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Jack De Johnette: Made in Chicago

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: ECM Records
Released: 2015.01.24
Time:
 77:42
Category: Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz, Free Improvisation
Producer(s): Jack De Johnette, Dave Love ...
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.jackdejohnette.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2015
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Chant (Roscoe Mitchell) - 16:56
[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 (Jack DeJohnette speaks to audeince) - 6:09
[7] Ten Minutes (Muhal Richard Abrams / Jack DeJohnette / Larry Gray / Roscoe Mitchell / Henry Threadgill) - 3:28

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Henry Threadgill - Alto Saxophone, Bass Flute
Roscoe Mitchell - Sopranino, Soprano/Alto Saxophones, Bass Recorder, Baroque Flute
Muhal Richard Abrams - Piano
Larry Gray - Double Bass, Violoncello
Jack De Johnette - Drums, Mixing, Producer

Dave Love - Producer
Manfred Eicher - Executive Producer, Mixing
James A. Farber - Engineer, Mixing
Martin Walters - Engineer
Jeremiah Nave - Assistant Engineer
Daniel Santiago - Assistant Engineer
Christoph Stickel - Mastering
Sascha Kleis - Design
Paul Natkin - Photography
Thomas Staudter - Liner Notes

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


With Made In Chicago, an exhilarating live album, Jack DeJohnette celebrates a reunion with old friends. In 1962, 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 cofounded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in 1965, DeJohnette, Mitchell and Threadgill were all deeply involved from the outset, presenting concerts and contributing to each other s work under the AACM umbrella. Jack brought them together again for a very special concert at Chicago s Millennium Park in August 2013, completing the group with the addition of bassist/cellist Larry Gray. The concert recording featuring compositions by Roscoe, Henry, Muhal and Jack, plus group improvising - was mixed by Manfred Eicher and Jack DeJohnette at New York s Avatar Studio. Made In Chicago is issued as the AACM begins its 50th anniversary year.
 


At one point on Made In Chicago, drummer—and occasional pianist—Jack DeJohnette announces, "We'd like to do something spontaneous for you." By then, spontaneity is a foregone conclusion. With a discography that includes almost two-hundred recordings, DeJohnette is best known among more casual listeners as one third of pianist Keith Jarrett's long-time trio. Significant though the role has been, it hardly represents the scope of his career or his musical proclivities. In 1965, along a group of local Chicago musicians and composers, DeJohnette helped found the still active Association for the Advancement of Creative Music. At the forefront of the original AACM were pianist Muhal Richard Abrams saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and saxophonist and flautist Henry Threadgill. Together with the aforementioned, the quintet on Made In Chicago is filled by the versatile Chicago bassist Larry Gray whose work spans from the Chicago Symphony to saxophonist Branford Marsalis.

With this reunion of South Side friends and colleagues, DeJohnette has documented his purpose of re-connecting with his musical roots. Those roots are connected in the experimental and free jazz scene in Chicago of the 1960's, a time when free jazz was still widely vilified, even within the jazz community. However, there is nothing nostalgic in this live recording from the 2013 Chicago Jazz Festival. Of the seven tracks on Made In Chicago, one, "Announcement" is just that; a verbal set up to the closing number. The remaining six tracks clock in at well over ten minutes each, with the ironic exception of "Ten Minutes."

The set opens with the Mitchell penned "Chant" which moves from Abrams simple, dignified lines to forceful and enthralling group improvisations where melody minimized and the ensuing session builds to a feverish pitch. DeJohnette uses a hand-held mic to pick up the overtones of the cymbals on "Jack Five," an Abrams composition. The slower tempo piece has a warped floating feeling, anchored just slightly by Abrams and Threadgill's alto but once again, the piece takes off. DeJohnette's extended solo with its polyrhythmic intonations and variety of tones is exceptionally musical. Threadgill takes up the bass flute on Mitchell's neo-classically influenced "Think." Mitchell's bass recorder, Gray's cello and DeJohnette's disembodied thunder give the composition and ethereal feel. Abrams rolling blues and open harmonies dominate the early stage of DeJohnette's "Museum of Time," the most lyrical of the pieces on Made In Chicago. As on all the pieces in this collection, it eventually heads into abstract territory.

There isn't a venue that regularly gathers a more prestigious collection of progressive artists than does the Chicago Jazz Festival. DeJohnette, was given free rein to assemble a band and create a program and with the fiftieth anniversary of the AACM at hand he could not have paid a more fitting tribute to an organization that fosters imaginative thinking. More to the point of the music, to hear these veterans express the love of their work in a powerful, forward looking set that's not likely to be repeated.

Karl Ackermann - March 11, 2015
© 2015 All About Jazz



In 2013, the Chicago Jazz Festival invited Jack DeJohnette to assemble a dream band to open. The renowned drummer, composer, and pianist assembled a group whose personnel revisited the roots of his early days on the city's South Side: saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill - with whom he had attended Wilson Junior College in the early '60s - and mentor Muhal Richard Abrams, whose Experimental Band they all played in. Abrams also co-founded the historic Association of Creative Musicians (AACM) that fostered the talent of all three, and a bit later, this group's bassist Larry Gray. Reunions can be a tricky business in the jazz world, especially when people haven't played together in nearly five decades. That said, this set works far more often than it doesn't, and it never really falters. There is ample chemistry between the principals. Mitchell's "Chant" gets things off to a lively start. Its melody is short and repetitive, with a children's song quality expressed by the saxophones. Abrams plays off the top, engaging in counterpoint, and DeJohnette rolls it out, filling, accenting, and pushing; he's followed by Gray as the dialogue between the horns commences and solos appear within it. That notion of repetition also fuels DeJohnette's "Museum of Time," where Abrams plays a glissando pattern in a compact mode as the horns respond with short, blues-like phrases as the composer whispers and rushes along on brushed cymbals. Gradually, the work opens up with a brief and lovely Abrams solo, as the horns, in slightly staggered phrasing, capture the mournful melody before they begin to moan it out. Gray's and DeJohnette's tom-toms eventually add a funky backdrop to Abrams' second solo and a dialogue between flute and saxophone before the tune builds again with tension and drama. Threadgill's "Leave Don't Go Away" is simultaneously tight and sprawling. The saxophonist's collage ideas run rampant before Abrams dialogues intensely with the drummer and the bassist. Throughout Made in Chicago, ideas assert themselves, though they are occasionally ponderous and speculative as in Abrams' "Jack Five" and Mitchell's chamber jazz piece "This." Even in these, however, there are nearly sublime moments thanks to Gray - his earthy solo in the former tune and his fluid arco playing in the latter keep things from going too far afield. The last piece here, "Ten Minutes," is a strident, thoroughly engaging, even bracing group improvisation with wonderful conversation, sparkling ideas, and soloing. While Made in Chicago was supposed to be a one off, it turns out to have been a lift-off point for further concert engagements. This document is important not only for the historic nature of the reunion of vanguard jazz luminaries, but as the spark for further exploration.

Thom Jurek - All music Guide



Jack DeJohnette leads a supergroup, and rare Chicago reunion, of AACM veterans Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill along with bassist Larry Gray.

DeJohnette’s stated intention in assembling this particular group was to re-connect with his musical roots. He was an integral part of the free jazz scene in Chicago in the early to mid ’60s, out of which that influential South Side collective  AACM emerged.

As documented in George Lewis’ history of the AACM, A Power Stronger Than Itself, DeJohnette was among the established local players who participated in Friday afternoon sessions with Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Malachi Favors and other music students emerging from Woodrow Wilson Junior College. DeJohnette actually introduced Mitchell to Abrams at a 1963 rehearsal of Abrams’ fluctuating Experimental Band, a precursor to the AACM.

Even as DeJohnette’s ultra-special Special Edition celebrated the past at the Chicago Jazz Festival, there was little nostalgia in its fiercely relevant sounds. The set began with “Chant,” a Mitchell piece from the late ’70s whose progression from stately, pastel-toned minimalistic lines to intensely charged, bagpipe-like invocations couldn’t have been more gripping. On Abrams’ “Jack Five,” DeJohnette created a nifty prelude by running a hand-held mic under and above the hi-hat and cymbals to capture percussive overtones. He later rocked the piece, which found Threadgill in harder-edged form on alto than he has been lately, with a popping bass drum solo.

Throughout, DeJohnette was in his element with his polyrhythmic accents, booming tones and, on Mitchell’s “Think,” mallet strokes. The chamber-like piece opened with the composer on bass recorder, Threadgill on bass flute and Gray on cello. DeJohnette’s featured composition, “Museum of Time,” was a beaut, lifted by Abrams’ bluesy rolling figures and eloquent open attack and the richest harmonies on an evening dominated by overlapping melodies and counter tones.

Dave Love - Producer
© 2012 Copyright New Music USA



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, DeJohnette, Mitchell and Threadgill were involved from the outset, presenting concerts and contributing to each other’s work under the AACM umbrella. DeJohnette then relocated to New York, but remained a frequent visitor and collaborator.

Invited to present a program 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.

 Made In Chicago features compositions by Roscoe Mitchell (“Chant” and “This”), Muhal Richard Abrams (“Jack 5”), Jack DeJohnette (“Museum of Time”), and Henry Threadgill (“Leave Don’t Go Away”), as well as the collective improvisation “Ten Minutes”. 

The album marks ECM debuts for Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill and Larry Gray. Roscoe Mitchell’s ECM discography includes albums with the Art Ensemble of Chicago (Nice Guys, Full Force, Urban Bushmen, The Third Decade, and Tribute To Lester) as well as with his Note Factory band (Nine To Get Ready, Far Side) and with the US/UK Transatlantic Art Ensemble which he co-led with Evan Parker (Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3, and Boustrophedon).

Jack DeJohnette, recently named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, has recorded prolifically for ECM since 1971. His first disc for the label was Ruta & Daitya, a duet with Keith Jarrett. Numerous recordings with Jarrett since then include many albums with the popular ‘Standards Trio’ completed by Gary Peacock (highlights include the six-CD set At The Blue Note, and, most recently, Somewhere).  Jack has led a series of distinguished groups of his own at ECM beginning with Directions, followed by New Directions and Special Edition. Special Edition’s recordings, with line-ups including David Murray, Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman, John Purcell, Howard Johnson and Baikida Carroll, were reprised in ECM’s Old & New Masters box set series in 2012 to great critical acclaim.  DeJohnette also co-led the Gateway trio with John Abercrombie and Dave Holland (albums Gateway, Gateway 2, Homecoming, In The Moment), and has recorded with frequent musical partner John Surman (The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, Invisible Nature, Free And Equal).  DeJohnette’s unique solo album Pictures stands as a classic amongst the early ECM recordings. He has furthermore appeared as drummer on numerous ECM sessions, including albums by Kenny Wheeler, Collin Walcott, John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny, George Adams, Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Gary Peacock, Bill Connors, Ralph Towner and Mick Goodrick.

© 2015 Jack DeJohnette.



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, Jazz Critic / 19 Jan 2015
© 2015 Copyright Telegraph Media Group



Drummer Jack DeJohnette has been an integral part of the New York area jazz scene for more than 50 years, long enough to forget that he’s originally from Chicago. Before moving east, he participated in the band that gave birth to the Advancement for the Association of Creative Musicians, a collective that has nurtured several generations of great Chicago jazz musicians.

On his new recording, “Made in Chicago” (ECM Records), Mr. DeJohnette goes back to those roots by convening a band featuring all-star musicians from his early days in Chicago; he is joined by saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill and by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. Each is a renowned innovator and leader who rarely plays sideman gigs. The recording documents an August 2013 concert by the band in Millennium Park during the Chicago Jazz Festival. The band will perform Thursday night at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and again this summer at the Newport Jazz Festival on Aug. 1.

In the early ’60s, Mr. DeJohnette, who is 72 years old, was a classmate of Mr. Threadgill, 71, and Mr. Mitchell, 74, at Wilson Junior College (now Kennedy-King College) on Chicago’s South Side. They played music together in school settings and at the many jam sessions that took place in the city’s jazz clubs and lounges. It was at one of these sessions that Mr. DeJohnette met Mr. Abrams, now 84, who led an ensemble called the Experimental Band; fittingly for its name, it functioned as a workshop for musicians with ideas that didn’t fit into the jazz mainstream. Messrs. DeJohnette, Threadgill and Mitchell all played in the band, which featured a varying roster of musicians and ultimately grew into the AACM in 1965.

The Chicago Jazz Festival invited Mr. DeJohnette to create a project of his choosing in honor of his appointment as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. On “Made in Chicago,” the four jazz greats are joined by veteran bassist Larry Gray, who is also a native of Chicago’s South Side.

The set list consists of Mr. Mitchell’s “Chant,” which has been staple of his repertoire for 40 years, and one less-familiar tune each by Messrs. Mitchell, Threadgill, Abrams and DeJohnette. It closes with an improvised jam. There are stellar moments throughout the recording. For instance, Mr. Mitchell’s tense coiled sounds are offset beautifully on “Chant” by Mr. Abrams’s ruminative piano chords. The pianist and the drummer engage in a powerful duet in Mr. DeJohnette’s “Museum of Time.” And Mr. Threadgill’s pungent alto saxophone is heard on several pieces.

But the record falls prey to the issues that mar many “supergroup” recordings. The product of only a few days of rehearsals, it is an uneven affair; there are moments of sublime synthesis followed quickly by moments where the playing feels measured and less assertive. Yet the best parts are intriguing. Save for some gems on imprints like Nessa and Delmark, Chicago’s avant-garde jazz scene of the ’60s was under-recorded, and this album—though made a half-century later—offers a glimpse into what might have been heard during some of those Experimental Band gigs.

At Mr. Abrams’s urging, Mr. DeJohnette moved to New York in 1964 and quickly found elite-level work, playing in bands led by saxophonists Jackie McLean, Charles Lloyd and Wayne Shorter. In 1969, he joined Miles Davis’s band, playing on the classic “Bitches Brew” sessions. During the ’70s, Mr. DeJohnette made his mark not only with his own group, Special Edition, a showcase for several up-and-coming saxophonists, but with New Directions, which featured such top players as guitarist John Abercrombie and trumpeter Lester Bowie. Much of Mr. DeJohnette’s time since the early ’80s has been spent performing with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio, which has become one of the most popular groups in jazz.

Messrs. Threadgill and Abrams also moved to New York in the early ’70s and still live there. Mr. Mitchell spent some time in Europe before settling first in Michigan and now in Oakland, Calif., where he teaches at Mills College. It is easy to hear the Chicago roots in their sound, but not so much in Mr. DeJohnette’s—and I suspect that is the point of “Made in Chicago.” He shows his Windy City side, and it adds a new, introductory chapter to the lengthy discography of a great jazz drummer.

Martin Johnson - March 11, 2015
The Wall Street Journal



Jack DeJohnette is best known for his work with Keith Jarrett, Miles Davis and his own Special Edition band – but here is a rekindling of DeJohnette’s early Chicago life, reconvening with sax-playing schoolfriends Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, and Chicago free-jazz guru Muhal Richard Abrams. It was recorded live at the city’s jazz festival in 2013, and has the spirit and Albert Ayler-influenced horn sounds of archetypal 1960s African-American free-jazz – but it is anchored by varied compositions and DeJohnette’s loose, flowing drumming. Mitchell’s Chant has wild sax lines rising out of a four-note motif; Threadgill’s Leave Don’t Go Away unleashes DeJohnette at his free-funkiest and Abrams in chord-hammering, Cecil Taylor-like mood. It’s not always comfortable listening, but it’s an intriguing reunion of jazz pioneers.

John Fordham - 29 January 2015
© 2015 Guardian News and Media
 

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