Sunday, November 8, 2009

The Art Ensemble Of Chicago - Oouffnoon

The influential jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie died ten years ago today. I only had a chance to see the Art Ensemble of Chicago once, but it was a wonderful opportunity -- I wish I'd had more.

Here they are performing live at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1972. They were beginning to become better-known in the world at large, and were ready to tell that world who they were and what they were about. Here is Oouffnoon from that performance. In this particular song saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell gets most of the solo space, but Bowie is, as always, a key part of the group interplay.

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