similar bands to be more accepted into the mainstream of modern music. Where "Full Force" generally lives up to the title, there's also a palpable diverse approach, producing more than enough potent music brimming from the sinews of these brilliant musicians to uphold their burgeoning cache. The crown jewel of this effort is "Charlie M," a blue…
Beautiful Young Generation
Newly mastered from original BYG tapes. Based on the original 1967 BYG ‘Special Disc-Jockeys’ LP sampler. Expanded with 5 additional tracks exlusive to CD. Introduction by surviving BYG co-founder Jean-Luc Young. Track-by-track notes by author and journalist Kevin Le Gendr. BYG were a pioneering independant record compagny, one of the first labels to actively promote diversity and support black African-American musicians and multi-cultural artists worldwide during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Launc…
Fundamental Destiny
Katalyst presents Fundamental Destiny by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Live at the Frankfurt, Germany Jazz Festival with Don Pullen. Now, the production team at AECO has once more gone through the archives and come up with another gem, culminating in the recent release of Fundamental Destiny, a record of a live 1991 Art Ensemble concert given in early June of that year at the Frankfurt, Germany Jazz Festival. All the members of the ensemble are present: Lester Bowie on trumpet, Joseph Jarman on w…
Kabalaba
Katalyst Entertainment presents Kabalaba, a live album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974 and originally released on their AECO label in 1978. It features performances by Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors Maghostut, and Don Moye along with Muhal Richard Abrams.
Early Combinations
On Early Combinations, Art Ensemble history is still in wet cement: Roscoe Mitchell’s proto‑Ensemble and Joseph Jarman’s quartet collide in two long 1967 tapes where themes for cancelled gigs and failed auditions already sound like future classics.
Je Suis Un Sauvage / Le Moral Necessaire
A single produced by the highly-revered Saravah label at the time, featuring the Art Ensemble of Chicago backing the poetry of the little-remembered Alfred Panou, is not as well-known as the label's other releases. Seen in the 1967 film Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Panou who is of mixed Benin-Togolese origin, already had a career as an actor in political theater when, pushed by producer Pierre Barouh, he recorded two of his texts concerning Black Power. Panou's prose is one of the first, i…
The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles
The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles is a 21-CD limited and numbered edition issued as the standard-bearers of Great Black Music prepare to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Both the Art Ensemble of Chicago and ECM Records were founded in 1969, and there have been many shared experiences. As Roscoe Mitchell says, “It has been amazing to have taken this journey together.”With their first ECM album, the widely-acclaimed Nice Guys, the Art Ensemble’s revolutionary and polystylistic …