Roscoe Mitchell: Far Side | CD review

Saxophonist Mitchell, a co-founder of that iconic and long-running free-jazz band the Art Ensemble of Chicago, has devoted his later years to a kind of contemporary ensemble music that deploys the sounds free improvisers make without descending into too many cacophonic scrums. This live session, caught at Germany's Burghausen Festival in 2007, features two of the most creative young pianists in today's jazz in Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer, plus regular Mitchell trumpet collaborator Corey Wilkes on blustery brass, with two basses, and two drummers. There are just four long pieces, exploring the leader's fondness for slow-built spontaneous relationships, and for setting up open, sparsely populated soundscapes, in which his players are encouraged to tune their ears to the smallest changes. This can make a Mitchell session an austere experience at times. But improv fans, followers of Taborn and Iyer, and those familiar with Mitchell's methods and fiercely searing sax attack will find that this subtly assembled show gets a lot out of its participants – and mixes the anticipated maelstroms of collective tussling with passages of a kind of rough-surfaced tranquillity, eloquent layering of the qualities of reeds, brass, deep strings and percussion, and some scaldingly imaginative flights from its premier-league pianists. JF