THE ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO
Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz, Jazz Related Soundtracks • United States

Founded by Lester Bowie, groundbreaking avant-garde fixture brought invention and open space to the realm of free jazz. Originally comprised of saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, trumpeter Lester Bowie, bassist Malachi Favors, and later, drummer Famoudou Don Moye, the Art Ensemble of Chicago enjoy a critical reputation as most influential avant-garde jazz ensemble of the 1970s and '80s. During the late '60s and early '70s, the Art Ensemble helped pioneer the fusion of jazz with European art music and indigenous African folk styles. The band also combined music from sanctified church services, minstrel shows, and bawdy houses of late 19th and early 20th century America -- with a modernist spirit and lively stage show that involved face paint and costumes as well as literally hundreds of musical instruments. A pronounced theatrical element was essential to their work. Its members attained a measure of jazz stardom on their own -- particularly read more...