Personnel: Leo Smith (trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn); George Lewis (tenor trombone, sousaphone).
Like Sound and Nonaah, the three compositions that make up this double LP on Chuck Nessa's home label, offer a picture of Roscoe Mitchell not only as a composer and instrumentalist, but as a sound sculptor. Unlike his contemporary Anthony Braxton, Mitchell's compositions always have a deep concern with the very nature of sound. On "L-R-G," which stands for Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, and George Lewis, the nature of sound in all its registers is the concern. From the extreme low end of the sousaphone played by Lewis, through the various members of the trombone family, to Mitchell on the reeds and woodwinds in the middle, and all of its shapes and colors through to Smith, whose expertise on the trumpet and cornet family moves to the upper register of the piccolo trumpet, Mitchell explores the various interactions -- in improvised context -- of the relationships between single and grouped sounds. "The Maze" is a piece for percussion and sound octet. Among those included are Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Thurman Barker, Douglas Ewart, and fellow Art Ensemble members Don Moye, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors. This is a long strangely intervallic piece, with doors opening onto one set of textured improvisations while another closes, all of them within the context of sonic relationship. Finally there is the mammoth soprano saxophone meditation "S II Examples." This work is perhaps the most sustained tonal meditation on the soprano saxophone on record. Far being a recording of "improvisations," what "S II Examples" proposes and accomplishes is the evocation and elocution of the sonic palette of the soprano horn as it mingles with breath control, and its own microtonal reverberations. This is a very slow, controlled, and gradually unfolding work that is one of Mitchell's masterpieces in terms of giving himself and the listener a total view of how numerous the sonic and spatial possibilities are on the straight horn. Taken together, these three works mark the turn in Mitchell's work from the early years into his more mature period, which continues into this 21st century along a continuum: the preoccupation of the composer with the mystery of sound and its various incarnations in ensembles or in relationship to itself. ~ Thom Jurek
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