Roscoe Mitchell, The Sound And Space Ensembles

Roscoe Mitchell and the Sound and Space Ensembles brings two of the groups Roscoe Mitchell was leading in the early 1980s onto one Black Saint record, cut in Milan over two days in June 1983. The Sound Ensemble was a band with trumpet, guitar, bass and drums around his saxophones. The Space Ensemble was a chamber trio with a low reed player and a tenor voice. Here the two line-ups alternate and then meet, across six pieces that run from a setting of words for voice and horns to short collective improvisations and a long closing set of variations. Mitchell plays soprano, alto and tenor saxophone throughout.

The sessions took place on June 2 and 3, 1983 at Barigozzi Studio in Milan, produced by Giovanni Bonandrini and engineered by Giancarlo Barigozzi. The Space Ensemble partners are Gerald Oshita, on baritone and tenor saxophone and the contrabass sarrusophone, and the tenor Tom Buckner. The Sound Ensemble is guitarist A. Spencer Barefield, bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal with a trumpeter doubling on flugelhorn and piccolo trumpet. Words, at over eleven minutes, opens the record with Buckner's voice set against sparse reeds. You Wastin' My Tyme follows at four minutes, a rough, loose number with Mitchell himself singing. Views A, B, C and View D are brief group improvisations, Linefine Lyon Seven runs about eight minutes, and Variations On Sketches From Bamboo closes the album at more than twelve. Mitchell had been one of the founding members of the AACM in Chicago, and the group he formed with bassist Malachi Favors became the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

This is the Black Saint CD 120070-2 of an album first issued on LP as BSR 0070, with a 1984 copyright on the label's own listing.