CREATIVE MUSIC STUDIO

Most fans of jazz and improvised music from the 1970s and on know of the various musical collectives that formed in a number of cities. Groups like Chicago’s AACM, the Black Artists Group in St. Louis and the “loft scene” in New York City were centers of fervent creativity for the music. This CD set concentrates on an equally influential axis of musical experimentation based at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York. The vision for CMS is best described as creating collective synergy, having musicians from separate regions and backgrounds live and work together as they find common ground and develop a personal musical vocabulary. The Guiding Artists who participated in CMS ranged from artists rooted in jazz, such as Charles Brackeen and Oliver Lake, to artists coming at improvisation from the classical side, such as pianists Ursula Oppens and Fred Rziewski. “Any person in today’s music scene knows that rock, classical, folk and jazz are all yesterday’s titles,” declared Creative Music read more...