Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago was arguably the most innovative jazz group to emerge in the '70s. Its compositions and collective improvisations draw from all sorts of world musics, traditional and avant-garde jazz, rhythm & blues, African music, 20th-century European art music, even rock & roll, gospel, martial music, jug-band music, and the natural sounds of human and animal voices. The quintet has been known to employ 500 instruments in a concert, which might also include a slide show, dance, or vaudeville shtick. No matter the format, they adhere to their motto: "Great Black Music - Ancient to the Future."

The Ensemble evolved from collective jazz experiments in Chicago in the early and mid-'60s. Roscoe Mitchell and Malachi Favors first played together in Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band in 1961. Along with Abrams, the two were charter members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music, founded in 1965 with such jazz experimentalists as Anthony Braxton and the future members of Air (not the French duo of the same name). Lester Bowie (who had played R&B with Little Milton and Albert King) was also an AACM member. In 1968 the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble (including Mitchell, Bowie, Favors, and drummer Phillip Wilson) began gigging and earned a local reputation for both their music and their integration of music and conceptual theater.

Before the end of 1968, Wilson had joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Ensemble continued without a drummer, but the addition of Joseph Jarman (who had studied under John Cage and Indian classical musicians) kept it a quartet. In 1969 the players moved to Paris, and over the next two years, they recorded 11 albums and three film scores, performed hundreds of concerts, and met drummer Don Moye (who joined the group in 1970). They returned to the U.S. in 1971 to tour. Atlantic signed the Art Ensemble in 1972, but it took a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to finance the group’s second Atlantic album. Since then the Ensemble has recorded for large and small labels including its own AECO Records.

Each of the members has recorded solo and with other musicians, including Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Jack DeJohnette. Abrams and singer Fontella Bass (who had a #1 soul hit with “Rescue Me” in 1965; Bowie and Bass were married at this time) have performed frequently with the Art Ensemble.

Although the late 1980s and 1990s saw the band recording in a variety of different settings (Dreaming of the Masters is a collaboration with pianist Cecil Taylor; America–South Africa is a collaboration with an African vocal choir), band members’ side projects cut into the Ensemble’s visibility. Bowie led the popular Brass Fantasy, Mitchell composed and played with his own new music groups, and Moye played in the all-star Leaders band with Lester Bowie.

While in London, on tour with Brass Fantasy, Bowie fell ill. Subsequently diagnosed with liver cancer, he died in 1999.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)