For more than 50 years,
Roscoe Mitchell has blurred relationships between sound and silence, scripted composition and improvisation, jazz, classical, and even R&B musics as a soloist, bandleader, member of the
Art Ensemble of Chicago, and composer. In 2015, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art presented a 50th anniversary exhibition devoted to the Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians (or AACM), an organization
Mitchell co-founded, in an exhibit called The Freedom Principle. The music on the double-length
Bells for the South Side was recorded during the exhibit with four of
Mitchell's trios --
James Fei and
William Winant;
Hugh Ragin and
Tyshawn Sorey;
Craig Taborn and
Kikanju Baku;
Jaribu Shahid and
Tani Tabbal -- playing separately and in combinations.
The music here glances back to the many places
Mitchell has visited, but this is no mere retrospective: most of this is bracing new music that looks forward to further exploratory musical landscapes. The set opens with "Spatial Aspects of the Sound," a chamber piece with
Baku using wrist bells,
Winant's various percussion instruments, and
Taborn's and
Sorey's pianos. At 12-plus minutes, it unhurriedly allows tones and clusters, movement and stillness, to articulate a range of carefully controlled articulations. On "Panoply," sputtering sopranino, squawking tenor, kit drums, and various percussion instruments engage in aggressive, inspired free interplay. "Prelude to a Rose" contrasts
Sorey's trombone,
Ragin's trumpets, and
Mitchell's reeds in elongated, dovetailing tones through a slowly unfolding melody. "EP 7849" is another combinatory exercise with electronics, electric guitar, cowbell, hand drums, and bowed double bass that offers futurist dissonance and complex, fascinating engagement. "Dancing in the Canyon" is a canny, propulsive, and extremely active free-for-all with
Taborn and
Baku. On the title track, disc one's closer,
the Art Ensemble's army of percussion instruments is utilized.
Sorey plays
Mitchell’s percussion cage, and
Tabbal and
Baku the percussion instruments of
Don Moye and
Malachi Favors, with
Winant on
Lester Bowie's bass drum.
Ragin’s trumpet offers sounds in all registers, while
Mitchell digs extremely low-end sounds from his bass sax. It's certainly mysterious, but also utterly lovely. Disc two's "Prelude to the Card Game, Cards for Drums, and the Final Hand" features
Mitchell,
Tabbal, and
Shahid in an intuitive, equaniminous improvisation one would expect from players whose relationship dates back 40 years. Likewise, the extended smearing and droning of
Mitchell's and
Fei's reeds on "Six Gongs and Two Woodblocks" amid
Winant's percussion and
Fei's electronics are simultaneously spectral and inquisitive. The closing medley, "Red Moon in the Sky/Odwalla," juxtaposes a new work (the former) with a reading of an
Art Ensemble staple, with all players in open, bleating improvisation before a tight, bluesy, modal post-bop sums it all up, displaying the myriad faces of
Mitchell's approach to both function and extension in the relentless creation of a poetics in sound.
Bells for the South Side is indeed massive, but its depth, breadth, and inspired performances border on the profound. ~ Thom Jurek