Made in Chicago
Made in Chicago documents the first performance by reedmen Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, bassist Larry Gray, and drummer Jack DeJohnette. Whereas Mitchell’s writing prepares the stage with “Chant,” the bandleader’s “Museum Of Time” lights it on fire. Detours into material by Threadgill and Abrams show a muscular poetry at work, while the spontaneous encore, “Ten Minutes,” gives the word “mastery” a run for its money. One would never know this was an ad hoc group by the way it shakes, rattles, and rolls. Such retrospective avant-gardism is hard to come by.