L-R-G/ the Maze/ S Ll Examples

Roscoe Mitchell is mostly, and rightly, reckoned with his work as a leading member of the hardscrabble, meta-instrumental, and enormously influential avant-garde jazz group Art Ensemble of Chicago. However, Mitchell also owns a considerable stake in composed music of a kind considerable as classical, which makes use of written materials to drive determinate kinds of improvisation, or even some non-improvised interpretation in the conventional sense. Mitchell's serious work in so-called "serious music" was recognized at the academic level in 2007, when Mitchell was named to the Darius Milhaud Chair of composition at Mills College in Oakland, and many writers date Mitchell's shift of focus to the 1990s when he began to work with such non-jazz, creative musicians as classically trained vocalist Thomas Buckner. However, for Mitchell, contact with classical music disciplines goes back to his very early days as a student in Germany. Nessa's CD Roscoe Mitchell/L-R-G, The Maze, S II Examples documents a period in 1978, when Mitchell was beginning to work on his composed strategies with usual suspect figures from the jazz world, some from the Art Ensemble itself. In 1978, Michigan-based indie Nessa Records had almost exclusive access to Mitchell and his associates, as the Art Ensemble of Chicago had barely begun its association with ECM -- the first fruits of which did not appear until 1979 -- and the group was reaching the end of a five-year hiatus that also witnessed the collapse of some of the labels it recorded for. The Maze brings the entire Art Ensemble membership, minus Lester Bowie, and other free jazz luminaries such as Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill, to serve as percussionists. Rather than being a rattletrap barrage of percussion as one might expect, The Maze is a carefully controlled polyphonic texture of percussion sounds that is mostly vertical and moves forward in a deliberate progression. The quality of the sound in this 1978 recording is astounding, made at the 30th Street Studio belonging to CBS Records. L-R-G (i.e., "L"eo Smith, "R"oscoe Mitchell, and "G"eorge Lewis), brings this high-powered trio of improvisers into contact with an orchestra's wealth of instruments, divided by range and type: woodwinds for Mitchell, high and low brass, respectively, for Smith and Lewis. Like The Maze, this is a slowly forward-evolving catalog of special sounds; however, in this case the sounds are specific to the players involved. S II Examples, likewise, began as a trio for soprano saxophones for Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, and Anthony Braxton, but Mitchell realized his curved soprano provided him with some additional flexibility that the straight saxes favored and the others did not. So he decided to record it as a solo piece, and it is an extraordinary one; Mitchell's microcosmic understanding of gradations of tone is virtually encyclopedic, and the amount of wiggle room he has between two half steps is such that when he plays three or four "regular" notes by way of transition, it's an event. In a superficial sense, Nessa's CD Roscoe Mitchell/L-R-G, The Maze, S II Examples does not represent a radical departure from Mitchell's work as a jazz musician, as does, say, Skies of America does for Ornette Coleman; those who follow Mitchell's work in jazz will well recognize him in comfortable voice here. Nevertheless, for listeners attuned to contemporary art music coming to Roscoe Mitchell with little or no knowledge of his work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago should likewise easily understand how his rigorous approach in organizing improvised elements fits in with the rest of the classical avant-garde. Beyond that, Nessa's CD Roscoe Mitchell/L-R-G, The Maze, S II Examples 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.

Like Sound and Nonaah, the three compositions that make up this double LP on Chuck Nessa's home label, offer a picture of Roscoe Mitchell not only as a composer and instrumentalist, but as a sound sculptor. Unlike his contemporary Anthony Braxton, Mitchell's compositions always have a deep concern with the very nature of sound. On "L-R-G," which stands for Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, and George Lewis, the nature of sound in all its registers is the concern. From the extreme low end of the sousaphone played by Lewis, through the various members of the trombone family, to Mitchell on the reeds and woodwinds in the middle, and all of its shapes and colors through to Smith, whose expertise on the trumpet and cornet family moves to the upper register of the piccolo trumpet, Mitchell explores the various interactions -- in improvised context -- of the relationships between single and grouped sounds. "The Maze" is a piece for percussion and sound octet. Among those included are Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Thurman Barker, Douglas Ewart, and fellow Art Ensemble members Don Moye, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors. This is a long strangely intervallic piece, with doors opening onto one set of textured improvisations while another closes, all of them within the context of sonic relationship. Finally there is the mammoth soprano saxophone meditation "S II Examples." This work is perhaps the most sustained tonal meditation on the soprano saxophone on record. Far being a recording of "improvisations," what "S II Examples" proposes and accomplishes is the evocation and elocution of the sonic palette of the soprano horn as it mingles with breath control, and its own microtonal reverberations. This is a very slow, controlled, and gradually unfolding work that is one of Mitchell's masterpieces in terms of giving himself and the listener a total view of how numerous the sonic and spatial possibilities are on the straight horn. Taken together, these three works mark the turn in Mitchell's work from the early years into his more mature period, which continues into this 21st century along a continuum: the preoccupation of the composer with the mystery of sound and its various incarnations in ensembles or in relationship to itself. ~ Thom Jurek