Leroy Jenkins

Leroy Jenkins Live! was recorded on March 15, 1992 at P.S. 122 in New York and released by Black Saint in 1993. The Chicago-born violinist, trained classically from childhood and a pupil of Walter Dyett at DuSable High School, joined the AACM in 1964, formed the Creative Construction Company with Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith and Steve McCall, and in 1970 moved to New York, where he founded the Revolutionary Ensemble with Sirone and Jerome Cooper, as the NewMusicBox appreciation of 2007 recounts. In the 1970s and 1980s he also wrote for the new-music world, with works played by the Kronos Quartet and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. This concert puts his violin in an electric band with guitar, synthesizer, bass and drums.

The band is Brandon Ross on guitar, Eric Johnson on synthesizer, Hilliard Greene on bass and Reggie Nicholson on drums. Jenkins wrote all seven pieces and produced the record, Susan James recorded it and Carl Baugher wrote the liner notes. The opener, Bird, Eddie, And Monk, runs close to ten minutes, and Chicago, the longest at almost fourteen, comes near the end, before the three-minute Jehovah Theme. In between are A Prayer, Static In The Attic, Computer Minds and Looking For The Blues.

This is the Black Saint CD 120122-2, first released in 1993.