Analyses of improvised jazz music have focused either on musical-structural or group-interactive elements. For the Art Ensemble of Chicago, an avant-garde jazz collective founded in the late 1960s by Roscoe Mitchell, musical-structural and group-interactive elements are inseparable. Two live recordings demonstrate an interactive framework in which members of the group refer to multiple Art Ensemble compositions to build up to a full-length performance of a single work. Within a single interactive framework, performers freely incorporate bass lines, melodic fragments, timbres, and rhythmic motives associated with these compositions.

Works: Roscoe Mitchell (composer) and The Art Ensemble of Chicago (performers): A Jackson in Your House (60-61); Lester Bowie and Don Moye (composers) and The Art Ensemble of Chicago (performers): Mata Kimasu (61-65).

Sources: Roscoe Mitchell: A Jackson in Your House (60-61), Duffvipels (60), Get in Line (60); Albert Ayler, Bells (61); Lester Bowie and Don Moye: Mata Kimasu (61-65); Roscoe Mitchell: People in Sorrow (63).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein