Archived 1979 Interview: Roscoe Mitchell Hits New Level of Musical Existence

Roscoe Mitchell, circa 1978. Photographer unknown.

By Don Phipps

Roscoe Mitchell sat down with me on February 4, 1979 before he gave a solo recital on alto saxophone in front of a full house at the now defunct Lulu White’s Supper Club in Boston, Massachusetts. This interview, published in its entirety in the September 10, 1979, edition of The Daily Free Press, where I was the Art Editor and a staff writer from 1978-1980 while a student at Boston University, has since been buried, available only on microfiche at the university library. It has never been published on the Web. To me, this interview is significant enough to warrant re-publication here. Mitchell today is 84 but when I interviewed him, he was just 38 – a good portion of his life and artistic output yet to come

Mitchell and his great jazz group, The Art Ensemble of Chicago (consisting of Mitchell, trumpeter Lester Bowie, fellow saxophonist Joseph Jarman, and a rhythm section of Malachi Favors Maghostut and Famoudou Don Moye), had returned the previous year from a decade long expatriation from the USA. This return was ebulliently celebrated with a raucous North American debut and performance of their entire seminal Nice Guys album (ECM 1126) at Jonathan Swift’s Pub in Cambridge, MA, on October 23, 1978. At the time of this concert, I had no idea who the Art Ensemble of Chicago even was! All I knew was that Anthony Braxton was opening the concert with a series of solo alto saxophone improvisations, and that I did not want to miss the event. Imagine then seeing the Art Ensemble play without any bias, pro or con, without knowing who they were, or having any idea just how important they were in the history of free jazz.

The solo concert Mitchell performed after this interview was just as special. It came on the heels of his 1978 release of L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples (Nessa n-14/15). I noted in my coverage of that concert that a woman in the audience remarked loudly that Roscoe could “make that thing (his alto saxophone) say everything.” I would argue that truer words were never spoken.

My introduction to the interview began with the following:

“Mitchell, 38, is a founding member of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the mastermind behind what many consider to be the greatest jazz combo of the decade, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He also plays almost every wind instrument imaginable, from the flute to the contrabass saxophone. But even above these achievements, Roscoe aspires to the principle of the artist uncompromised, seeking to extend the boundaries of musical ideas. In a number of audible ways, he and his followers are changing the concept of what we think of as music. When I talked to him, he was both attentive and conscientious. His thoughtful answers about jazz and music as a whole revealed a man who possesses a confidence in manner as well as music. Above all, he was friendly. The following are excerpts from that interview:]

After years of working with The Art Ensemble, why have you begun to record on your own again?

Mitchell: I had started to do things on my own, so my name had started to go out again. For instance… as time went on the more push and sacrifice people had to do in the music, we formed (in 1969) the Art Ensemble has a collective. I had devoted a lot of my energy to the Art Ensemble. In the mid-70s the first things that started to come out on my own was, I think, the Sackville recordings, solo things, and the quartet and that, and I think that interest was starting to build up in me again. Then when Nonaah (Nessa 9/10) came out, it got such a good critic response, it was the natural order of things.

Your new album (Roscoe Mitchell, Nessa 14/15) contains compositions unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Can you tell our readers something about the pieces on the album and explain what you are trying to accomplish?

Mitchell: The album contains a piece (“The Maze”) for eight percussionists on one side, and on the other whole side is a solo piece for soprano saxophone (“S II Examples”). On the other whole record, it’s a double album set, is a trio (“LRG”) with myself, (Wadada) Leo Smith, and George Lewis. The trio is a thing where we take the complete reed spectrum and surround it with the complete brass spectrum and then you have all of these interactions of sound going on. It’s a form of meditative music. What I really like about it is that you can be listening to it and you can go away from it, and wherever you come back to it, you can go right back to listening to it at that spot.

The soprano sax piece, “S II Examples,” is fascinating. What are you attempting musically?

Mitchell: “S II Examples” is a one to five projected piece for soprano saxophone. The Examples section is where I take all the fingerings of the saxophone, turn it all around, play it in a lot of different ways and produce different sound patterns. I then take these sound patterns, say I take one range of sound patterns, play them on tape, listen to them, then maybe take these sound patterns and start to move sound patterns around instead of notes. These are just examples of sound patterns. I’ll probably release a tape to go with the book that catalogues the various sounds. “S II Examples, tape example 1” for instance: “Delayed side B-flat key.” Play that example. You could have sound movement, Example 1 with the delayed side B-flat fingering to Example 2, a low B trill. If I have these particular fingerings happening, then I’m going to have new sounds. It can allow you to move in music in ways that can trick you. You might even think that it’s going a certain way and it goes another way.

You say you set up this recent series of concerts to do improvisational music. What does improvisation mean to you?

Mitchell: Improvisation is in a really growing stage. What happened was in the early sixties, when people started experimenting with freer forms of music, there were a lot of choices to choose from… because there were so many things that had not been dealt with. Everything felt new and fresh. Now we’ve established certain things that can happen within certain kinds of musical situations… It’s a constant thing, like being able to improvise, being able to study improvisation, to be able to take the idea of improvisation to the next level, improvise on that level, study improvisation, and go on from there. You build up all this information, and then release that information, experiment with it, and it keeps opening up all the time. What I’m doing now… is investigating the alto as much as I can in a solo context so that I can have some control over that medium. I figure that playing by yourself is the other end of playing with a lot of people.

Do you have any musical influences?

Mitchell: I just get the whole thing on people. I’ll go through a day and I’ll listen to Duke Ellington, or go through another day and listen to Bird (Charlie Parker), or go another day and listen to Bach. Whatever is appealing to me at the time. Currently I’m in a real study period in music. I’ll listen to some double record sets of Duke Ellington, and I’ll notice how much music was on these double-record sets. After you listen to the whole record, you couldn’t even remember what you heard on the first side because so many things had gone down in the music.

Who did you listen to as you were growing up?

Mitchell:When I was growing up there wasn’t such a divide between my parents and myself and what we were actually listening to musically. My parents could go out on the street and listen to Bird, Lester Young, or whatever, or go up to the club in Chicago, and everybody was coming through there, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, everybody. These are the kind of records we had at home. Now everything is so much more separated. The parents don’t really listen to what the kids are listening to.

I have the same problem with my parents.

Mitchell: Yeah, I even had that problem with my family. My father grew up in music as a singer. But when my music started to change, he said, “Oh Man, what is that?” At that time Jack DeJohnette and I were playing together a lot and Jack was playing drums and I was playing saxophone and that really took it out because there wasn’t any piano and bass or nothing. Just this thing happening.

That’s pretty wild. Anthony Braxton has recently released a new album with the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra titled For 4 Orchestra (Arista A3L 8900). Are you doing anything in the way of orchestra composition?

Mitchell: Later this month, I’m doing a thing in Austria with a quartet, a solo piece, and large ensemble. What I’m doing with the large ensemble is trying out different ochestrational techniques that I want to apply to an orchestra piece I’m going to do later this year. Eventually it will be recorded.

You mentioned techniques for orchestra. What do you mean?

Mitchell: I’m working with certain types of queuing techniques where you can shift the music all around and different kinds of things and have spaces happen differently each time depending upon the people that are playing and the way their body tempo is going that day, and how they are feeling; and checkpoints for each person in the composition, so that if you are starting to go out of it, I can slow down the pace if I want to, or speed it up; or like trying to have a lot of natural considerations in the music so that the music can flow along naturally like the way we are breathing.

Does it bother you to see yourself compared with Anthony Braxton so much?

Mitchell: No. We all came up together in Chicago. We have known each other and played together for getting close to twenty years. People are definitely going to refer to us when they talk about the music. I think the thing that is unique about the Chicago musicians (AACM) is that Anthony and Joseph (Jarman), (Henry) Threadgill and myself, to mention some of the reed men that came out of that era in music, although we all came up together, everybody has still developed their own type of style and then own type of approach to music. Then that’s even gone past that now, because people are defying styles. You have people that can give an illusion of having no style at all. It’s gone past like “he plays alto saxophone, and he plays this or that.” People are beginning to represent themselves in a lot of different lights now. Ten years or so ago, people had to go out and function as strong people inside strong individual small groups and make strong representations of themselves as soloists. Now things are beginning to open up and people are being able to do even larger projects

, so we are beginning to see another side of it.

The question of style interests me. Do you have a style you could call your own?

Mitchell: My style is just the way I go about doing things. I might play the same piece that you do. My tone will be different from yours and the way I approach a particular thing rhythmically and the type of accents I may use would make the difference. Once you make a style for yourself in music, then you can keep your style, and everything else that you can add to your vocabulary is just resynthesized in your own style. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. I want to have music where it doesn’t sound like me, but is me. That has got to be the ultimate in pure music.

Where do you think you are now musically?

Mitchell: I’m trying to develop into a state where I can be more meditative in the music, and play with longer concentration spans, and have the music going on for longer spaces of time. I do want to get into big pieces now. I think people ought to go out and hear these big extravaganzas every now and then. The musicians are ready to do it now; it’s just a matter of being able to finance these projects.

Besides wanting to do large pieces, do you have any personal direction?

Mitchell: I’m reaching for another level of my musical existence. When I started to play all the different instruments, my embouchure shattered, and I couldn’t play anything for a while. But now all these instruments are beginning to come, they are beginning to come. It’s not like if you pick up one instrument and go on to another it’s the end anymore. A lot of things… motivate me. Such as the experience of being able to go and get people that I’ve functioned with for almost twenty years now and being able to have specialized pieces of music if I want to. There are other opportunities that are opening up. We are getting fusion, not only in the jazz rock thing, but now we’re getting fusion from classical music into improvisation so that opens up so many more avenues.

You mentioned jazz rock. Jazz in the public’s eye is represented by the fusion sounds of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Chuck Mangione, rather than Roscoe Mitchell and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Why?

Mitchell: It’s a matter of nervous systems and how fast people’s nervous systems can adjust to these other sounds before they can start to take them in and listen to them. Now all of a sudden, “Wow man, we can have the same rhythm with a whole lot of other chords!” That started to open people up. When people hear other music now it’s not such a far place for them to go, straight from rock to the more freer forms of music. Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Chuck Mangione are really big draws, comparable to the rock stars, and I think that’s good, because it is making the transition and it’s coming out that we’re getting more and more people.

But there has been an acoustic whiplash in jazz. Some musicians such as Keith Jarrett and Cecil Taylor have openly criticized the very basis of electronic (fusion-based) music. You feel no antipathy?

Mitchell: You have to remain open. There is something that can be done with all different types of sounds in musical situations. What happens when you close yourself down is that you have died. No one else. Everything else is still going on. We are now faced with the possibility of the computer…. It’s a challenge to me to be able to sound like a machine if I want to. I can learn a lot from that. It’s a challenge to deal with a machine. It’s hard work just like anything else. You got people who can go in there and get songs out of the computer but that is not really that interesting. We want to try to strive for things that are on a much higher level. It’s interesting to take yourself out of the context of a melodic flow and move through sound structure in a different kind of way. The “S II Examples” I’ve been telling you about comes close to being able to match these sounds.

Music is founded upon a compositional process. With the advent of the 12-tone system and mathematical atonality, many people would say that music is cold and unexpressive. In fact, insincere. What are your thoughts on the matter?

Mitchell: If we look at it with an open mind and one considers that sound is sound and we can use it the way that we want to display a certain picture, and if you go about your work in a sincere manner, then the results will be like that. No matter what medium you’re using, it should turn out with the same sincerity.

How would a person guard against insincerity in music?

Mitchell: It has to do with longevity. People will come up and sound good for a year, but how will they sound in twenty years? This is the thing you have to look at. The thing about playing an instrument is that in the final end, you have got to face the instrument and play it. When a piece is done well and then it can be broken into a mathematical equation, especially if you’re dealing with the 12-tone system or any other system for that matter. People who do music, many times they don’t take that into consideration the type of mathematical equation they are dealing with. And sometimes they do. If we look at the music of Charlie Parker, it is a clearly defined mathematical system that he uses to play his music. However, when he was doing it he probably thought, “Well, I want to play music differently from Lester Young,” because Lester Young inspired him. Then he started to use the tops of the chords and developed a whole thing from that. It is no different.

Your music has suffered economic repression, whether it has been the lack of playing engagement or the inability to record. Does the repression continue today?

Mitchell: Sure. People play all sorts of games. The period that the Art Ensemble did not record was a result of these games. But the music is coming around so strong that it is beginning to come out. If you take something and try to press it into a wall, and it keeps trying to come out, it is going to come out. The music was able to push through… and still be alive at the end of it.

Are you bitter?

Mitchell: I’m not bitter. I’ve always managed to make it in a good way. The music has been good to me. I have tried to be loyal to what I am doing and the rewards come with that. I was able to survive.

You’ve done much more than just survive. A personal question, Roscoe. Do you feel that your influence will be discussed 30 years from now?

Mitchell: I should certainly hope so. I consider myself one of the prime innovators of this music. Whoever is a historian and wanted to check the music out, the way you would have to do it is to go back to the earlier recordings. You would be able to see what my contributions have been to the music. If you really listen to the music, you can hear something that might sound new and go back and listen to something that I did in the sixties where I covered the area already. I think it is very important for guys that are doing the work have it documented very well, so that when people go back and study these people, they can actually see their musical development as it went along and relate it to the time it happened.

Do you intend to continue experimenting with music?

Mitchell: Yes. The thing is if you don’t do it, you’re going to fall behind because there are guys out there that are doing it. My thing is that I’m not going to spend this much time in the music and not share in the rewards that are coming up now. I can’t see that at all.

It’s a shame you’ve not been able to record more frequently.

Mitchell: That happened because I put a lot of time into a group situation, and now the whole thing is turning over again. I’m finding now that most of my musical ideas are really extended kind of things, meditative. You can have one idea on a record. One whole record! And I think it’s just a matter of time and more and more things will be happening.

[Author's note: In the Daily Free Press of February 14, 1979, I published a review of the performance Mitchell gave following this interview. Some excerpts from my review:]

“Roscoe, playing on the E-flat alto sax, created what he fondly calls sound collages – a spare minimal broach of mathematical reasoning and fiery spirit…. In concert, he moved with confidence along cold floating melodies, eerie… with patience and assurance. His breathing and pacing were masterfully controlled, sparse, dry, raspy, and witty. His piercing saxophone slotted inverse textures that courted perfection….

“The fourth piece of his first set had the presence of a Bach fugue. On an audible stream of air, Roscoe transformed large bursts and running notes into the sweet space of atonal modulation. Mitchell’s instrument belched, boomed, and squeaked, sounding like Morse code. The motif were exciting exposes with unparalleled use of dynamics and pointillistic impressions….

“Roscoe’s inner sense of ecstasy found joyful expression…. Full hand trill runs, devoted concentration all flowered into beautiful lyricism. As notes filled holes while other spaces opened up, the music hung balanced between sound and silence…. His music contained elements of tribal rhythms and the native south, of swing hop and cool jazz, of the cerebral and the gut level of feeling….

“Roscoe’s many-faceted improvisation was set aglow in a radiant light. His extraordinary genius found itself in inspired proportions; the sax crumbled, decimated, disappeared – replaced by sound, pure sound on a musical plane which transcended beyond itself….

“Outside of the small group of critics who have already paid homage to Roscoe Mitchell, history awaits. His genius is sure to be recognized in the future.”