L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples
L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples is an album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell recorded in 1978 and released originally as a double LP on Nessa Records. It was reissued in 1989 as a single CD. Background. Following a successful three-year stint with the Art Ensemble of Chicago in Europe, in 1971 Mitchell came back to Chicago and moved to a farm in Bath, Michigan, just northeast of Lansing. "L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples" brought sound explorations he had made in Michigan together with the  earlier innovations made by the Art Ensemble. In 1976 he found a happy medium between city and country in Madison, Wisconsin. According to Chuck Nessa, who produced the album, "We spent over a year preparing for that record. I went up to Roscoe's place in Wisconsin every weekend to go over that stuff." Composition. "L-R-G" (which stands for Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis), is a 37-minute trio for sixteen different instruments grouped by type: woodwinds (Mitchell), high brass (Smith) and low brass (Lewis). For this piece and "The Maze," Mitchell uses the term "sound  collages". He took inventory of every possible sound the musicians could produce, then organized the sounds into pieces based on texture, without the restriction of fixed tempos. "L-R-G" was performed once more, not long after the album came out, at New York Public Theater. "The Maze" is a 21-minute octet for all kinds of percussion including a lot of unconventional instruments. Mitchell used on the piece AACM stars as Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill to serve as percussionists, together with Art Ensemble members Don Moye, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors. Chuck Nessa remembers that it took the  musicians more than four hours just to set up all those instruments, but that they nailed the piece in one live take. "The Maze" would never be performed again until two decades later, when Mitchell played all three pieces from the album at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. "S II Examples" is a 17-minute exploration of multi-phonics on the curved soprano saxophone. The piece was originally designed to be played by a trio with Jarman and Braxton, but when they got together Mitchell discovered that one example that could be done in his curved soprano saxophone could n't be played on their straight sopranos, so he decided to record it as a solo piece. Reception. In his review for AllMusic, Dave Lewis says about the album that "is a splendidly recorded and mastered CD, and inasmuch as Roscoe Mitchell as classical composer is concerned, this is very close to where it truly starts." "The Penguin Guide to Jazz" says that "it's a rather bewitching set altogether, and a useful notebook on what Chicago's playing élite were looking into at the period."