Art Ensemble of Chicago

About

Also known as: AEC, Roscoe Mitchell Sextet, The Art Ensemble, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, アート・アンサンブル・オブ・シカゴ

Few groups have blurred the line between concert and ceremony quite like the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Growing out of the AACM in the late 1960s, the ensemble built its reputation on a genuinely wild range of sounds, from free jazz and blues to African percussion and beyond, all while performing in face paint and elaborate costumes. They were not shy about props either: at one European show in 1969, they had around five hundred instruments on stage, including bicycle horns, wind chimes, and birthday party noisemakers alongside saxophones and trumpets. The core lineup of Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarman, and percussionist Don Moye shaped decades of avant garde music. Bowie died in 1999, Favors in 2004, and Jarman in 2019, leaving Mitchell and Moye to carry the name forward. They did exactly that, assembling a sprawling large ensemble for a 50th anniversary project and then releasing The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris in 2023 with a tighter group of around twenty musicians.