Made in Chicago (ECM)

Jack DeJohnette

Released January 16, 2015

Arts Fuse 2015 Jazz Critics Poll Top 10 New Album

The Telegraph Best Jazz Albums of 2015

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With Made In Chicago, Jack DeJohnette celebrates a reunion with old friends. More than 50 years ago, DeJohnette, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill were all classmates at Wilson Junior College on Chicago’s Southside, pooling energies and enthusiasms in jam sessions. Shortly thereafter Jack joined Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band, and Roscoe and Henry soon followed him. When Abrams co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in 1965, Mitchell and Threadgill were involved from the outset, presenting concerts and contributing to each other’s work under the AACM umbrella. DeJohnette had relocated to New York by then, but remained a frequent visitor and collaborator.

Invited to present a programme of his own choosing in the context of the Chicago Jazz Festival, Jack DeJohnette brought his old colleagues together for a concert at Millennium Park in August 2013, completing the group with the addition of bassist/cellist Larry Gray. This live recording, documenting their first performance as a quintet, was mixed by DeJohnette and Manfred Eicher at New York’s Avatar Studio. The album is issued as the AACM begins its 50th year anniversary year, and is both a powerful contemporary statement and a reminder of the wealth of great diverse music and innovative approaches to playing, writing and arranging which the organization has introduced over the years.

In the liner notes, Jack gives much of the credit to Muhal Richard Abrams, for leading by example in the early days. “Muhal’s door was always open. He wanted to explore different ways of composing and improvising, and then demonstrated to me, Roscoe, Joseph [Jarman] and Malachi [Favors] those different possibilities. It felt natural, and we saw there were other ways to express ourselves through improvisation. Most importantly, we began to recognize something in each other.” Muhal emphasizes that “it wasn’t a process of encouragement. Everyone came ready to be an individual. That’s all it took. And it’s quite strong to be amongst people who want to pursue their individualism and accept that realization… It felt special and unique because everyone was there for the right reasons, and everyone’s efforts seemed synchronized.” Henry Threadgill notes that “We gravitated toward people with a certain kind of voice and vision…When you’re young you like to look for people who want to try the things you want to try, to find some kind of comradeship.” Roscoe Mitchell observes that the work, and the mutual inspiration, is a continuing process: “Every time I get together with musicians from the AACM it’s like we are just picking up from wherever we left off. I think you can achieve great things in music by having these longstanding relationships with people. If you told me back then that this thing never stops, I might not have believed you. But now I see that’s really true.”

Along the way Mitchell, Threadgill, Abrams and DeJohnette himself have changed the history of the music, with many landmark recordings and volatile concerts. Though younger than these meanwhile iconic players, bassist and cellist Larry Gray now also qualifies as a veteran of the Chicago jazz scene. Some of his earliest recordings were with Roscoe Mitchell and Jodie Christian, and he grew up absorbing the innovations of the AACM along with a wide scope of jazz and classical music and more. He first played with Jack in the early 1990s with another set of legendary Chicago soloists including Von Freeman and Ira Sullivan.

Track Listing:

1. Chant (Roscoe Mitchell) 17:01

2. Jack 5 (Muhal Richard Abrams) 14:53

3. This (Roscoe Mitchell) 12:13

4. Museum Of Time (Jack DeJohnette) 13:37

5. Leave Don’t Go Away (Henry Threadgill) 10:19

6. Announcement 3:28

7. Ten Minutes (Threadgill / DeJohnette / Gray / Abrams / Mitchell) 6:06

Personnel:

Jack DeJohnette: drums, speaker

Muhal Richard Abrams: piano

Larry Gray: double bass, cello

Roscoe Mitchell: sopranino saxophone, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, baroque flute, bass recorder

Henry Threadgill: alto saxophone, bass flute

Recorded live August 2013, at the Chicago Jazz Festival, Pritzker Pavillon Millennium Park, Chicago

Produced by Dave Love and Jack DeJohnette

Recording Engineer: Martin Walters

Assistant Engineers: Jeremiah Nave, Daniel Santiago

Mixed by Manfred Eicher, Jack DeJohnette and James A. Farber (engineer)

Mastered by Christoph Stickel

Photos: Paul Natkin

Design: Sascha Kleis

Executive-Producer: Manfred Eicher

Review:

The title of this album, in which drummer and composer Jack DeJohnette brings together colleagues of 50 years standing, says more than it appears to. Four of the five jazz musicians are veterans of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. That name sounds like an echo of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – with good reason, as the musicians cleave to the same principles of spiritual aspiration and strenuous self-improvement.

Jack DeJohnette says admiringly about pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, whom he met back in 1962, “He was a Renaissance man… he was always telling us, ‘Go to the library’”. Bringing Abrams together with veteran sax players Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill was both a creative project and an act of homage. For good measure these four senior players are joined by the younger cellist and bassist Larry Gray.

The photos of these dignified and now somewhat frail old-timers in the sleeve notes are moving, and the music is moving too, in a floating, ecstatic sort of way. The two sax players soar and loop like two birds in flight, each shadowing or echoing the other. Jack DeJohnette’s drums rarely settle on a pulse, painting a sound-world in intricate floating patterns full of empty spaces, like a points of light in a night sky. At the opposite extreme is the wild solo from Henry Threadgill in Roscoe Mitchell’s Chant, where he goes on for minutes, literally without drawing breath (thanks to that astonishing playing technique known as ‘circular breathing’.) This piece sounds at first like a homage to Terry Riley’s In C, but its bright C major sound is soon blurred and eventually obliterated.

The range of expression these five players draw from their instruments is astonishing, particularly in Mitchell’s This, where Baroque and bass flutes, piano and bowed double bass pace quietly in stately and sombre patterns. In Abrams Jack 5, the hint of blues that so often lies behind the ‘transcendental’ strain in black American jazz comes movingly into focus.

This album may not be an easy listen, but it’s certainly a rewarding one.

Ivan Hewett (The Telegraph)