Roscoe Mitchell, New Chamber Ensamble

Legendary avant-garde jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is best known for his role as a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This group is recognized for incorporating, and none-too-subtly ridiculing, the long-bearded tradition of Western art music. Mitchell, nonetheless, has something to say that is within the tradition himself, apart from, but related to his work in the field of jazz. Usually the sort of classical music piece produced by a "jazz cat" is formulated within certain limited parameters -- either bluesy chords or jazzy rhythms are hung upon established classical music forms like pinning laundry to a clothesline, or a parody of some well-known classical melody is "jazzed up." Mitchell is not in the least interested in these now hackneyed hybrids, and the music that appears on the Roscoe Mitchell New Chamber Ensemble's Lovely Music disc Pilgrimage is classical music, period. Nonetheless, most of it is improvised, which makes the results challenging and rather unusual.