Roscoe Mitchell’s New York-Detroit Connection
Mitchell remains a vital figure in jazz. When New York’s premiere new-music club, the Knitting Factory, moved to a new location earlier this year, it featured Mitchell in two opening-week performances–one with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the other with his sextet, the Note Factory. Delmark recently released a fine new CD, Hey Donald, on which he leads a quartet. And in coming months Mitchell, who formerly taught at the University of Wisconsin and still lives in Madison, will be touring the U.S., France, Italy, and Israel.
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Parts of this concert were less successful than others. During an extended free-jazz piece in the second set (Mitchell’s “Hop Hip Bip Bur Rip”), the music occasionally lost its focus. And the level of musical inventiveness and emotional intensity sometimes dropped when Mitchell wasn’t playing. But such unevenness is an inevitable by-product of music this adventurous. Some jazz concerts display the consistent proficiency of a talented child reciting multiplication tables. Mitchell’s performance wasn’t about reciting answers, but asking questions.
