New York Art Quartet

Featuring: Milford Graves, John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, Reggie Workman, Leroi Jones

Temporary Super Offer! "If we just could have hung on for another year,” Rudd said of both NYAQ and the Jazz Composers Guild, “things could have turned out much differently. Things were about to flip, in a good way. A lot of government programs were starting up that we could have gotten 

grants from. There was a change in perception about the music that was happening. People were starting to consider it as art. The music was moving out of the bars and coffee houses  and into museums and concert halls. But, the Guild lasted long enough to inspire musicians to organize. The Guild laid the groundwork for similar organizations here in America and in Europe. What happened in Holland is a good example. We were just a little ahead of the times.”  – Bill Shoemaker

 

John Tchicai had a gig at a midtown restau-rant in late 1963 that lasted one night. For-tuitously, Roswell Rudd was there on the recommendation of Don Cherry, and was knocked out by the saxophonist’s sound and phrasing. Tchicai and Rudd then woodshedded around their day-job schedules for several months, their “good telepathy” – Rudd’s 2010 characterization – indicating the formation of a quartet, for which they tapped Don Moore and J.C. Moses of New York Contemporary Five. However, Milford Graves sat in at the end of the group’s first rehearsal, probably at Michael Snow’s loft; not only did Moses lose the gig that night, but Graves’ radical approach also caused Don Moore to quit. Tchicai then enlisted Lewis Worrell, one of the first musicians he met after arriving in New York.  Naming the group New York Art Quartet was Tchicai’s idea. Rudd initially thought it “was too uppity, not funky enough for a jazz band.” However, the name reflected the times, with the New Thing repositioning itself in a wider context of avant-garde arts through initiatives like the Jazz Com-posers Guild (of which Rudd and Tchicai were members) and concert series like the October Revolution in Jazz and Four Days in December (NYAQ performed in the former after only a few gigs, and shared a New Year’s Eve bill at Judson Hall with Sun Ra’s Arkestra to culminate the lat-ter).