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  • The Psyche

    17514-2

    Artist: Revolutionary Ensemble

    Label: Mutable Music

    Leroy Jenkins (violin), Sirone (bass), Jerome Cooper (drums, piano).

    In 1970 the idea of revolution was everywhere - the raging war in VietNam, the desperate antiwar protests that erupted, the ongoing civil rights revolution, and the jazz revolution. In New York City, the center of the jazz world, the free jazz scene - "outside" jazz, underground jazz, the avant garde - was highly active. Inflamed by a decade of innovations by the likes of Coleman, Taylor, Coltrane, Ayler, rugged individualists roamed the lofts and small clubs, seeking catharsis in playing fast, exhaustive energy music. One night at a popular club drummer-bandleader Sunny Murray introduced his versatile bassist, Sirone, to Leroy Jenkins, who was becoming known as a new violinist in town; almost immediately the two discussed playing together. They soon formed a trio with, briefly, drummer Frank Clayton; later in 1970 another newcomer to New York, drummer Jerome Cooper, joined the two string players to complete the Revolutionary Ensemble.

    This group introduced New York to decided musical advances, many pioneered by Chicago's A.A.C.M. musicians. Ex-Chicagoan Jenkins, who played violin, of all unhyeard-of modern jazz instruments, had formed his concept from classical, swing, blues, and modern elements and had been one of the radicals who discovered new concepts of sound, space, and musical relationships in the late 1960s. Cooper had been a somewhat later Chicago explorer, while Sirone's freedom of motion...