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  • The Art Of Improvisation

    17523-2

    Artist: Leroy Jenkins' Driftwood

    Label: Mutable Music

    Min Xiao-Fen, pipa; Denman Maroney, piano; Rich O'Donnell, percussion; Leroy Jenkins, violin. Recorded at the October 8, 2004 Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) concert.

    In groupings from solo to chamber orchestras, Leroy Jenkins has recorded 25 albums and CDs. Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1932, he was already performing on violin at the age of 8 at his local Baptist Church. He studied music in high school and then attended Florida A&M University where he completed his B.S. in music.
    Jenkins returned to Chicago in 1965 and was drawn into the well spring of Chicago's creative music activities. Almost immediately, he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM). Jenkins recalls that this union marked the first time that as a violin player he was truly welcomed into creative music performances. During this time he played and recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, Leo Smith and Anthony Braxton.
    In 1969, Jenkins left for Paris with Braxton and Smith. With the addition of drummer Steve McCall, they formed the Creative Construction Company. Their 1970 performance in New York, joined by Richard Davis on bass and Abrams on piano, gave New York the first taste of the new music that Chicago musicians were creating.

    Jenkins continued to work with the finest creative musicians: Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Alice Coltrane, Mtume, and Cal Massey, to name a few. But it was the work of the collective Revolutionary Ensemble (co-founded w...