Search - Art Ensemble of Chicago :: Urban Bushmen

This two-CD set documents a 1981 Munich concert, emphasizing the unfolding ritual and orchestral breadth that the Art Ensemble has always used to structure and channel the energy of free jazz. Employing versions of drummer Don Moye's processional "Promenade: Cote Bamako" to bracket the performance, the band uses extended percussion pieces to create a mood of high drama. Within that heightened space, they travel far afield, from Joseph Jarman's extended suite "Theme for Sco," with its use of military bugle calls, to Roscoe Mitchell's puckish "Peter and Judith," to the warm melancholy of Lester Bowie's "New York Is Full of Lonely People." It's a riveting, kaleidoscopic concert. --Stuart Broomer