Gittin' to Know Y'all

Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpeter Lester Bowie assembled the Baden-Baden Free Jazz Orchestra for a performance at the Baden-Baden Free Jazz Meeting in 1969. The lineup included saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, pianist Dave Burrell, and drummer Steve McCall, alongside a slew of Europeans: trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, guitarist Terje Rypdal, drummer Tony Oxley, and about a dozen others. The half-hour piece they performed, split across two sides of this LP, builds slowly, drifting in on long tones from the 12 horns and Rypdal’s guitar, with two pianos (Burrell and Leo Cuypers) heard in either side of the stereo field and bassists Barre Phillips and Palle Danielsson droning ominously as three drummers (McCall, Oxley, and Claude Delcloo) summon the thunder. Eventually, it becomes a storm of sound that occasionally settles down to let one instrument or another seize the spotlight, and Bowie at one point offers hoarsely declaimed poetry. This album has been somewhat forgotten over the 50+ years since it was recorded, but it’s a major document of an early summit meeting between American and European improvisers.