Roscoe Mitchell Far Side

[David Ayers]

I've been trying to discuss this one on the ECM thread but no-one there apart from me has heard it. Has ANYBODY heard it? It seems support for Roscoe has dropped to nil around these parts - I am quite surprised. FWIW it has quite grown on me.

Roscoe Mitchell

The Note Factory

Far Side

Roscoe Mitchell saxophones, flutes

Corey Wilkes trumpet, flugelhorn

Craig Taborn piano

Vijay Iyer piano

Harrison Bankhead cello, double-bass

Jaribu Shahid double-bass

Tanni Tabbal drums

Vincent Davis drums

Far Side/Cards/Far Side

Quintet 2007 A For Eight

Trio Four For Eight

Ex Flover Five

Recorded March 2007

ECM 2087

A live album from Roscoe Mitchell and his exceptional Note Factory band, “Far Side” features bracingly adventurous music from a performance at the Burghausen Jazz Festival in southern Germany in 2007. The Note Factory offers an uncompromising exploration of the levels and degrees of sound inside Roscoe Mitchell’s panoptic compositions, and the constantly-changing music harnesses great energies inside its broad structures.

“Far Side” is the second ECM disc from Mitchell’s Note Factory ensemble. Roscoe described the first, 1999’s “Nine To Get Ready” as “the coming together of a dream I had many years ago of putting together an ensemble of improvising musicians with an orchestral range.” The dream now a solid reality, Mitchell has continued not only to blur demarcation lines between composition and improvisation in this group - as he has in other bands before it - but also to inspire a generation of players. “Far side” features a particularly gifted cast of young trailblazers. Trumpeter Corey Wilkes, and pianists Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer are meanwhile all established as bandleaders in their own right, and playing with Mitchell has been a priority for each of them.

Craig Taborn explained why in an interview with Nate Chinen: “The kind of things that Roscoe works with [in the Note Factory] have to do with developing your ideas within a certain space, to make it as three-dimensional as possible. To make it full of activity and different currents so that it's a really deep structure, as opposed to being a one-dimensional structure. He likes a lot of depth. The meaning stems from the multiplicity of ideas. But coming out of that, the possibilities of sound change, because you're forced to evolve your sound, your ideas and everything on your own in that context... It really forces you to listen to everything almost with more clarity. You become really aware of the texture. Instead of focusing on one idea or one line of improvisation, you're focusing on this unified space in which all this stuff's occurring. Playing with Roscoe has made me hear that kind of space differently.”

(To facilitate soloist identification amid the flow of things on the present recording: Vijay Iyer, Jaribu Shahid and Tani Tabbal incline to the left side of the stereo panorama, and Craig Taborn, Harrison Bankhead and Vincent Davis to the right.)

Born in Chicago in 1940, Roscoe Mitchell is one of the innovators in creative music of the post-Coltrane, post-Ayler era, and one of the outstanding composer-leaders to have emerged from the ranks of the AACM. He founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago (originally the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble), whose ECM legacy includes the critically-lauded albums “Nice Guys”, “Full Force”, “Urban Bushmen” and “Tribute To Lester”. More recently Mitchell has co-led the Transatlantic Art Ensemble with fellow saxophonist Evan Parker. Roscoe’s album with this conglomeration, “Composition/Improvisation Nos 1, 2 & 3”, won an Album-of-the-Year Award (Choc de l’année) from France’s Jazzman magazine – one of many honours bestowed upon Mitchell. In addition to his touring and performing activities, Roscoe Mitchell currently holds the position of Distinguished Milhaud Professor of Music at California’s Mills College. “Far Side” is issued shortly after his 70th birthday.

Craig Taborn can currently be heard on Michael Formanek’s new album “The Rub & Spare Change”, and he’s just recorded a solo piano disc due for 2011 release on ECM. In 2005 he played on David Torn’s album “Prezens” and with Roscoe appears on the aforementioned “Nine To Get Ready” and the two Transatlantic Art Ensemble discs – as do bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal, who have been part of Mitchell’s music for more than 30 years.

Dynamic young trumpeter Corey Wilkes has also recorded for ECM with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble and filled Lester Bowie’s vacant seat in the Art Ensemble of Chicago since 2003. He is widely regarded as an important player for the future of jazz and funk and hybrid forms in between.

Vijay Iyer, Harrison Bankhead and Vincent Davis all make ECM debuts on “Far Side”. Iyer, very much an improviser of the moment, was recently voted Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. Bassist/cellist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Vincent Davis have toured together with the Roscoe Mitchell Trio. Perhaps best known for his work with the late Fred Anderson, Bankhead has played with Oliver Lake and Joshua Redman, as well as the groups 8 Bold Souls, Frequency and the Indigo Trio. Vincent Davis, previously a member of the trio of Malachi Favors Maghostut, has also played in groups led by Craig Taborn and Billy Brimfield.

[.:.impossible]

I didn't know about this. I'm sure I will

get it eventually. I'm not exactly hanging on the new release schedule these days. We've tightened the budget over the past year. This is one for the list though. Thanks.

[mjzee]

His "Nine To Get Ready" didn't do much for me.

[ejp626]

I did like Snurdy McGurdy, but that's pretty much it. I am done with free jazz. I don't enjoy listening to it; in fact, I find it a chore. I've tried on and off for years, but now I am through. From the clips on Amazon I can already tell this is not something I would like, despite the presence of Iyer.

[Chuck Nessa]

Roscoe has never been an easy listen. He's been a challenge since I first heard him 45 years ago. That's why I like him so much. Like Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Beethoven and a few others, he keeps my mind working to keep up. I love that. I can understand others not wanting to work on that journey.

To the recording at hand: I have not had it and only ordered it this weekend - it is to be delivered tomorrow. I had not ordered it 'cause Mr. Mitchell frequently sends me freebies of his new releases - I am still digesting the last Rogue Art set (Contact w/ David Wessel - cd + dvd) and Spectrum with Muhal and the Janacek Philharmonic on Mutable.

I also hesitate posting about his releases for fear of some calling them tainted by my close relation.

[papsrus]

Bah ... post away. Your insights are invaluable.

I didn't know about this new release (not that I would, necessarily). Will check it out. The RogueArt sounds intriguing also.

[Chuck Nessa]

I should mention Roscoe says he has a new Rogue Art release coming soon. Did not ask for details.

Edited June 28, 2011 by Chuck Nessa

[GregK]

I'd like to check out that Rogue Art too-what's on the DVD?

I got Far Side about a week after it came out, listened to it twice but with all of the other things I've gotten lately I haven't had much time to thoroughly listen to it. From the little I've heard, it certainly requires a dedicated listen. The first song is an epic. But I have liked just about everything recent that he has released (that I've heard), so I will be going back to it soon.

[David Ayers]

I don't think this is difficult music - it is mostly fairly gratifying, if only occasionally in 4/4 time. One issue on Roscoe performances has, I think, been finding kinetic elements to go alongside the sound-in-space bits (which get wearing in longer doses). Those records with funky passages seem to me to take a wrong turn. This one I like for keeping up the momentum without going that way. It's got a voice of its own among the Roscoe albums I've heard.

[paul secor]

I got Far Side about six months ago, listened to it once, and put it on the shelf. I find that I have to be in the right place to hear Roscoe Mitchell's music. In that sense, his music is like Cecil Taylor's, Arthur Schnabel's, and some others. If I'm not in a place where I can give his music my attention - I don't know if I should say emotionally or intellectually - it's more a sense of allowing the music to come to me - if that doesn't happen, I have no connection to the music. And it's not that Roscoe Mitchell's music is strictly intellectual. His music just demands and deserves my attention.

Anyway, I listened to the longest cut on Far Side tonight -"Far Side/Cards/Far Side". The opening was to me a sound exploration making use of layers, tones, and textures. Roscoe Mitchell's blistering solo later in the piece reminded me of John Coltrane's late groups - seeing how far they could go and still make it back. Hardly anyone is doing that today and I was happy to hear Roscoe Mitchell still blowing like that.

I do hope that Chuck will continue to write about Roscoe Mitchell in these forums. I enjoy Chuck's enthusiasms and intellect, and Roscoe Mitchell's music deserves to be written about and listened to. And his music deserves someone with better writing skills than I have.

Edited June 29, 2011 by paul secor

[jlhoots]

I've listened to Far Side several times & like what I've heard.

[David Ayers]

And that's Prof. Mitchell, btw. Keep up!

[Leeway]

Roscoe is a genius. Let me repeat that: Roscoe is a genius.

[David Ayers]

I find myself with Roscoe mainly listening through the albums to try and draw out interesting things, and I don't often feel that the shape of those works/albums is that successful. Even though I don't think Far Side is a classic I find it more plausible from that point of view than some other of the albums. Maybe the one I most warm to is that album of duets with Braxton. Somehow for me that hits the mark a lot (and often those duet albums seem to thin to me). I guess Roscoe is often trying different things, and I find myself listening to what he is trying to do rather than really living in and beleiving in the works - finding patches where it more or less works, and occasionally coming on a very successful and memorable passage.

[mjazzg]

Dug out Far Side on the back of this thread but not in time to respond the prompt in the ECM thread - sorry David, i'll endeavour to be quicker next time .

I find the long track doesn't really work for me. The density of sound that I suppose is meant to be felt by the listener as layers just comes across as a bit of a sludge (live recording perhaps the reason). I can't distinguish between the double-quintets sufficiently and found myself frustratedly wondering that I'd've preferred just five players - probably just my cloth ears though. i don't find it engaged me until some 13 minutes in. The solos at the end are fine, especially taken by Wilkes on this listen.

The recording really comes to life for me on tracks 3-4. Here the writing seems fully realised by the combinations chosen and particular performer's personalities come to the fore - Bankhead's cello for instance. There's a rigour in these pieces that makes them just sound right - as if they couldn't have been presented in any other way.

So, it's the classic 'game of two halves' from my perspective. I'll admit to Mitchell being a musician that I tend to like the idea of maybe more than his music which I don't often feel an emotional response to. I'm pleased that the re-listen to this CD has highlighted these particular pieces.