Home » Jazz Musicians » Junius Paul
Junius Paul
Art Ensemble Of Chicago: The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris
by John Sharpe
Having first come to international prominence in Paris at the end of the '60s, it seems fitting for the Rogue Art imprint to celebrate the Art Ensemble Of Chicago's progression into their sixth decade in the same city. This double CD documents the performance of an extended AEC at the Sons d'hiver Festival in February 2019. Only reedman & composer Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye survive from the original quintet but, rather than accept this as a limitation, ...
read moreKahil El'Zabar: What It Is!
by Howard Mandel
Behold and behear: What It Is!, the 58th recording to feature composer-drummer/percussionist-bandleader-music director and interdisciplinary arts activist Kahil El'Zabar. The album debut of a six-year-old band comprising three Generation Next players who've emerged from the school of Chicago's renowned AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) with chops benefitting from 59-year-old Kahil's mentorship, What It Is! is an hour of now-jazz that looks to the future while embracing the past. It's a statement of the joy of interactive play, ...
read moreArt Ensemble of Chicago: The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris
by Mike Jurkovic
Recorded live in Paris in February 2020, The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris. presents Art Ensemble Of Chicagoas defiantly daring avant-garde as that first night in Paris, 1969 giving no quarter whatsoever in their lifelong, diasporic pursuit of creation unbound. Breaking at the pace of a dream, surviving co-founders saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye return to the moment of conception with a two hour, double disc set The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris, ...
read moreArt Ensemble Of Chicago: The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris
by Giuseppe Segala
Parigi è città fatale per l'Art Ensemble of Chicago: nel 1969 fu traguardo del prodigio artistico e umano preparato negli anni precedenti da Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors e Joseph Jarman, che avevano incrociato le proprie esperienze dapprima al Wilson Junior College di Chicago, nel 1961, poi nel lavoro con la Experimental Band di Muhal Richard Abrams, che dal '66 vide anche la partecipazione di Lester Bowie. Infine, nella formidabile attività musicale, didattica e sociale dell'Association for the Advancement of Creative ...
read moreMakaya McCraven: Deciphering the Message
by Angelo Leonardi
Il debutto in casa Blue Note di Makaya McCraven è un omaggio alla storia musicale dell'etichetta, espresso ovviamente in prospettiva personale. Come ha fatto nei suoi dischi recentie in particolare nell'omaggio a Gil Scott-Heron (We're New Again, XL Recordings 2020)-il batterista e produttore di Chicago usa creativamente la tecnologia sperimentata dai DJ e produttori di hip-hop e club culture, in prospettiva nuova. Il classico repertorio Blue Note degli anni cinquanta e sessanta suscita l'attenzione delle subculture giovanili ...
read moreRoscoe Mitchell Quartet: Come and See What There Is to See
by Mark Corroto
In a recent interview, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire related the story of when he first visited a jazz club; as an eighth grader in Oakland, he experienced a performance by The Art Ensemble Of Chicago. What a spectacle it must have been and, of course, he would have witnessed the maestro himself, Roscoe Mitchell. Decades later Akinmusire, some 42 years Mitchell's junior, dedicated a song, Mr. Roscoe (Consider The Simultaneous)," on his release On The Tender Spot Of Every ...
read moreGil Scott-Heron / Makaya McCraven: We're New Again
by Karl Ackermann
"All the dreams you show up in are not your own." With those words to an interviewer at The New Yorker, Gil Scott-Heron tried to explain a degree of detachment from I'm New Here (XL Recordings, 2011), his comeback" and the final studio album before his death that year. The project was initiated by the head of XL and was the first album Scott-Heron released in the sixteen years he struggled with addiction and two drug-related terms in prison. The ...
read more