Art Ensemble of Chicago: Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City: Live at Iridium

Trumpeter Corey Wilkes, a sanguine young Chicagoan with a tenacious spirit, takes up the challenge of filling Lester Bowie's position. Bowie, the most influential avant garde jazz trumpet player since Don Cherry, casts a long shadow over any potential replacement. Wilkes' brash timbre, assertively expressive and filled with youthful vigor, never mimics Bowie's iconic penchant for sonic abstraction. Filling his phrases with terse linear runs and cyclical melodic variations, Wilkes proves his mettle with incendiary performances of ravishing harmonic invention.

Jaribu Shahid is well known for his many years as sideman to multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell in The Sound Ensemble. A dependable accompanist in both inside and outside situations, his inclusion here is both logical and expected. The reinvigorated Ensemble recently enjoyed a week-long residency at New York's Iridium, where this live concert was expertly recorded. Basking in the glow of an enthusiastic crowd, the Ensemble plays in an unrestrained fashion, exploring four decades' worth of tunes that veer from esoteric to primal.

The playlist is evenly split between new and old material, but Mitchell is credited for most of these compositions; three collectively written pieces premiere here for the first time. "The Morning Mist," "On The Mountain" and "Red Sand Green Water" are all free-flowing meditations in the classic AACM tradition. Delicate pointillist accents and pensive, lyrical excursions expand into tumultuous climaxes of blistering group improvisation full of swirling, acerbic horns and churning rhythmic undercurrents.

Delving into the Ensemble's varied back catalog, the group unleashes the rough and tumble "Song For Charles." On the quieter side, "Slow Tenor and Bass" is a somber miniature, while the percussive vamp of "The J Song" is a sublime, mid-tempo ethnic meditation. "Song For My Sister" swings majestically, given a judiciously expanded treatment—in contrast to the brawny funk workout of "Big Red Peaches."

Non-Cognitive Aspects documents the Art Ensemble of Chicago forging ahead, despite the loss of Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors, beginning their fourth decade with the same unflagging commitment as they began their first.