Jack DeJohnette, Muhal Richard Abrams, Larry Gray, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill

Made in Chicago is a live reunion of musicians who grew up together in the city's experimental scene of the 1960s. Jack DeJohnette, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill were classmates at Wilson Junior College on the South Side in 1962. All three then passed through Muhal Richard Abrams' Experimental Band and were involved from the outset in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which Abrams co-founded in 1965. Recalling those years, Abrams says that "everyone came ready to be an individual." Half a century later, this concert put them on the same stage again.

DeJohnette was invited to curate a programme for the 35th Chicago Jazz Festival and used it to bring his old colleagues together. He completed the group with bassist and cellist Larry Gray, whom he had first played with in the early 1990s. The quintet's first performance took place on 29 August 2013 at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Abrams plays piano, Mitchell sopranino, soprano and alto saxophones, baroque flute and bass recorder, and Threadgill alto saxophone and bass flute. DeJohnette and Dave Love produced the recording, which DeJohnette and Manfred Eicher mixed at Avatar Studios in New York. It was the ECM debut of Abrams, Threadgill and Gray.

The set mixes compositions by four of the five with collective improvisation. Mitchell's Chant opens on a hypnotic, swirling riff that carries a long, strained saxophone solo over DeJohnette's free-pulse drumming. His This moves the other way, with baroque and bass flutes, piano and bowed strings pacing slowly in sombre patterns. After DeJohnette introduces the band, the encore Ten Minutes is a freely improvised blast, driven by an insistent piano figure under both saxophones.

The record was widely reviewed as more than a nostalgia piece. Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune heard music "by turns combustive and contemplative, freely improvised and rigorously developed". Kevin Le Gendre in Jazzwise wrote of "music made by masters whose virtuosity is matched by their sense of measure." ECM released it as the AACM began its 50th anniversary year.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2392, released in January 2015, with about 78 minutes from the concert, including DeJohnette's spoken introduction of the band.