{"id":10205,"date":"2025-03-04T13:29:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T19:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=10205"},"modified":"2025-03-04T13:55:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T19:55:40","slug":"space-roscoe-mitchell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/space-roscoe-mitchell\/","title":{"rendered":"SPACE: A Conversation with Roscoe Mitchell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Confucius noted that \u201csilence is a true friend who never betrays.\u201d To many creators, silence takes on supreme importance. Without silence, sound has no relevance. Silence is more than just the absence of organized sound, it is something to be given reverence. This is certainly the case for multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell. Throughout several prior interviews, Mr. Mitchell has described silence as something \u201cperfect\u201d that should be interrupted. Fittingly enough, one of the NEA Jazz Master\u2019s great groups takes its name by reference to silence. The SPACE trio – currently consisting of Mitchell, Thomas Buckner, and Scott Robinson – will perform at Roulette on March 6, 2025. The event is part of the thirty-fifth season of Interpretations<\/em>, a New York-based concert series that examines the relationships between contemporary composers and those who interpret their art. In some cases, as with SPACE, the subject artist and the interpreter are one and the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roscoe Mitchell has been at the battlefront for expanding concepts of modern music for the last six decades. After studying with Muhal Richard Abrams in the early 1960s, he became one of the first members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965. His debut, Sound<\/em> (Delmark, 1966), became the first album out of that now venerated institution. Ahead of its time, and even still so, Sound<\/em> took a broad perspective of the sonic environment in which the master artists found themselves. In large part, this comes from the direction given to each instrumentalist to create their solo around the relationship between sound and silence, not traditional Western music building blocks like melody or rhythm. As a result, \u201cunorthodox devices\u201d like bicycle horns and toys were recognized as potential new voices worthy of exploration. Already blurred walls between the stylistic boundaries of genre were discarded in favor of a holistic sound that adopted influences from a wide range of sonic ideas. The core of the Sound<\/em> group – Mitchell, Malachi Favors, and Lester Bowie – would gradually turn into the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble. Two years later, it became known as the now iconic Art Ensemble of Chicago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Mitchell continued creating and evolving over the ensuing decades, an interest in the interrelationship between sound and silence remained. He even named his ensemble after those elements, with one being named \u201cSound\u201d and another \u201cSPACE.\u201d The latter was a trio Mitchell formed in 1979 with baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner and rare woodwind specialist Gerald Oshita. SPACE\u2019s first record, New Music for Woodwinds and Voice<\/em> (Arch, 1984) was ahead of its time in combining improvisation and composition, jazz and Western classical music, and standard and non-standard instrumentation. Unfortunately, Oshita died in 1992 at the young age of fifty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the story of SPACE continues. Twenty-five years after Oshita\u2019s passing, Mitchell and Buckner formed a new version of the SPACE trio with multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson. As Mitchell makes clear in our conversation, this version of SPACE that has performed on and off over the last eight years is not the same as the original because the trajectory of the band is so dependent on its members. Their original compositions and improvisations are similarly uniquely tied to the artists on stage. However, the shared interest of both trios in the relationship between sound and silence remains. So does, as evident throughout this conversation, Roscoe Mitchell\u2019s forward focus and creative boldness. This conversation has been edited for clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PostGenre: You have been quoted a few times as saying that silence is perfect and when you interrupt silence, you strive to be at the same level as silence. How do you know when you are playing that you are reaching that same level of perfection instead of filling space and taking away from perfection?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Roscoe Mitchell: Well, I mean, have you ever gone and sat in a room that’s totally silent? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PG: Yeah, yeah. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

RM: Yeah, well, that’s what it is. It’s perfect, you know? So if you want to interrupt it when you do something, it has to at least be on that level. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>