CD ECM Records The Art Ensemble Of Chicago And Associated Ensembles - Boxset

“The Art Ensemble of Chicago is alone in jazz history for reaching back conceptually to long before there ever was anything called jazz and moving toward a future beyond category.”
- Nat Hentoff

THE ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO AND ASSOCIATED ENSEMBLES is a 21-CD limited and numbered edition issued as the standard-bearers of Great Black Music prepare to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Both the Art Ensemble of Chicago and ECM Records were founded in 1969, and there have been many shared experiences. As Roscoe Mitchell says, “It has been amazing to have taken this journey together.”

With their first ECM album, the widely-acclaimed Nice Guys, the Art Ensemble’s revolutionary and polystylistic “ancient to the future” mix of musics - from the deeply spiritual to the fiercely experimental - was illuminated in new detail in Manfred Eicher’s panoramic production, and the stage set for many adventures to follow. These included the albums Full Force, Urban Bushmen, and The Third Decade with the classic AEC quintet line up of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors Maghostut and Famoudou Don Moye. All of Bowie’s and Mitchell’s subsequent ECM recordings are also gathered together here. Charismatic trumpeter Lester Bowie is heard here with his Brass Fantasy group, with Wadada Leo Smith and with Jack DeJohnette. Multi-reed master and primary AEC conceptualist Roscoe Mitchell appears with his Note Factory band, with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble co-founded with Evan Parker, and with an historic trios project recorded at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Along the way, numerous distinguished creative musicians make appearances – the long list includes Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer, Matthew Shipp, Tyshawn Sorey, Fontella Bass, Charlie Haden, Kenny Wheeler, Corey Wilkes, Gerald Cleaver, Phillip Wilson, George Lewis, William Parker, John Abercrombie, Eddie Gomez, and many others, in ECM recordings made between 1978 and 2015.

This beautifully-designed box set incorporates a 300-page book reprising all original album covers, liner notes and poetry (by Joseph Jarman), as well as quotes from Art Ensemble members and the press, new texts by Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer and George Lewis, a preface by Manfred Eicher, and an introduction by Steve Lake. Plus: many photographs (some previously unpublished), archival documents, and more.

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“An impressive complement to a season of commemoration, this elegant boxed set gathers every ECM release by The Art Ensemble of Chicago, along with albums that spin in a compatible orbit […] Avant-garde enthusiasts will be familiar with most if not all of this material, but it’s presented in such handsome fashion here, as in the catalog of a museum retrospective, that the package makes its case.” Nate Chinen WBGO

Some of the best work of one of the greatest groups in jazz is celebrated in a new mammoth boxed set, ‘The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles’ (ECM). The package features 21 discs, including five essential recordings from the Art Ensemble, as well as individually led and sideman projects by its members. It is a vital document of jazz in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and it offers clear sonic through-lines to some of today’s most important bands.
Martin Johnson, The Wall Street Journal

Fewer groups in improvised music have a legacy more respected than the 50-year run of The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and ECM Records has assembled every note they released on that label with “The Art Ensemble of Chicago and associated ensembles.” […] The box set’s heartfelt and thoughtfully annotated book will serve as a revelation to admirers of the group […] When I heard the Art Ensemble’s ‘Full Force’ album (included here) as an impressionable kid, its expressions of freedom changed my life by exposing me to the possibilities of sound. I haven’t been the same since; it’s nice to think someone else might be affected by these geniuses decades later.
Bret Saunders, Denver Post

This 21-CD collection, centred on the four recordings the Ensemble made for ECM between 1978 and 1984, captures the quintet in its vibrant theatrical prime, fearlessly living up to the strapline ‘Great Black Music, from the ancient to the future’. […] A fascinating document of an influential strand of left-field jazz.
Mike Hobart, Financial Times

ECM’s state-of-the-art production values are palpable in the recordings […] The oft-reserved Mitchell was particularly effusive about the box set’s booklet, a feat of design ingenuity and editorial intelligence that does the music justice, augmenting well-reproduced album covers with a slew of archival documents and photographs, and essays by luminaries like George Lewis and Vijay Iyer.
Ted Panken, Downbeat

CD1 - Art Ensemble Of Chicago : Nice Guys
CD2 - Art Ensemble Of Chicago : Full Force
CD3, 4 - Art Ensemble Of Chicago : Urban Bushmen
CD5 - Art Ensemble of Chicago : The Third Decade
CD6 - Leo Smith : Divine Love
CD7 - Lester Bowie : The Great Pretender
CD8, 9 - Lester Bowie : All The Magic!
CD10 - Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy : I Only Have Eyes For You
CD11 - Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy : Avant Pop
CD12 - Art Ensemble of Chicago : Tribute to Lester
CD13 - Roscoe Mitchell : Nine To Get Ready
CD14 - Roscoe Mitchell, The Transatlantic Art Ensemble : Composition / Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3
CD15 - Evan Parker, The Transatlantic Art Ensemble : Boustrophedon
CD16 - Roscoe Mitchell, The Note Factory : Far Side
CD17, 18 - Roscoe Mitchell : Bells For The South Side
CD19 - Jack DeJohnette, New Directions : New Directions
CD20 - Jack DeJohnette, New Directions : In Europe
CD21 - Jack DeJohnette, Muhal Richard Abrams, Larry Gray, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill : Made In Chicago