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For February – just under the wire – we provide capsule reviews of recent works with an eye towards avant-garde expressionism. Two of the selections explore the contributions of legends of the music, while the others showcase the voices of younger practitioners of the craft. For this month, only one of these albums – Mat Muntz’s Phantom Islands (Orenda, 2023) – came out in February proper. Another – Richard Koloda’s Holy Ghost: The Life & Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler (Jawbone, 2022) is not even a recording. The others – Art Ensemble of Chicago’s The Sixth Decade: From Paris To Paris (RogueArt, 2023) and Cory Smythe’s Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Pyroclastic, 2022) – came out last month and last year, respectively, but are still worthy of comment.

Art Ensemble of Chicago – The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris 

It is one thing to craft a creative motto. It is quite another to live it. Since 1969, the Art Ensemble has stayed true to its promise of “Great Black Music – Ancient to Future.” The immediately preceding We are on the Edge (A 50th Anniversary Celebration) (Pi, 2019), confirmed that the listening world is still trying to catch up to the AEC’s ideas that sounded ahead of their time a half-century earlier. The Sixth Decade, a live recording from early 2020 at Festival Sons d’hiver, further underscores the continued vibrancy of the Ensemble’s core message, even as most of its original members – only Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye remain – are now but spirits left in the music. As it has done throughout its history, the Art Ensemble remains unconstrained by artistic precepts and styles. This modern chamber orchestra conception of the group reaches its zenith when the shifts in stylistic concepts are utterly unpredictable, as on “Leola” where low tone pulsations morph into haunting operatic vocals. 

Cory Smythe – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Standards play an important role in training future musicians and providing a piece upon which musicians can more easily converse in their improvisations. Given their familiarity, there can often be monotony in performing these once-inspiring tunes. The best approach to standards lies in cases where artists reappropriate the song’s core to create a new language. For example, Bird’s crafting of Ko Ko out of the chordal remnants of “Cherokee.” One-half of Smythe’s latest album follows this model by loosely adapting Kern and Harbach’s classic into a collection of mutated strings, altered resonances, and toneless whirs. These solo piano expeditions are equally imposing and familiar. On the rest of the album, the standard is less a direct compositional source and more a narrative one, providing the theme of climate change. These series of “Liquiforms” and “Combustions” are provided by a larger ensemble’s isolated bursts of sound which alternatively flow into and ignite one another. 

Richard Koloda – Holy Ghost: The Life & Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler

Given his significance, it is surprising how little is written about Albert Ayler’s life. Oh, people know the highlights. His time in the military. A discography from the brilliance of Spiritual Unity (ESP, 1964) to the much-maligned New Grass (Impulse!, 1969). His tragic end in the East River. But, far too often, these events are treated as isolated moments and not properly contextualized within the longer timeline of a brilliant artist’s life. Koloda’s twenty years of research on the subject and longtime friendship with Donald Ayler help him present arguably the most definitive biography of the subject to date. At times Koloda presents controversial theses – among them that Ayler enlisted primarily to avoid paying child support or how significantly Ayler influenced Coltrane- but strongly supports his contentions. If Holy Ghost can be faulted for anything, it is that Koloda sometimes goes into too much detail. One does not necessarily need to know Ayler’s social security number, for instance. But overall, it is a compelling read and a great addition to the literature on the history of free improvisation.  

Mat Muntz – Phantom Islands 

There is something special about artists who feel so unconstrained by the status quo that, even in its broadest terms, the very concept of their work is without precedent. While the bagpipes are uncommon in improvised music, Rufus Harley and others have created some history. How many people outside Croatia have heard of Muntz’s primorski meh in any context? The rest of the group is unconventionally orchestrated- featuring guitar, oboe, and Yuma Uesaka on clarinets. The compositions emphasize unusual tunings and microtonality. The confluence of foreign influences provides exotic trappings for this  “folk music from nowhere.” Yet, like any other music of and from the people, there is an emotional rawness that shines through regardless of the language used. Under the surface of “Dzig No. 1”, the non-chanter horns form melodies ripe for dancing. “Three Mirages, Small Town Blues” seemingly tells of an unknown peoples’ stories of sorrow. If anything, the alien terrain permits shared cross-cultural messages to emerge from the music’s heart.