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https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/2016/05/muhal-richard-abrams-b-september-19.html

PHOTO: MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS (1930-2017)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/muhal-richard-abrams-mn0000509696/biography

Muhal Richard Abrams

(1930-2017)

Biography by Thom Jurek

Composer, arranger, and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams was largely a self-taught musician who was deeply influenced by the bop innovations of the late Bud Powell. Abrams was a beacon in the jazz community as a co-founder (and first president), in 1965, of Chicago's legendary vanguard music institution, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). While Abrams was well known as a mentor to three generations of younger musicians -- born in 1930, he was a decade older than his closest peer in the AACM -- as a bandleader and professor at the Banff Center, Columbia University, Syracuse University, and the BMI Composers' Workshop, he was not always recognized for his substantial contribution as a player and recording artist. Abrams' first gigs were playing the blues, R&B, and hard bop circuit in Chicago and working as a sideman with everyone from Dexter Gordon and Max Roach to Ruth Brown and Woody Shaw. But Abrams' own recordings revealed his strength as an innovator. His 1967 debut, Levels and Degrees of Light on Chicago's Delmark label, set the course for his own career and that of many of his AACM contemporaries, including Henry Threadgill, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Leo Smith, and Anthony Braxton. Abrams was also a conduit for the tradition. Though his music was noted for its vanguard edginess, he nonetheless bridged everything in his playing from boogie-woogie to bebop to free improv, as evidenced by Sightsong and Rejoicing with the Light, both on the Black Saint label. As a composer, Abrams moved through the classical tradition as well. Novi, his first symphony for orchestra and jazz quartet, has been performed at various festivals, and the Kronos Quartet performed his String Quartet, No. 2. Muhal Richard Abrams died at his home in Manhattan in October 2017; he was 87 years old.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/muhal-richard-abrams/

Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams:

World renowned pianist and composer has been in the forefront of the contemporary music scene for well over forty years. Muhal is a co-founder of The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), founder of The AACM School of Music and President of The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, New York City Chapter. Muhal was the first recipient of the grand international jazz award, "The JazzPar Prize", which was awarded to him in 1990 by the Danish Jazz Center in Copenhagen, Denmark.. In 1999 Muhal was presented a proclamation by Richard M. Daley, Mayor of the City of Chicago, declaring April 11, 1999 as Muhal Richard Abrams Day in Chicago.

Except for a brief period of study at Chicago Musical College and Governors State University in Chicago, Illinois where he studied electronic music, Mr. Abrams is predominately a self-taught musician who, as a result of many years of observation, analysis, and practice as a performing musician, has developed a highly respected command of a variety of musical styles both as a pianist and composer. The versatile Mr. Abrams and members of The AACM are responsible for some of the most original new music approaches of the last three decades.

Some recent compositions of Mr. Abrams are: Transversion I OP. 6 for Symphony Orchestra, “NOVI” For Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Quartet, Variations for Solo Saxophone, Flute, and Chamber Orchestra, commissioned by the City of Chicago for the 1982 New Music America Festival; Quintet for Voice (Soprano), Piano, Harp, Cello, and Violin, commissioned by The Kitchen and performed at Symphony Space in April, 1982; Improvisation Structures I- II-III-IV-V-VI performed in a series of six solo piano concerts for the 1983 New York State New Music Network Tour; TRIO,” a three-part composition for solo piano, performed at the New Music America Festival in 1984 in Hartford, Conn. July, 1984, and hosted by Real Artways; “Odyssey of King” performed by The Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra at Brooklyn's Botanical Garden, February, 1984 and “Celebrate Brooklyn” at the Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn, New York on June 23, 1984; “String Quartet #2” was performed by The Kronos String Quartet on November 22, 1985 at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City; “Piano Duet #1” performed by Ursula Oppens and Frederic Rzewski for Music at the Crossroads on February 11, 1986, and sponsored by The Philip Morris Co. at the Whitney Museum; “Saturation Blue” performed on March 14, 1986, by The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra Chamber Ensemble at Freeport High School, Freeport, NY, Tania Leon, Conductor; “Folk Tales 88'” commissioned by The Brooklyn Philharmonic and performed by The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at Fort Hamilton Base, Brooklyn, NY on July 9, 1988, Tania Leon, Conductor; “Transversion I OP. 6” performed February 22 & 23, 1991 by The Detroit Symphony Orchestra at the Unisys Corporation Classical Roots series in Detroit, Michigan; “What A Man” commissioned for the Black Repertory Ensemble by the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago and the Friends of the Chicago Public Library in honor of the Late Mayor Harold Washington and to commemorate the opening of The Harold Washington Library on October 7, 1991; “The String Quartet III” commissioned by Bang On The Can and performed by The Cassatt String Quartet in May, 1992; "Strings and Things" commissioned by The String Trio of

New York in 1992, “Saxophone Quartet 1” commissioned by The Rova Saxophone Quartet in 1994; “New Horizons” commissioned by New Band in 1995; Duet for Violin and Piano, commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, 1996;

“Impressions 1” commissioned by The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and performed in 1997 by The SEM Ensemble, Petr Kotik conductor.

“Tomorrow’s Song, As Yesterday Sings Today” commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies Director; with the generous support of Francis Goelet; “Baritone Voice And String Quartet” commissioned by Thomas Buckner and performed at Merkin Hall in New york City on February 25, 1999; “2000 Plus The Twelfth Step” commissioned for The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band; Jon Faddis, Music Director, by The Carnegie Hall Corporation. The world premiere was given at Carnegie Hall, New York City on Thursday, March 18 1999.

In addition to teaching privately for the past twenty years or more, Mr. Abrams has taught jazz composition and improvisational classes at: The Banff Center in Banff, Canada, Columbia University in New York City, Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY, The New England Conservatory, Boston Mass., The BMI Composers workshop in New York City, and The Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland.

Musicians Affiliation

Max Roach, Dexter Gordon, Clifford Jordan, Sonny Stitt, Woody Shaw, Anthony Braxton, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Eddie Harris, Von Freeman, and many others.

Current Activities

Recording and touring the United States, Canada, and Europe with his orchestra, sextet, quartet, duo, and as a solo pianist. In addition, composing and scoring large orchestra and chamber works.

https://www.muhalrichardabrams.com/

MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS

https://www.muhalrichardabrams.com/biography.html

2016

NewMusicBox

Muhal Richard Abrams: “All human beings express ideas”

Muhal Richard Abrams in conversation with Frank J. Oteri. Video presentation by Molly Sheridan.

https://vimeo.com/159541801

According to Muhal Richard Abrams, "We can’t separate ourselves from other human beings because we are expressing ideas and all human beings express ideas. And human beings have rhythm and breathing in common."

Read a complete transcript on NewMusicBox here:

newmusicbox.org/articles/muhal-richard-abrams-think-all-focus-one/

VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/159541801

BIOGRAPHY

World-renowned pianist and composer Dr. Muhal Richard Abrams has been at the forefront of the contemporary music scene for over 68 years. Muhal is a co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), founder of the AACM School of Music and president of the AACM New York City Chapter, Inc.

Muhal was the first recipient of the grand international jazz award, "The JazzPar Prize", which was awarded to him in 1990 by the Danish Jazz Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1999 Muhal was presented a proclamation by Richard M. Daley, Mayor of the City of Chicago, declaring April 11, 1999 as "Muhal Richard Abrams Day" in Chicago, Illinois. In 2009 Muhal was selected to be a USA Prudential Fellow by United States Artist. In 2010 Muhal was chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts to be a NEA Jazz Master, and Muhal was also inducted into the Downbeat Magazine "Jazz Hall of Fame". In 2012, Muhal received the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, from Columbia University. Also in 2012, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation presented Dr. Abrams with The BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award at The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. In 2014 Dr. Abrams received the Doris Duke Impact Award. Dr. Abrams was also the recipient of the 2014 Walter Dyett Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Institute of Chicago, an organization in which Dr. Abrams was one of the co-founders. In 2015 Dr. Abrams received a PhD. in Humane Letters, honoris causa from DePaul University and Dr. Abrams also received the 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award.

Except for a brief period of study at Chicago Musical College and Governors State University in University Park, Illinois, where he studied electronic music, Dr. Abrams is predominately a self-taught musician who, as a result of many years of observation, analysis and practice as a performing musician, has developed a highly respected command of a variety of musical styles both as a pianist and composer.

The versatile Dr. Abrams and members of The AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) are responsible for some of the most original new music approaches of the last four decades.

Website Design by

Richarda Alise Abrams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhal_Richard_Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abrams at Moers Festival, 2009

Muhal Richard Abrams (born Richard Lewis Abrams; September 19, 1930 – October 29, 2017) was an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the free jazz medium.^[1] He recorded and toured the United States, Canada and Europe with his orchestra, sextet, quartet, duo and as a solo pianist. His musical affiliations constitute a "who's who" of the jazz world, including Max Roach, Dexter Gordon, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Art Farmer, Sonny Stitt, Anthony Braxton, and The Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Early life

Abrams's mother, Edna,^[2] was born in Memphis.^[3] His father, Milton,^[2] was born in Alabama and moved with his parents to Chicago.^[3] Richard Lewis Abrams was born there, the second of nine children, on September 19, 1930.^[2] His father became a self-employed handyman; his mother was a housewife.^[3]

"Abrams's paternal grandfather was 'what you call a junk man', selling the fruits of neighborhood foraging. Abrams and his brother would pull the cart around the neighborhood, eventually arriving at a junk-yard on State Street, where the items would be sold."^[4] Abrams first attended Forrestville public school in Chicago.^[5] He grew up in a gang area; truancy and fighting meant that he was sent to Moseley School, a reformatory school for boys.^[6] There, in addition to strict discipline, he was taught about black histories.^[6] He later moved on to DuSable High School.^[7]^[8]

Although he was aware of the strong music program there, led by Walter Dyett, Abrams preferred playing sports, so did not participate in Dyett's classes.^[9] Among the future musicians Abrams met at the school were Charles Davis, Richard Davis, John Gilmore, Johnny Griffin, Laurdine Patrick, and Julian Priester.^[9]

As a child, Abrams was interested in the arts – film, painting, sculpture, and music.^[10] He later recounted that, in 1946, he decided to concentrate on the last of these, so left school and started piano lessons with a classically trained church pianist.^[10] He went on to study at the Metropolitan School of Music, which merged with Roosevelt University.^[10] "Supporting his studies in counterpoint, keyboard harmony, theory, and composition with a day job at a downtown printing company, Abrams eventually bought a second-hand piano."^[10] He also dropped out of his music school,^[11] reporting of his studies: "I didn't get too much out of that, because it wasn't what I was hearing in the street".^[7] He then decided to study independently: "I've always had a natural ability to study and analyze things. I used that ability, not even knowing what it was (it was just a feeling) and started to read books."^[7] In Abrams' words:

From there, I acquired a small spinet piano and started to teach myself how to play the instrument and read the notes – or, first of all, what key the music was in. It took time and a lot of sweat. But I analyzed it and before long I was playing with the musicians on the scene. I listened to Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and many others and concentrated on Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson for composition. Later I got scores and studied more extensive things that take place in classical composition and started to practice classical pieces on the piano.^[7]

Later life and career

1950s and 1960s

Abrams started out "playing all kinds of gigs - blues, jazz, stage shows, rhythm and blues, and church socials."^[11] His musical abilities earned him jobs working with "everyone from Dexter Gordon and Max Roach to Ruth Brown and Woody Shaw."^[12]

In the mid-1950s, Abrams was becoming better known as both a pianist and a composer.^[13] A strong influence on his direction as a pianist at that time was King Fleming, for whom Abrams also composed and arranged.^[13] Another local man, William E. Jackson, helped Abrams develop his arranging and orchestration skills.^[13] Abrams co-founded a quintet named the MJT+3, and recorded with them in 1957, resulting in Daddy-O Presents MJT+3, which contained several of his compositions.^[14] Abrams also became more involved in investigating the "occult arts" around 1959 or 1960, and joined the Rosicrucians.^[15]

Abrams's son, Richard Jr., was at high school in the early 1960s.^[16]

Still eager for self-development, Abrams was introduced to, and then acquired, books on musical composition written by Joseph Schillinger.^[14] In the books, Abrams found topics that resonated, including the incorporation of spirituality into music.^[17] At a more practical level, the pianist reported that "The Schillinger stuff taught me to break things back down into raw material – where it came from – and then, on to the whole idea of a personal or individual approach to composition."^[18]

Abrams was able to apply his learning after organising young musicians in the area into an ensemble that rehearsed at the C&C Lounge in Chicago from 1961.^[19] This became known as the Experimental Band, and "became a forum for Abrams to test his new, Schillinger-influenced compositional palette."^[20]

Around 1963, Abrams was part of a trio with bassist Donald Rafael Garrett and drummer Steve McCall.^[21] The pianist lived with his wife, Peggy, in a small basement apartment on South Evans Avenue.^[22]^[2] It was the location for nightly gatherings of musicians from the area, who "would explore musical, cultural, political, social, and spiritual ideas."^[22] Abrams found that he was in, and wanted to be in, the position that Fleming and Jackson had been with him – helping younger and less experienced musicians to develop.^[23] The Experimental Band, led by Abrams, encouraged cooperation, knowledge exchange, and the playing of its members' compositions.^[23] In interviews in later years, Abrams tended to downplay his influence on other, younger musicians.^[24] They, however, remembered things differently: "Everybody was following him around like little puppies", said saxophonist Gene Dinwiddie, while Roscoe Mitchell summarized that "He would always be turning people on to books, and talking about scores. Maybe he just doesn't realize the effect that he had on people's lives."^[24]

The Experimental Band had very few, if any, public performances.^[25] Although some rehearsal tapes were made, these were for study purposes and were routinely recorded over.^[26]

In 1965, four men – Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, composer Phil Cohran, and drummer Steve McCall – agreed to form a new organization of musicians.^[27] They invited mostly other African Americans to the first meeting, on May 8, at which they discussed the principles of the nascent organization, the primary one being that it would be for original, creative music.^[28] At the second meeting, Abrams was elected president.^[29] Later in the month, an official name was chosen – the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).^[30] When the AACM started a school in 1967, Abrams led the classes in composition.^[31]

Further exposure with the AACM helped Abrams get a recording contract with Delmark Records.^[32] His first album for them, Levels and Degrees of Light, was recorded in 1967,^[33] and featured the recording debuts of saxophonist Anthony Braxton, violinist Leroy Jenkins, and bassist Leonard Jones.^[34]

Rather than playing in smoky night clubs, AACM members often rented out theaters and lofts where they could perform for attentive and open-minded audiences.^[35]

"Abrams took the name Muhal in 1967. Interviewed by the French magazine Jazz in 1973, he said that the word, its origin unclear, means 'number one'."^[2]

Abrams also played with saxophonists Eddie Harris, Gordon, and other more bop-oriented musicians during this era.^[36]

1970s and 1980s, Loft jazz era

In the 1970s, Abrams composed for symphony orchestras, string quartets, solo piano, voice, and big bands in addition to making a series of larger ensemble recordings that included harp and accordion.^[37] In the early 1970s, his big band had a weekly concert at the Transitions East performance space in Chicago.^[38] Abrams formed a sextet from other AACM members in 1972.^[39] The other musicians were Reggie Willis on bass, Steve McCall on drums, and Kalaparusha Difda, Wallace McMillan, and Henry Threadgill on various woodwind and saxophone instruments.^[39] With this band, Abrams had his first international concerts, playing the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1973.^[39] He had a successful solo concert at the Montreaux Jazz Festival the following year, as well as touring Europe with the Art Ensemble of Chicago.^[40]

During this time, Abrams recorded extensively under his own name (frequently on the Black Saint label), and as a sideman for musicians such as Marion Brown (Sweet Earth Flying, 1974), Anthony Braxton (Duets 1976, 1976), Roscoe Mitchell (Roscoe Mitchell Quartet, 1976), and Chico Freeman (Morning Prayer, 1976, and Chico, 1977). He served as composer and wrote the theme for the 1970 drama series Bird of the Iron Feather, the first all-Black television soap opera.^[41]

Abrams left Chicago for New York in 1976.^[42] After initially living with other musicians, he moved his family there the following year.^[43] The move of city was partly to be at the centre of musical activity, and partly for financial reasons.^[44] Initially, there were very few concerts, but he garnered press attention and was able to record annually with Black Saint.^[43] Experience in writing extended compositions also helped Abrams and other AACM musicians in New York: "The compositions themselves showed that they were outside of the mainstream of jazz, and notice was taken by classical people. You can get access to these [classical music] ensembles, and it started to happen."^[45]

In the late 1970s, Abrams was also part of the jazz peer-review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts.^[46] "As a Chicagoan who was identified with experimental music, yet who was respected by the ancien regime, Abrams was uniquely positioned to take a leading role in guiding the broad changes in both the demographics and the aesthetic directions of the panels that gradually took place."^[46]

His 1-OQA+19 "juxtaposed complex written passages with propulsive rhythms"; and Lifea Blinec "presented multi-instrumentalism, text-sound, and electronic textures."^[47]

He was involved in the local Loft Jazz scene in New York.^[48] In 1982, he presented an orchestral work at that year's New Music America festival in Chicago.^[49] He also helped set up the New York Chapter of the AACM, which first presented concerts in the city in 1982.^[50]

1990–2017

In 1990 Abrams won the Jazzpar Prize, an annual Danish prize within jazz. Abrams received a 1997 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 2005, the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the AACM, some of Abrams's solo and ensemble pieces were presented by the organization in New York.^[51] In May 2009 the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Abrams would be one of the recipients of the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters Award.^[52] In June 2010, Abrams was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by New York City's premier jazz festival, known as the Vision Festival.^[53] Abrams died at his home in Manhattan, at the age of 87.^[2] His daughter, Richarda, became an actress and singer.^[54]

Influence

He is a widely influential artist, having played sides for many musicians early in his career, releasing important recordings as a leader, and writing classical works such as his "String Quartet No. 2", which was performed by the Kronos Quartet, on November 22, 1985, at the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York.^[55]

As sideman

With Art Ensemble of Chicago

Fanfare for the Warriors (Atlantic, 1974)
Kabalaba (AECO, 1978)

With Barry Altschul

You Can't Name Your Own Tune (1977)

With Hamiet Bluiett

Saying Something for All (1998)

With Anthony Braxton

Three Compositions of New Jazz (Delmark, 1968)
Creative Orchestra Music 1976 (Arista, 1976)
Duets 1976 (Arista, 1976)
Quintet (Basel) 1977 (hatOLOGY, 1977 [2000])
Live At The Rainbow Gallery '79 (Hi Hat, 2016)

With Marion Brown

Sweet Earth Flying (Impulse!, 1974)

With Creative Construction Company

Creative Construction Company (Muse, 1970 [1975])
Creative Construction Company Vol. II (Muse, 1970 [1976])

With Jack DeJohnette

Made in Chicago (ECM, 2013 [2015]) with Larry Gray, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill

With Kenny Dorham

Kenny Dorham Sextet (1970)

With Marty Ehrlich

Emergency Peace (1990)

With Chico Freeman

Morning Prayer (1976)
Chico (1977)
Freeman & Freeman (1981)

With Barry Harris

Interpretations Of Monk Vol. 1 (Koch Jazz, 1997) with Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Charlie Rouse, Roswell Rudd, Richard Davis, Ben Riley, Ed Blackwell

With Eddie Harris

Instant Death (Atlantic, 1971)
Eddie Harris Sings the Blues (Atlantic, 1972)
Excursions (Atlantic, 1973)
That Is Why You're Overweight (Atlantic, 1975)

With Joseph Jarman

As If It Were the Seasons (1968)

With Leroy Jenkins

Lifelong Ambitions (Black Saint, 1977)

With Clifford Jordan

Inward Fire (Muse, 1978)

With Robin Kenyatta

Beggars and Stealers (1977)

With George E. Lewis

Shadowgraph (1978, Black Saint)

With Roscoe Mitchell

Nonaah (1967)
Roscoe Mitchell Quartet (1975)
Duets and Solos (1990)
Live At "A Space" 1975 (Delmark, 2013 Discogs AllMusic)

With Walter Perkins MJT+3

Daddy-O Presents MJT+3 (1957)

With Woody Shaw

The Iron Men with Anthony Braxton (Muse, 1977 [1980])

With Sonny Stitt

Soul Girl (Paula Records, 1973)

Gallery

Abrams at Moers Festival, 2009

Bibliography

Lewis, George E. (2008). A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. University of Chicago Press.

External links

Muhal Richard Abrams Website
Muhal Richard Abrams at AllMusic
Muhal Richard Abrams discography at Discogs
Muhal Richard Abrams at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

https://www.muhalrichardabrams.com/discography.html

DISCOGRAPHY

Muhal Richard Abrams SPECTRUM with Roscoe Mitchell, Mutable Records 17536-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

SOUNDDANCE with George Lewis and Fred Anderson, PI Recordings PI 37
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

VISION TOWARDS ESSENCE,PI Recordings PI 23
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

STREAMING with Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell,PI Recordings – PI 22
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams THE VISIBILTY OF THOUGHT,Mutable Records – 17502-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams THE OPEN AIR MEETING with Marty Ehrlich,New World Records - 80512-2

Muhal Richard Abrams SONG FOR ALL,Black Saint Records - 120161-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams THINK ALL, FOCUS ONE,Black Saint Records - 120141-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams ONE LINE TWO VIEWS,New World Records - 80469-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

DUETS AND SOLOS with Roscoe Mitchell and Muhal Richard Abrams,Black Saint Records - 120133-2

Muhal Richard Abrams FAMILYTALK,Black Saint Records - 120132-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

BLU BLU BLU,Black Saint Records - 120117-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

The Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra THE HEARINGA SUITE,Black Saint Records - BSR 120103-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

UMO PLAYS THE MUSIC OF MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS, UMO Record Co., UMO CD 101

MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS & THE DANISH RADIO BIG BAND,
JAZZPAR WINNERS 1990-2004, Copenhagen, Denmark

Muhal Richard Abrams COLORS IN THIRTY-THIRD,Black Saint Records - BSR 120091-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams ROOTS OF BLUE, Featuring Cecil McBee,RPR Records RPR 1001
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

The Muhal Richard Abrams Octet VIEW FROM WITHIN,Black Saint Records - BSR 120081-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

The Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra REJOICING WITH THE LIGHT,Black Saint Records - BSR 120071-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams DUET, Featuring Amina Claudine Myers,Black Saint Records - BSR 120051-2

Muhal Richard Abrams BLUES FOREVER,Black Saint Records - BSR 120061-2
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams SPIHUMONESTY,Black Saint Records - BSR 120032-2
Cover Design: Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams MAMA AND DADDY,Black Saint Records - BSR 120041-2

Muhal Richard Abrams SPIRAL LIVE AT MONTREUX 1978,Arista Novus AN 3007

Muhal Richard Abrams LIFEA BLINEC,Arista Novus AN 3000

Muhal Richard Abrams 1-OQA+19,Black Saint Records - BSR 120017-2

Muhal Richard Abrams SIGHT SONG featuring Malachi Favors,Black Saint Records - BSR 120003-2

Muhal Richard Abrams AFRISONG,India Navigation ‎– IN 1058

Muhal Richard Abrams THINGS TO COME FROM THOSE NOW GONE,Delmark Records - DE-430

Muhal Richard Abrams YOUNG AT HEART WISE IN TIME,Delmark Records - DE-423

Muhal Richard Abrams LEVELS AND DEGREES OF LIGHT,Delmark Records - DD-413
Cover Art: Muhal Richard Abrams

MJT+3 ‎– DADDY-O PRESENTS MJT + 3,Argo Records ‎– LP-621

Website Design by

Richarda Alise Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams: “I’ve always had a kind of feeling that I could teach myself”

More: March 18, 2016

https://vimeo.com/159541804

Tags: #Third Stream music, #polystylism, #improvisation, #free jazz, #AACM

NewMusicBox

Muhal Richard Abrams in conversation with Frank J. Oteri. Video presentation by Molly Sheridan.

"I came to a point where I wanted to be more technically enlightened about composing, so I started to study on my own," says Muhal Richard Abrams. "I didn’t need the teacher. No disrespect to the teachers, it’s just my kind of feeling. I’ve always had a kind of feeling that I could teach myself if I could find the information somewhere because I had the patience to spend the time to try and learn it no matter how difficult the learning curve."

Read a complete transcript on NewMusicBox:

newmusicbox.org/articles/muhal-richard-abrams-think-all-focus-one/

Interview by Frank J. Oteri

NewMusicBox

Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.

April 1, 2016

Muhal Richard Abrams: Think All, Focus One

Muhal Richard Abrams

A conversation at New Music USA
January 15, 2016—2:00 p.m.

Video presentations and photography by Molly Sheridan
Transcribed by Julia Lu

Although very early on in our conversation Muhal Richard Abrams adamantly denied ever being anyone’s teacher, I learned more during the hour I spent talking to him than I had in most of my music classes. And yet, I feel like it’s almost impossible to adequately communicate what it is exactly that I learned. At the risk of sounding like a Zen koan, that is precisely what I learned.

Let me attempt to explain. To Abrams, there are no boundaries. Any label we put on something—fixed composition vs. spontaneous improvisation, group vs. individual, even old music vs. new music—is artificial and limits possibilities. From his vantage point, all dualities are contained within each other. All improvisations are compositions and all compositions begin as improvisations. A solo performance can inhabit multiple personalities and an orchestra can be the embodiment of a pluralistic individualism. As for old and new, “None of it’s real because the situation that is characterized as old often times is revisited and found to be useful for some future purpose. And something new can be visited and found that is reminiscent of something that’s old.”

Though an iconic figure in the history of jazz, the 85-year-old composer/pianist also eschews the word jazz since it only describes certain aspects of his music.

“The word jazz can be confusing,” Abrams points out. “But if we say music, it could be anywhere. It’s just music. The next question, what type of music? Okay. No type of music. Just sound.”

And indeed over the past seven decades, Abrams has created music that some listeners might categorize as blues, Latin, classical, and all kinds of jazz from swing to bop to free. He’s even experimented with electronic music.

“That came about because sound can be produced in any way that you feel that you’d like to produce sound,” Abrams explains. “It’s just electronic sound. … But sound, that’s the thing, because before music can be called music, it has to be harnessed and structured from sound. Music is a by-product of sound. Sound is the thing. Sound.”

While the music he has created is extremely individualistic, it is also the by-product of his humility and deep sense of community. I titled this feature “Think All, Focus One,” which is the name of one of his most fascinating explorations involving electronics, the closing track of an album released 21 years ago on the Black Saint label. It’s as succinct and definitive a summation I can conceive of for a creator whose life’s work embraces and reconciles such a broad range of aesthetics.

This Spotify playlist containing over seven hours of music by Muhal Richard Abrams merely scratches the surface of his immerse and highly varied discography.

Frank J. Oteri: There’s a beautiful quote by you at the end of your liner notes for a record that came out in 1987 called Colors in Thirty-Third which I think sums up your belief system about music: “May the past, present, and future be ever before us as one.”

Muhal Richard Abrams: Well, I think I was trying to be in any time. I was thinking infinitely, if that’s possible. And I believe it is. Whatever I said could be in any time because it applied to what I feel is your essence, your inner focus.

Black Saint released Muhal Richard Abrams’s Colors in Thirty-Third in 1987

FJO: So many people describe music as either being “old music” or “new music.” But sometimes the lines can be very blurry. For example, in jazz, changes in style happened very rapidly; the transition from swing to bop and then cool and free all happened in a relatively brief period of time. Your music incorporates elements from all of these styles. For you, it’s all part of the language. And your music tells us that we can do it all.

MRA: Well, it’s partly human language. We can’t separate ourselves from other human beings because we are expressing ideas and all human beings express ideas. I may express it through a musical continuum and a poet may it express through literary continuums, but it’s basically the same thing because when we confront the whole idea of movement or rhythm, all these different sections or areas have rhythm in common, you know. And human beings have rhythm and breathing in common.

So, in reference to people saying this is old or this is new, if it’s old for you, then it’s old for you. If it’s new for you, it’s new for you. But those are just terms that are useful to describe the particular mood that that person or those people are feeling. None of it’s real because the situation that is characterized as old often times is revisited and found to be useful for some future purpose. And something new can be visited and found that is reminiscent of something that’s old. Take women’s fashion or men’s fashion. We see it every day. You know what I mean? And we certainly see it in music. Why is it that Beethoven and Bach are current and present today and valid today? Why is Duke Ellington still extremely important? When we view him as an individual creator, there’s a lot to learn. We’re observing an individual’s output, and I think the fact that we are all individuals for some reason or other is the basis of real education.

FJO: When you started to answer my previous question you said that you express things in music that other people express in poetry. Before we began taping our conversation we were talking about visual art, which is another avenue for personal expression. What caused music to be the thing that you expressed yourself in throughout your life? How did you come to music?

MRA: I expressed myself in the visual arts first, though certainly not long enough in terms of a practice. I was attracted to all of it at the same time. But I applied myself to the visual arts and then music took over. That’s it. It just took over.

FJO: Was there any kind of crystallizing moment of hearing something?

MRA: I think I started remembering something. I think that’s what it was. In the visual arts also, I was remembering something because it didn’t seem like I had to learn it. It certainly required practice, of course. Everything requires practice because if you don’t practice, then you’re kidding yourself, in terms of developing and receiving really great ideas. I started remembering things and my musical memory started to dominate. It’s the best way I can explain it. It just started to dominate, so I just put the bulk of the practice in music.

FJO: Was there a lot of music in your household when you were growing up?

One of the most unusual entries in the Muhal Richard Abrams discography is his appearance as a sideman for Eddie Harris’s funky 1972 Atlantic album Instant Death.

MRA: I grew up in Chicago, and there was music all around. It was a blues center. I listened to all kinds of that. I grew up around Muddy Waters and all those guys. And there were a lot of great jazz musicians. And a lot of those great jazz musicians played classical music. So I was impressed with all of it. Then I got a chance to listen to regular so-called classical music. I was enjoying and appreciating that, and having the desire to learn how to compose all sorts of music because my training was like a street improviser. I learned to play standard tunes and what not like that. But I always held two situations at the same time: making up things and being with things that were made already. It all was happening at the same time.

FJO: One of the things that I find so fascinating about your development is that playing the piano and composing music are both things that you pretty much did without a teacher.

MRA: Oh yeah.

FJO: This is pretty extraordinary. Of course, there have been others who have done that, but there aren’t too many of them, especially not many who have taken it to the level that you have. But what’s ironic about that is that you have been an important mentor to so many other people, both your contemporaries and musicians from younger generations, yet you yourself had no such mentor.

MRA: I can certainly identify some people that I associated with that were older than I was around Chicago. I certainly learned a lot from them. But I don’t claim to be a teacher. I never have claimed to be a teacher. If someone claims that they’ve learned something from being close or around me or associated with me, that’s fine. Those kinds of things happen through association, but mentor or teacher? If people want to apply those terms, fine. But I don’t think of myself in that way. I love sharing and collaborating with people, young or old. There’s something to learn from each person’s individualism, and if I’m associating with you, then your individualism can tell me something that I don’t know anything about. And my individualism can possibly do the same for you, because we all, as individuals, have something that no one else has. As I tried to state earlier, I think that’s the basis of the real human education.

FJO: Well, one of the things that’s so transformative about small group improvisatory music—call it jazz or whatever you want to call it—in its history in America is that it is such a human music because it is about people spontaneously creating together and reacting to each other. So you can hear someone’s individuality, and it leads you down a certain path, and then they hear what you did, and it leads them down a certain path, and it’s this wonderful, fluid conversation between individuals.

MRA: We have used the word jazz, but any type of description of music, especially the word jazz, can be confusing because, like we spoke of earlier, some people say they like the old or that this is new and the word jazz has stuck with a lot of people as a certain type of activity, so it can’t describe anything past that for those people. But if we say music, it could be anywhere. It’s just music. The next question, what type of music? Okay. No type of music. Just sound. You know, because that’s what it is. Sound. Before it’s even organized into any kind of continuum that we would call music, it’s just sound. As we speak here, I certainly feel that every serious practiced output that has come about since the beginning of time, is good—and valid. A style name limits the scope or the focus and that turns out to be unfair to quite a number of people.

FJO: Jazz has certain associations for people and so does classical. It was interesting to hear you say “so-called classical.”

In 1981, Muhal Richard Abrams joined forces with Amina Claudine Myers for an album of duets for two pianos that explores a wide range of musical styles.

MRA: It’s the same. You’re putting a restriction on a vast area of activity. And, by the way, you alluded to the fact that one could learn from the other. Classical music is the same thing. It’s written composition, of course, but the great composers did a lot of improvising, too. All of them. When you play their music, you can tell. It’s not just mechanical. Rachmaninoff sat down and played ideas at pianos. I’m sure he did that. Then he said, “Well, I’ll make this a piece.” Certainly Chopin must have done that. But they were well-trained musicians, so they knew how to handle the material of harmony, rhythm, and melody, because you hear all those things. It’s just too human in its feeling and its activity to be strictly mechanical. As a composer, if you give me a score pad I could just sit right now—I don’t need to have a piano or anything—and I can just write; I don’t have to know what it sounds like. I know how to structure it. That’s one way. If I sit down at the piano and start playing and say, “Yeah, I like this. I’ll write this down.” That’ll sound a little different. So I’m sure in their case, they improvised a lot of things. But it’s quite different from a person that has had the experience of improvising as a focus; theirs was compositional as a focus.

FJO: So to take an improvisation and turn it into a composition, the lines can often be very fluid and very blurry, as they ought to be. And I think they always were, as you’ve said. But what are things that make something that was spontaneously conceptualized in the moment into something that could theoretically be something that you’d want to repeat and do the same way other times, again and again? What gives it that essence of compositionality? How does it go from being an improvisation to being a composition?

Muhal Richard Abrams’s 1975 album Afrisong is a collection of seven of his solo piano improvisations.

MRA: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think what I’ll say is probably pretty similar in each case. Some things you want to keep for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is that you learned something from doing this. You were enlightened by it. So you want to keep it because it might have constituted an area where you solved something that you might have been having questions about. Let me try this. Let me see what this is like. Oh, I think I’ll write it down. Sure.

FJO: So when did that first start happening for you?

MRA: It always happened.

FJO: But you said that when you first started making music, you were improvising.

MRA: But I was doing that too, though.

FJO: So you were writing stuff down? How did you come to learn music notation?

MRA: Well, I came to a point where I wanted to be more technically enlightened about composing, so I started to study on my own. I remember they had these harmony books. They’re teaching people harmony out of a book. I’ll just go buy the books, and I’ll read the books. And so I just see what it is. I didn’t need the teacher. No disrespect to the teachers, it’s just my kind of feeling. I’ve always had a kind of feeling that I could teach myself if I could find the information somewhere because I had the patience to spend the time to try and learn it no matter how difficult the learning curve.

FJO: But there’s also another kind of learning that happens from working relationships. For many musicians, working as a sideman in someone’s group has been an analogous experience to being that person’s student. And there were all these great musicians you played with when they came to Chicago—like Max Roach and Dexter Gordon. This had to have been a learning process for you.

MRA: Oh yeah, on the stage—listen, that was it! You didn’t go up on the stage unless you could really complement the scene.

FJO: So how did those opportunities come about? How did Max Roach learn about you?

MRA: Mostly through Joe Segal, the person who had a venue called the Jazz Showcase. He had it at different clubs and things, but he really started with having jam sessions at Roosevelt University, so we would all participate in jam sessions. Then he started to bring in national and international entertainment and would hire us as sidemen for the people that were coming. That’s how that came about.

FJO: You attended Roosevelt briefly.

MRA: Very briefly. I was searching for a learning path. However, I found that I didn’t really need that either.

FJO: Well, there’s a quote from you I came across where you said you wanted to go there to learn about the music, but what they were telling you about the music wasn’t the same as what you were experiencing.

MRA: It was very basic, and I was performing more advanced type things than they were. But let me be fair to them. You know, if teachers are going to teach, they start with the basics. I don’t blame them for not having different information than I had from actual playing in the street. But, like I said, what I did decide is that the same literature that they had there to teach me, I could just get the literature and teach myself. That way, the pace by which I would learn the literature could be a pace that I would set. It would take me six months to learn that a triad has a positive and a negative, but you could learn that in two days.

FJO: I wish there was some recorded documentation of your performances with Max Roach.

MRA: No, we didn’t record. I performed with him, and it was great. That was some education. That was like a Ph.D.

FJO: And Dexter Gordon?

MRA: Same. And Sonny Stitt.

FJO: I’m also intrigued that you worked with a really great singer who’s not as well remembered now as she should be—Ruth Brown.

MRA: Yeah. Believe it. And Percy Mayfield. You remember Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love”?

FJO: What do you feel you got from working with Ruth Brown?

MRA: Her feeling was so great. It was a challenge to present the right complement every night. Just basic things. But my experience in Chicago around blues and different forms like that came in handy. I was ready to do it.

FJO: One thing that I hear, and I was wondering if you will agree with me or not, is I find your piano playing so melodically rich; the melodies just soar. It almost sounds like singing at times. Some pianists are really rhythmic, or percussive, or really big on harmonies, but I feel that your pianism is a very melodically flowing pianism.

MRA: Yeah, I guess it is. I don’t know. I feel a lot of worlds all at the same time and respect for a lot of worlds, even the percussive world sometimes. I do that, too. Actually, I think what it is for me is I’m composing. I think it’s basically that. I’m composing. And for me, there are two ways of composing: writing it on a paper and improvising. So when I’m playing the piano, it’s improvised composing or composed improvising. The memory of what you’ve been and what you are and whatever you will be comes out.

FJO: None of what you did with Max Roach, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Percy Mayfield, and Ruth Brown got recorded. But you did record with a group called Modern Jazz Two + Three.

MRA: Oh yeah. It was the first recording I ever made.

FJO: I’ve been trying to track down that record for a very long time, but somebody posted one of the tracks on YouTube—a composition of yours called “Temporarily Out of Order.”

MRA: George Coleman reminded me of that piece a couple years back. He used to play it. He sang it. I’m surprised that he remembered it.

The first recording on which Muhal Richard Abrams appears is the 1957 Argo album Daddy-O Presents MJT+3. It was briefly re-issued on CD in Japan in 2002.

FJO: It’s got a great melody and some interesting chord progressions, but what strikes me about it is how different it is from what you started doing very soon afterwards with the Experimental Band. I don’t know the whole album, but judging from that one track, wonderful though it is, it is not experimental music. So what led you to go from straight-ahead type playing to wanting to really be open to the full range?

MRA: I was always that way. It’s just that I came to a point where I needed to express the more open type approach. You know, you evolve. So I came to that point and, because I was seeing it all the time through writing original pieces, I just decided to open it up. There were a couple of musicians around Chicago who agreed with that. And we just started opening things up.

FJO: But what’s interesting about what happened in Chicago with you and the other musicians there is that it was very different than similar developments with free music in New York and Los Angeles at the time. While you were opening things up, as you say, you remained mindful about earlier history and also about contemporaneous popular music. It was never experimental for the sake of being experimental. It was really about just having this open view, as we’ve been saying before, of being mindful of the past, the present, and the future all at the same time rather just making music for the future and forgetting about the past.

MRA: Well, I don’t even think that’s possible. People could fancy themselves doing what you just said, but I think basically people were trying to be composer-improvisers and the main generator was the individualism of each person. That is very important because I believe that individualism resulted in a scene with quite a few very strong individuals, like those that came out of the AACM. They were very strong individuals because they were encouraged and presented with a situation that asked them to present their individualism in concert. So there was a constant challenge to meet those challenges.

On Muhal Richard Abrams’s 1985 Black Saint album View from Within, styles range from straight-ahead hard bop to free jazz, Latin, Chicago blues, and even contemporary classical music.

FJO: Since the past, present, and future are all a continuum, I’m going to jump decades ahead and then we’ll jump back. In the ‘80s you released a record with a very interesting title—View from Within. There’s an incredibly wide range of music on there. One track is Latin music. Another one is a full-on Chicago blues.

MRA: That’s right.

FJO: There’s also material on there that sounds like classical music, as well as stuff that sounds like straight-ahead jazz. But what’s interesting is that you describe all this as a view from within as opposed to the view from outside.

MRA: I’ve kept a better balance by respecting other things. Somehow it balances me to do that. Learning from another individual’s information—that’s extremely important.

FJO: Now in terms of balancing, to bring it back to the 1960s, your second LP—Young at Heart/Wise in Time—is like two completely different records. You reminded me of it when you were saying that sometimes you also get all rhythmic and percussive. There are sections on the ensemble side, Young at Heart, that are throbbing and really intense, especially in the interplay between you and the percussionist, Thurman Barker. But the other side, Wise in Time, is a beautiful, lush, at times almost Rachmaninoff-esque piano solo.

Muhal Richard Abrams’s 1969 Delmark album Young at Heart / Wise in Time is ideally suited to the LP format since it consists of two very different side-long tracks: a composition for ensemble and a sprawling solo piano improvisation.

MRA: Well, listening to people like Art Tatum, and also Rachmaninoff, it was sitting down getting a feeling of how the piano sounds as a complement to all these people. That’s all it was: Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Art Tatum, Monk. Just sitting down and being musical in that way, to explore how the piano can sound. I think that’s probably what happened in that instance.

FJO: It’s a perfect listening experience on an LP because you have the two sides, whereas on a CD or an online stream you don’t get that same sense of duality.

MRA: It was limited, but yet not.

FJO: Now, in terms of the composition-improvisation divide, how much was worked out in advance and how much was completely spontaneous.

MRA: The piano solos were improvised. Period.

FJO: Completely improvised?

MRA: Yes, that’s what I’m saying—just sitting down and respecting the fact that it’s important to make an effort to be musical and to explore, as best you can, how the piano can sound. So that’s a compliment to Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Chopin, Monk, Duke, and also one of my first influences on piano, King Fleming. I just mentioned him because he needs to be mentioned. He was the first pianist I heard who was a jazz pianist and was classically trained. The way he played the piano, he was aware of the piano sounding in a combination of manners—jazz and classical, all at the same time. He listened to a lot of people who were like that: Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum. But I think King Fleming’s influence as to how a pianist should sound hit me first and early, because he was the first pianist that I’d gotten close to who could play like that. And he had a large band, and the arranger who orchestrated for that was a trumpet player, Will Jackson. I need to mention him, too. I learned a great deal from both of these gentlemen. I learned performing in a jazz band from King Fleming and writing for a jazz band from Will Jackson. They’re both deceased now, but I think that other people should know about them.

FJO: Curiously, on your first recording date as a leader, in addition to playing piano, you also played clarinet.

On Muhal Richard Abrams’s recording debut as a leader, the 1967 Delmark album Levels and Degrees of Light he plays clarinet in addition to playing piano.

MRA: Well, I just feel musical with anything that I would apply myself to. I wanted to play the clarinet, so I just picked up clarinet and respected the fact—I practiced clarinet. I certainly didn’t stay with it as long as I could have, but I stayed with it long enough to do what I needed to do in terms of when I did perform with it.

FJO: And I imagine that it gave you other ideas that you might not have gotten on the piano, because of the different physical relationship it requires, producing sound with your breath.

MRA: It’s a different feeling because it’s a different mechanical manipulation. Sure.

FJO: This multi-instrumentalism is a hallmark of AACM members. In terms of the beginnings of the AACM, you were its founder as well as its first president. You were the person who brought these people together. But notions of hierarchy seem antithetical to you, as well as to aesthetics of the AACM overall; so how did that work?

MRA: There was no hierarchy. We all agreed to agree; sometimes we agreed not to agree. But we certainly agreed to contribute to each other’s efforts to express one’s individualism. And that was the basis of it.

FJO: So how did that whole thing come about?

MRA: Well, I had organized a band called Experimental Band, which was a precursor of the AACM. I needed a place to try out some of the newly learned things that I was educating myself about in terms of music through my studies. I needed a place to express those things. They were more open things. They weren’t things that you’d play in jazz clubs. So I organized what I called the Experimental Band. The musicians could come and experiment with composition and improvisation. We were of like minds. And so from there we came to a point where I collaborated with three other musicians to create a formal association based on the same idea. That’s how the AACM came about.

FJO: It began from a group, but it’s not a performing group per se. It’s sort of a composer collective, but it operates in a different way than most composer collectives. It came from this idea of not playing in clubs and finding alternative venues for this kind of music, but it’s not a venue in and of itself.

MRA: We presented our own concerts. We also created the venue for producing the music or, rather, for presenting the music. We created a venue through just renting a space and presenting the concerts. In other words, it was a total effort. We weren’t looking for a place to perform the music. We created a place to perform the music. And so it was all one.

FJO: There are two things that could be strong motivators for doing this. One is what you had said about making music that wouldn’t work in a club. Or maybe it was music that the club wouldn’t want necessarily because it didn’t fit with the definition of music the people at the club were interested in presenting or that they felt the audience expected from that club. But there’s also another motivator which is about creating a space for the kind of listening that is most appropriate for this music. To really be able to focus on it requires a different kind of space than a club.

MRA: Well, no. Not really. Let me say this. It could have been played in clubs. In fact, we did. We were in residence every Monday night at a club. We played the way we played, and the place stayed packed with people who wanted to hear what we were doing. So it could be played in clubs. It was just that it wasn’t regular gig music. People come to hear standard things. But certainly we played in several clubs and the night we played was the night that people would come to hear what we would do. So it could be played anywhere. In Chicago, it was like that. It could be played anywhere in the city.

FJO: The reason I wanted to talk about it now is because the world 50 years ago is quite different from the world today in terms of venues. Nowadays, people who doing the most experimental kinds of things want to go back and play in clubs and suddenly clubs have become an even more tolerant space; whereas a half century ago there were more limits on what you could do. I think the notion of what is possible in a club now is very different.

MRA: Certainly you go to clubs here in New York now and you might hear anything because it’s wide open to individualism. I think that is the real factor that brought this type of situation to the fore, because individualism is not something that’s strange. You know what I mean? People today expect to hear an individual doing an individual type of presentation.

FJO: I’m also curious about this in terms of recording and how most people experience music. We didn’t really talk about listeners so much in this, like the ideal listening experience for somebody hearing what you or what other people associated with the AACM do. I don’t expect you to speak for the others, but to speak for yourself. What is an ideal listener in terms of focus on the music? Should the person be paying full attention? Could the music just be in the background? So many people nowadays walk around wearing headphones and listening to music as they’re going through their daily routines. Is that an okay way to experience this music versus being completely focused on it and having it speak to you— and have only it, ideally, speak to you?

Another provocatively titled Muhal Richard Abrams recording is the 1995 New World album One Line, Two Views which once again demonstrates Abrams’s penchant for reconciling seemingly opposing aesthetics.

MRA: Well, let me ask a question. How many different ways can a person decide to concentrate? I think that question asks many other questions. If a person is concentrating and seriously listening, it could be through earphones walking down the street. I wouldn’t even attempt to try to say what would be the ideal situation or where a person should listen to music. I think they make that choice. But the fact that there are people who seriously want to listen to certain kinds of music—well, they’ll do it anywhere, even through earphones. You know what I mean? They’ll do it anywhere, if that is convenient for them, and they’ll just do it whenever they find a convenient time to do it. I think that’s the answer, because people are listening to all sorts of things and I think a lot of them are quite eclectic, too. I mean, they’re listening to all kinds of stuff.

FJO: Well, if they listen to you, they’ll be hearing everything.

MRA: [laughs] I don’t know about that.

FJO: To bring it back to those early AACM years, you were such an important voice in the Chicago music scene, and yet in the mid-1970s you moved to New York City and have been here ever since. What made you uproot yourself?

MRA: What can I say? It was just time to move. Chicago is a great place, but New York is a different kind of place. The intensity and the challenge is quite constant. I guess it was just time for me to do that. You’re swimming in a pond and sometimes you go where it feeds into the ocean.

FJO: You came to the ocean, but a lot of the things that you did here were similar to what you had done there. In New York City, you were a major force in developing the loft concert scene. So to some extent you brought a Chicago idea to New York.

The somewhat cryptically titled 1-OQA+19, Muhal Richard Abrahms’s first album as a leader recorded in New York City (in November and December of 1977) and featuring four other AACM alumni (Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Steve McCall, and Leonard Jones), is definitely a continuation of the ensemble music he was involved with in Chicago.

MRA: Well, I don’t know about that, but I didn’t intend to function in any other way except for the way I was functioning. I have to include other people, of course, but we all came to do what we do: presenting concerts, same as we’d been doing in Chicago. Now we’re in the ocean; we do it according to this space.

FJO: It was such a vital time for this music, but now, 40 years later, a lot of that scene has disappeared or has changed very fundamentally. Back then Roulette was a loft. It was Jim Staley’s apartment. Now it’s an official, street-level concert venue. It’s amazing that we finally have such a venue that’s dedicated to new, exploratory music. That’s wonderful. But I also think we might have lost some of the personal, home-grown, DIY quality that we once had when so many of these concerts were taking place in people’s own homes. With the way the real estate market has played out, the way demographics have changed, we probably can no longer have such a scene in quite the way that we had it back then.

MRA: You hit it on the head when you said real estate market. There’s a reason for that. The real estate requirement for higher rents caused people to just give it up in terms of maintaining those venues. It happened to quite a few, without naming them, as I’m sure you know. But with Roulette, his [Jim’s] perseverance in terms of what he wanted to do paid off, which is great.

FJO: But what’s interesting is now he’s got this great space, but it’s not a loft anymore. It’s something else. It’s a fabulous something else, but it’s a different listening modality. It doesn’t have the same intimacy. It can’t.

The 2005 duo album Streaming, released on Pi, is a truly collaborative effort between two old friends and musical co-conspirators, Muhal Richard Abrams and George Lewis.

MRA: Well—and I’m sure you know this—you have to upgrade. You’re asking people for money, so you have to put it on a level where you can use that kind of money you’re asking for, if you’re fortunate enough to make those kind of contacts. But I think the music itself or the idea of the music and the presentation of the music hasn’t changed. At Roulette, they present a great variety of musical approaches. If anything, he expanded, but I suppose it has to be what it is in terms of physical structure in order to accomplish what it is that they want to do. If you do something for ten years, you say, “I want to do it again for the next ten years; however, I want to levitate and do it like this.” Things just have to grow. There’s a nostalgic feeling in reference to vinyl records and CDs, there’s a nostalgic feeling for the lofts and whatnot like that, but I think that the musical content in the lofts is still at play. It’s just not in the lofts.

FJO: So, for you, where are the ideal places where you would like to either play music or have your music played by others to be heard?

MRA: Oh, I don’t have any except for the AACM concerts. We’re still producing those concerts. But Roulette is a good place for having things done that are not AACM-type presentations. And Tom Buckner’s series does quite a few good things. I mean, I like seeing some things on his series that otherwise maybe wouldn’t be on an AACM series, some compositional things. I’ve done some things on his series. There are a few venues in Brooklyn. I don’t function in Brooklyn, so I’m not in touch with those other venues, except for Roulette. But they have other venues around that seem to be pretty consistent in presenting written and improvised music.

FJO: To bring it back to your music again, my all-time favorite piece of yours is The Hearinga Suite. I feel it has a foot in both of the worlds we’ve been talking about: that of composed improvisation and improvised composing—so-called classical music and so-called jazz. It’s a fluid interplay that is both at once—informed by both, yet neither. It’s its own thing. So I wanted to talk to you a bit about it and how it came into being. Do you feel it represented a turning point in your music because of its scale, both in terms of its length and the number of players involved in it?

MRA: No, I was always like that. I mean, it’s just happening. It’s a project that I did at that time, but in terms of the musical ingredients, they were always there. The idiom, the compositional makeup of the piece, that’s just me in that.

FJO: What does the word Hearinga mean?

MRA: It’s an expression, like a song—Hearinga—like a name or something. It has nothing to do with the music, but it’s an expression that is used to speak in reference to the music.

FJO: I thought it was about hearing, because it’s “hearing”-a. I thought you gave it the title as a way to focus listeners on hearing this multiplicity.

The Hearinga Suite, arguably Muhal Richard Abrams’s most ambitious work, was released by Black Saint in 1989.

MRA: That’s great, because certainly I intended for the title to provoke thought and wonder. But the intention was to bring a thought from the listener that would require the listener to deal with the listener’s self. You see what I’m talking about? It’s hard to explain, but I mean—it’s like I’m thinking and I’m looking at the table. I’m thinking about the table, and all of a sudden I’m seeing shapes within myself and getting questions and answers about something that I might not have been thinking about at all.

FJO: The individual movements go in so many different directions like, for example, “Conversations with the Three of Me.”

MRA: Oh yeah, that’s the piano thing.

FJO: I love that title, but there are so many more than just three of you.

MRA: Well, hey, right. But that’s rather metaphysical and also quite mundane at the same time. I used three improvised approaches.

FJO: So what are they?

MRA: There are three different moods, but they’re not moods that are separate. They’re played like a sonata. You play this slow, you play this a little fast, and then you play this fast. But it’s not exactly that type of thing because everything is improvised on the spot. The name came after the performance. All names come after the performances.

FJO: You also use a synthesizer on it.

MRA: That’s one of the moods.

FJO: Certainly there are things that can be done on synthesizers that are impossible to do on a piano or with other instruments. Even by the mid-1980s when you made this music, electronic music was largely a new sound world. So what brought you to use synthesizers, and do you feel that changed your language in any way, musically?

MRA: Well, let’s think of it this way: we’re actually talking about sound. We’re talking about music, but we’re talking about sound. So that came about because sound can be produced in any way that you feel that you’d like to produce sound. And that’s it. It’s just electronic sound. That’s the difference. There’s electronic sound, then the two piano sounds—three moods. Three of me, you know, a conversation with the three, so there’s an electronic part, and then there’s two different moods for the piano. So that’s the conversation, you know what I mean? But sound, that’s the thing, because before music can be called music, it has to be harnessed and structured from sound. Music is a by-product of sound. Sound is the thing. Sound.

FJO: You went even deeper into exploring electronic timbres in the ‘90s with “Think All, Focus One.” That’s probably my favorite of your electronic improvisations. It’s from another extraordinary album with a really great title: Think All, Focus One.

In addition to six compositions for septet, Muhal Richard Abrams’s 1995 Black Saint album Think All, Focus One contains a fascinating synthesizer improvisation.

MRA: Well again, here I have a provocative statement which has nothing to do with describing the music. It’s a statement that is intended to provoke, but not for control or anything. It’s just meant to provoke. It’s a feeling that comes together in that statement. You know what I mean? Think all, focus one. And I know what I get from it, but I don’t know what you might get from it.

FJO: Well what I think I got from it is that there’s all sound out there available to you, and you should be mindful of all of it: all styles, all possibilities of what you’re doing on any instrument, the whole breadth, the whole line between complete spontaneous improvisation to fully worked-out composition, as well as the rhythms and the melodies of all cultures. But despite thinking of all of that, you must be an individual.

MRA: That’s very good. That’s a nice compliment to the title, I must say.

In 2001, Mutable released a disc devoted to Muhal Richard Abrams’s notated compositions called The Visibility of Thought which includes performances by baritone Thomas Buckner, pianist Joseph Kubera, and the string quartet ETHEL.

FJO: Now when you write music for other people to play—like, say, the music you’ve composed for groups like the Kronos Quartet or ETHEL who performed a piece of yours for baritone and string quartet with Thomas Buckner, or the orchestra pieces you’ve written that have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra or the Janacek Philharmonic—these are situations where the musicians are working from written musical scores and they are performing this music without you. I imagine there is no improvisation in any of this music.

MRA: No. It’s written.

FJO: How does it feel to be apart from the music and for it to be fixed in that way?

MRA: Well, I’m improvising all the time, and I’m composing all the time. It’s the same thing. It’s the application that’s different. I am applying the approach to this orchestra with a written presentation, but it’s the same process. The difference is in the sense that I can make a certain kind of a texture with fifty strings. Four French horns can make a certain kind of texture. So I’m dealing with respect for the orchestra. That’s a component. I have elected to respect this instrument called the orchestra. And the possibilities of sound that can be gotten from treating it in a certain compositional manner.

FJO: But when you do something for an ensemble of improvising musicians, they bring their own individualism to the table.

MRA: I insist on it.

Though released under the name of percussionist Jack De Johnette, this extraordinary live recording from a 2013 Chicago Jazz Festival concert in Millennial Park (which was released on ECM in January 2015) is truly a group effort by all the members of the quintet which also includes Henry Threadgill, Larry Gray, Roscoe Mitchell, and Muhal Richard Abrams.

FJO: And you’ve performed as a sideman with others and you bring your individualism to them.

MRA: That’s right.

FJO: But when you’re writing a piece for orchestra, the whole idea is that it’s all on the page. They’re following the notes, and then they’re following the conductor’s interpretation of those notes. There’s a lot less room for self-expression.

MRA: Well, but there’s room for self-expressions, plural. You follow what I mean? People who are adept at playing classical music, I mean really great orchestra people, interpret musical symbols in a manner that can conjure up all sorts of pictures and panoramic images in terms of what you feel and what you hear when you hear a piece played by a really good orchestra. The way they interpret what you put down, that’s another element. You’re getting a plural of individualism, a pluralistic individualism, as a result of all these people playing together and playing with each other. There’s something that happens with them. There are certain people that couldn’t play with them because they wouldn’t be able to transfer that, they maintain the orchestra feeling for whatever is going on. It’s very important to them. In those great orchestras, it’s very important what happens among them. And that’s the other element. See? So you’re getting this plural individualist situation that goes on with them. It’s hard to explain because I think that the whole situation of individualism is transferable in terms of what a situation might be in terms of numbers of people.

FJO: So would you be okay with them taking a lot of liberties with something you’ve written down? How much can they change it and have it still be your piece? How much give and take is there in that process?

MRA: But the orchestra doesn’t change. The conductor might want to—

FJO: Speed it up?

The 2010 Mutable CD Spectrum features a performance of Muhal Richard Abrams’s orchestral composition Mergertone, a work commissioned by the Ostrava Days festival and premiered there in 2007 by the Janáček Philharmonic conducted by Petr Kotik.

MRA: Yeah, he might, but he doesn’t really change it, because if something sounds one way going at a slow tempo and you speed it up, then it’s a different mood. You discuss that with the conductor. And any changes, certainly a good conductor will consult with you before he make them; he’ll ask and make suggestions. And if you say, “No, leave it,” he’ll just leave it like that. So there’s always that collaboration. I mean, it’s a rare moment when a conductor will go off on his own, because he’s endeavored to interpret what the composer has written.

FJO: The structure is so large, so it requires a different way of working. There’s so little rehearsal time, so even if you wanted there to be room for improvisation in that context, there wouldn’t be enough time to make that work. Plus a lot of these musicians don’t have experience with improvisation and feel uncomfortable with it. But would you want to create such a piece?

MRA: No. To ask people who don’t improvise to suddenly improvise, it’s been my experience, you don’t get a great result. And it’s not the fault of the people. They’re great musicians and great on their instruments, but you’re asking them to do something that they don’t do! That doesn’t work out too good. You have to approach that situation differently. If you want improvisation, then you bring improvisation with you, so they don’t have to deal with it. And mix it.

FJO: The last thing I wanted to talk about with you is that on all your recordings, going back decades, there’s always a line stating how to obtain scores of this music. I wonder how many people have contacted you for scores and if they have then gone on to perform that and what those performances have been like.

MRA: Oh, I can’t speak to that. I don’t quite know what they do with it. They can do what they want with it. I don’t ask that they do anything when they get it. But usually they’ve listened to a recording and they try to stay as a close or true to what they heard. You know what I mean? Some people may change it, but what can you do? I don’t have any requirement beyond what I ask of myself.

https://www.muhalrichardabrams.com/honors-awards.html

HONORS/AWARDS

2015 Doris Duke Artist Award

2015 Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa ,
DePaul University, School of Music and The Theatre School, DePaul University, Chicago, Il.

2015 Keynote Commencement Speaker, DePaul University School of Music and The Theatre School,
DePaul University, Chicago, Il.

2015 Proclaimed New York City Jazz Record's "Musician of the Year"

2014 Doris Duke Impact Award

2014 Walter Dyett Lifetime Achievement Award, Jazz Institute of Chicago

October 19, 2012 The BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation,
The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.

May 16, 2012 Degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa ,
Columbia University, New York City

2010 NEA Jazz Master, National Endowment for the Arts

2010 Inducted into the Downbeat Magazine "Jazz Hall of Fame"

2008 USA Prudential Fellow, United States Artists

April 11, 1999 Muhal Richard Abrams Day in Chicago, proclamation presented by Richard M. Daley,
Mayor of the City of Chicago

1990 First Recipient of The JazzPar Prize, the grand international jazz award, Danish Jazz Center,
Copenhagen, Denmark 1990 First JazzPar Prize Photo

Muhal Richard Abrams is the recipient of the following recognitions:

Doctor of Humane Letters – DuPaul University

The BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award

New York City Jazz Record's Musician of the Year

Honorary Doctorate of Music - Columbia University

Downbeat Magazine "Jazz Hall of Fame"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran.^[1] The AACM is devoted "to nurturing, performing, and recording serious, original music," according to its charter. It supports and encourages jazz performers, composers and educators. Although founded in the jazz tradition, the group's outreach and influence has, according to Larry Blumenfeld, "touched nearly all corners of modern music."^[2]

Background

By the 1960s, jazz music was losing ground to rock music, and the founders of the AACM felt that a proactive group of musicians would add creativity and outlet for new music.^[3] The AACM was formed in May 1965 by a group of musicians centered on pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, who had organized an Experimental Band since 1962.^[4] The musicians were generally steadfast in their commitment to their music, despite a lack of performance venues and sometimes indifferent audiences. From 1969 the AACM organised a music education program for inner-city youths.^[5] In the 1960s and 1970s AACM members were among the most important and innovative in all of jazz, though the AACM's contemporary influence has waned some in recent years. Many AACM members have recorded widely: in the early days on the Delmark Records Avant Garde Jazz series and later on the Black Saint/Soul Note and India Navigation labels, and to a lesser extent on the Arista Records and ECM labels.^[6]

The musical endeavors of members of the AACM often include an adventurous mixing of avant-garde jazz, classical, and world music. The AACM also ran a school, The AACM School of Music, with classes in all areas taught by members of the AACM. The AACM also had a strong relationship with an influential sister organization, the Black Artists' Group (BAG) of St. Louis, Missouri. The AACM has received aid from the MacArthur Foundation and has a strong relationship with Columbia College. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis, has been published by the University of Chicago Press (May 2008).^[7]

In 2015, a 50-year retrospective exhibition of art, music and group-related artifacts, entitled, "Free at First", was held at the DuSable Museum of African American History.^[3]

Music

The AACM has been on the forefront of the avant-garde since its inception in 1965. Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago pushed the boundaries of jazz and challenged the avant-garde classical movement led by John Cage. Concerts were heavily improvised, and many AACM members created scores that blended music, geometry, painting, and ciphers to be interpreted by the performers live. The AACM was part of an artistic movement on the South Side of Chicago that included AFRICobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) and other collectives.^[8]

Members

(largely complete through at least 2015) ^[9]

Muhal Richard Abrams^[4]
Peggy Abrams [de]
Soji Adebayo [de]
Willel Afi-Fi [de]
Ajaramu Joseph Shelton [de]
Dee Alexander
Martin Alexander [de]
Frederick "Fred" Anderson
Leon Q. Allen [de]
Khari B [de]
JoVia Armstrong [de]^[10]
Harrison Bankhead
Renee Baker [de]
Thurman Barker
Fred Berry
Stephen E. "Steve" Berry [de]
Felix Blackmon [de]
Mwata Bowden
Byron Bowie [de]
Lester Bowie
Joel Brandon [de]
Anthony Braxton^[4]
William "Billy" Brimfield [de]
Ari Brown
Arthur "Art Turk" Burton [de]
Ken Chaney [de]
Jodie Christian^[4]
Charles Clark
Chet
Charles Wes Cochran [de]
Phil Kelan Cohran^[4]
Adegoke Steve Colson [de]
Iqua Colson
Pete Cosey
Gordon Emmanuel Cranshaw [de]
Jerome Croswell [de]
Michael Danzy [de]
Edwin Daugherty [de]
Rahmlee Michael Davis [de]
Vincent Davis (musician) [de]
Ernest Khabeer Dawkins
Justin Dillard [de]
Eugene "Gene" Dinwiddie
Drahseer Khalid [de]
Sura Ramses Dupart [de]
Eugene Easton [de]
Jimmy Ellis (musician) [de]
Coco Elysses [de]
Kahil El'Zabar
Douglas R. Ewart
Malachi Favors Maghostut
Alvin Fielder
Benjamin Ford (musician) [de]
Earl "Chico" Freeman^[4]
Christopher Gaddy [de]
Steven Galloway
Sarnie Garrett [de]
Ben LaMar Gay [de]
Aaron Getsug [de]
Frank Gordon (musician) [de]
Aquilla Graves (honorary member) [de]
Robert U. Griffin
Vandy Harris [de]^[11]
Walter Henderson (musician) [de]
Tony Herrera [de]
Frederic J. "Fred" Hopkins
Edward "Ed" House [de]
Billy Howell [de]
Light Henry Huff [de]
"Maia" Sonjia Hupert Harper [de]
Frederick "Fred" Jackson
Isaiah "Ike" Jackson [de]
John Shenoy Jackson [de]
Shaku Joseph Jarman
Leroy Jenkins
James Johnson (jazz musician) [de]
Shaun Johnson (trumpeter) [de]
Leonard E. Jones [de]
Kidd Jordan
Buford Kirkwood [de]
Janis Lane-Ewart [de]
Lester Lashley [de]
Sandra Lashley [de]
George E. Lewis
Evod Magek [de]
Steven "Steve" McCall, IV^[4]
Kalapurasha Ahrah Difdah/Maurice McIntyre
LaRoy Wallace McMillan [de]
Nicole "Niki" Mitchell^[7]
Roscoe Mitchell^[4]
Bernard Mixon [de]
Dushun Mosley [de]
Famadou Don Moye
Ameen Muhammed [de]
Amina Claudine Myers
Reggie Nicholson
Eddie "Gip" Noble, Jr. [de]
Seitu "Rah Bird" Nurullah [de]
Shanta Nurullah [de]
Norman Palm [de]
Jeff Parker
Junius Paul [de]
John Powell
Carlos Pride [de]
Amen Ra [de]
Avreeayl Ra [de]^[12]
Michael "Mike" Reed^[13]
Tomeka Reid
Matana Roberts
Troy Robinson (musician) [de]
Bata Rutlin [de]
Sherry Scott [de]
Sar Abshalom Ben Sholamo [de]
Rasul Siddik/Sadik
Wadada Leo Smith
Isaiah Spencer [de]
John Stubblefield
Hanah Jon Taylor [de]
Henry Threadgill
Malachi Thompson
Umchaka Uba [de]
Frank Walton (musician) [de]
Ann E. Ward
Rita Warford [de]
Jesus Wayne [de]
Edward Wilkerson, Jr.
Corey Wilkes [de]
Jose Williams [de]
Reggie Willis [de]
Jonathan Woods [de]^[10]
Adam Zanolini [de]^[10]
Sabu Zawadi [de]
Saalik Ahmad Ziyad [de]
Taalib-Din Ziyad [de]

External links

Categories:

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
Abbreviation	AACM
Predecessor	Experimental Band
Formation	May 1965
Founders	Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall, Phil Cohran
Type	Non-profit organization
Purpose	Support and encourage jazz performers, composers and educators
Location	CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Region	U.S.
Official language	English
Key people	Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette
Affiliations	Black Artists' Group
Endowment	MacArthur Foundation
Website	aacmchicago.org

https://www.aacmchicago.org/

AACM

Mission Statement

The AACM is a non-profit organization and a collective of composers and musicians dedicated to nurturing, performing and recording high artistic level programs designed to magnify creative music.

The AACM’s mission is to uplift humanity and enhance cultural understanding through the celebration of Great Black Music, to cultivate young musicians in the practice of creative music, and to push the boundaries of contemporary music through composition and improvisation, while providing an environment that encourages the development of its member-artist.

The AACM's School of Music provides free training programs for disadvantaged youth. AACM composers, through their experience as members, often grow to be heralded for groundbreaking innovations in contemporary music.

The AACM provides sources of employment for its musician members through music performance, interdisciplinary projects and composer commissions.

The Great Black Music Ensemble (GBME) and smaller AACM groups inspire local, national and international audiences through performances and touring.

https://www.aacmchicago.org/about-us

About the AACM

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was founded in 1965 in Chicago by a group of musicians who sought to build and sustain a creative community and new platforms for experimentation and innovation in music. One of the primary goals of the AACM is to support the development of individual artists while also fostering a sense of collective responsibility and collaboration. Through workshops, rehearsals, performances, and other activities, AACM members are encouraged to share their ideas, techniques, and knowledge with one another. This helps to create a vibrant and supportive community of musicians who are constantly pushing one another to grow and develop. In addition to providing a space for artistic experimentation and collaboration, the AACM also plays an important role in supporting the broader community. Many of its members are involved in teaching, mentoring, and outreach programs that aim to make music accessible to people from all backgrounds. This commitment to community engagement and social justice is a core part of the AACM's mission and identity.

Overall, the importance of community in the AACM can be seen in the way that it supports individual artists, fosters collaboration and experimentation, and engages with broader social issues. By bringing together musicians from diverse backgrounds and providing a space for them to explore new ideas and techniques, the AACM has become an important force for innovation and creativity in contemporary music.

https://www.muhalrichardabrams.com/interviews.html

INTERVIEWS

A photo Dr. Muhal Richard Abrams Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa and 2015 Keynote Commencement Speaker, DePaul University School of Music and The Theatre School,</a> <br> DePaul University

WATCH NEW MUSIC BOX Interview with Muhal Richard Abrams

LISTEN to DIALOGUE TALK Interview with Muhal Richard Abrams

READ Muhal Richard Abrams: The Advancement of Creative Music

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Richarda Alise Abrams

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/muhal-richard-abrams-the-advancement-of-creative-music-muhal-richard-abrams-by-aaj-staff

Muhal Richard Abrams:

The Advancement of Creative Music

by AAJ Staff

by Ted Panken

May 25, 2007

AllAboutJazz

At a certain point in the mid-1960s—the exact date escapes him—pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, a lifelong resident of the South Side of Chicago, visited New York for the first time on a gig with saxophonist Eddie Harris at Harlem's Club Barron. "New York suited my energy, Abrams recalled. "Of course. But I was already in that sort of energy. I had no doubt that I could be in New York. No doubt at all.

Doubt seems to be a concept foreign to Abrams, 76, who moved to New York permanently in 1975. In 1983, he established the New York chapter of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, commonly known as the AACM, which launches its twenty-fourth concert season on May 11, 2007 at the Community Church of New York with a recital featuring Abrams' quartet and a duo by Abrams with guitarist Brandon Ross.

The institutional pre-history of the AACM began in 1961, when Abrams and Harris joined a West Side trumpeter named Johnny Hines to organize an orchestra where local musicians could workshop their charts. By Harris' recollection, over one hundred musicians of various ages and skill levels attended. Although it disbanded within a few months, Abrams decided to begin another orchestra, which he called the Experimental Band. He recruited younger musicians like Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, who were interested, as Abrams puts it, "in more original approaches to composing and performing music.

Over the next few years, musicians such as Malachi Favors, Leroy Jenkins, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith and Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre entered the mix to participate in the adventure. A certain momentum developed with the Experimental Band as the nucleus and in 1965 Abrams, fellow pianist Jodie Christian, trumpeter Phil Cohran and drummer Steve McCall convened a meeting towards the purpose of forming a new musicians' organization devoted to the production of original music with a collective spirit. Thus, the AACM was launched.

Under the organization's auspices, Abrams mentored composer/instrumentalist/improvisers like Mitchell, Jarman, Braxton, Smith, Henry Threadgill and George Lewis in their nascent years. He also spawned an infrastructure within which each individual had autonomy to assimilate and process an enormous body of music from a broad spectrum of sources in a critical manner and gave them manpower with whom to workshop and develop their ideas while evolving their respective voices.

The AACM first hit New York in May 1970, when cultural activist Kunle Mwanga produced a concert at the Washington Square Methodist Church with Leroy Jenkins and Anthony Braxton (who had relocated from Chicago three months earlier), their AACM mates Abrams, Smith and McCall and bassist Richard Davis (also a South Sider). At the time, Abrams had recorded two albums of his own music—Levels and Degrees of Light (Delmark, 1967) and Young At Heart, Wise In Time (Delmark, 1969). Added to the mix by 1975 were Things To Come From Those Now Gone (Delmark, 1972) and solo piano sessions Afrisong (India Navigation, 1975) and Sightsong (Black Saint, 1975).

Once settled in New York, however, Abrams would record prolifically for the next two decades, with fifteen albums on Black Saint in addition to two dates for Novus, two for New World Countercurrents and one for UMO. You can't pigeonhole his interests—in Abrams' singular universe, elemental blues themes and warp speed post-bop structures with challenging intervals coexist comfortably with fully-scored symphonic works, string quartets, saxophone quartets, solo and duo piano music and speech-sound collage structures.

Abrams resists the idea that location factors into the content that emerges from his creative process. "What affected my output is the opportunity to record, he says. "In Chicago, if an opportunity presented itself, I created something for the occasion. When I got here [NYC], there was no difference. I am always composing and practicing for myself. Actually, it's more like studying than composing; I research and seek and analyze music—or sound, rather, because sound precedes music itself—and things come up. When a recording or something else comes along, I put some of those things together and it becomes a recording. Of course, in New York, I'm hearing more around me, but it doesn't make me process things any differently. I'm still dealing with my individualism.

The notion of following one's own muse at whatever cost was embedded in South Side culture during the years after World War II, when African-Americans were migrating en masse from Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama to Chicago for factory, railroad and stockyard jobs. As Harris told me on a WKCR interview in 1994: "In Chicago, you could hear Gene Ammons in one club, Budd Johnson in another or Tom Archia or Dick Davis—just speaking of the saxophone. Then there were all sorts of piano players that were really...different. You'd go to one club and the guy didn't sound a little different from the guy down the street. It was totally different.

"You were expected to do whatever it is that you felt you wanted to do and nobody said a word, Abrams says of the ethos of the South Side's world-class musician pool. "The jam sessions were like that. We played bebop and kept up with the geniuses like Bird and them. But I was never that interested in copying something and then using it for myself. I was interested in copying it in order to analyze it. Then I would decide how I would use or do that same thing. Chicago was full of musicians who distinguished themselves as individuals.

As an example he cites pianist John Young, best known outside Chicago for his work with tenorist Von Freeman and a prominent stylist since the 1940s. "When you listen to John, you hear remnants of [Earl] Fatha Hines, Abrams notes, leaving unsaid Hines' presence in Chicago from 1926 until the late 1940s. "He was very influenced by Fatha Hines, but John had his own way. We were impressed with the individualism from him, Ahmad Jamal, Von Freeman, Chris Anderson, Johnny Griffin, Ike Day and Sun Ra and the Arkestra. People wonder how an AACM could develop in a city like that. It's because you could do individual things and nobody bothered you.

Abrams himself is a self-taught pianist and composer. "I used to play sports, but for some reason, whenever I'd hear musicians perform, I had to stop to listen, he recalls. "It fascinated me and one day I decided that I wanted to be a musician. So I took off and started to seek out information about how to play the piano.

Although Abrams attended DuSable High School, where the legendarily stern band director Walter Dyett held sway, he preferred sports to school-sponsored music programs. But by 1946, he decided to enroll in music classes at Roosevelt University in the Loop. "I didn't get too much out of that, because it wasn't what I was hearing in the street, he says. "I decided to study on my own. I don't know why, but I've always had a natural ability to study and analyze things. I used that ability, not even knowing what it was (it was just a feeling) and started to read books.

From there, I acquired a small spinet piano and started to teach myself how to play the instrument and read the notes—or, first of all, what key the music was in. It took time and a lot of sweat. But I analyzed it and before long I was playing with the musicians on the scene. I listened to [Art] Tatum, Charlie Parker, [Thelonous Monk], Bud Powell and many others and concentrated on Duke [Ellington] and Fletcher Henderson for composition. Later I got scores and studied more extensive things that take place in classical composition and started to practice classical pieces on the piano, as I do now.

Abrams documents all his New York performances. Still, the decade between 1996 and Streaming (Pi, 2006), a compelling triologue between Abrams, Lewis and Mitchell, shows only one, self-released, issue under Abrams' name. As of this writing, no releases were scheduled for 2007. "That's okay, Abrams says. "I think things that are supposed to reach the public, eventually will. I understand that people want to be able to hear whatever is happening at any given time. However, the recording industry has ways that it does things and sometimes this may not be consistent with what the musician wants to do.

Business has a right to be whatever it is and the artist has a right to be whatever the artist wants to be. I also think the fact that musicians can do these things themselves today because of technology causes output to come out a little bit slower. But the quality is pretty much equal, often higher, than it used to be, because the musician can spend more time preparing the output. It's important for people to hear what I do, but the first point of importance is my being healthy enough to do it. I don't worry about whether it gets distributed right away.

"I always felt that you need to be about the work you need to do and that's to find out about yourself. That's pretty much a full-time job. You pay close attention to others, but the work that you have to do for yourself is the most difficult. I seem to move forward every time I reflect on the fact that I don't know enough. If you feel you have something, it's very important to get that out and develop it. Health is first. But your individualism I think is a close second.

Selected Discography:

Muhal Richard Abrams/George Lewis/Roscoe Mitchell, Streaming (Pi, 2005)

Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra, Blu Blu Blu (Black Saint, 1990)

Muhal Richard Abrams Octet, View From Within (Black Saint, 1984)

Muhal Richard Abrams, Mama and Daddy (Black Saint, 1980)

Muhal Richard Abrams, Levels and Degrees of Light (Delmark, 1967)

Creative Construction Company, Vol. 1 & 2 (Muse, 1970)

Photo Credit
Courtesy of AACM

https://larryappelbaum.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/interview-with-muhal-richard-abrams/

Interview with Muhal Richard Abrams

by Larry Appelbaum

September 19, 2015

This telephone interview with pianist, composer and bandleader Muhal Richard Abrams was recorded a few days before his 1996 orchestra concert at the Kennedy Center. That performance also marked the world premiere of an Abrams’ commission, Duet for Violin and Piano. Eighteen years later to the day, Muhal returned to the Kennedy Center, where I shot this pic at close of his concert.

Why don’t you tell us about the music you’re playing here this coming week?

Well, each piece is completely different. It’s original music; some older pieces and some newer pieces recently composed, of course.

How often does this orchestra perform?

This particular group hasn’t performed before. It’s a complete new setup.

For the commissioned work for violin and piano, you’ll have Regina Carter and Anthony Davis performing the premiere. Did you consider playing the piano part yourself?

I’d prefer to have someone else play it. I have quite a bit to do so I’ll be concentrating on the orchestra and the things I want to do there.

Did you write the piece with these two players in mind?

No. I never write with players in mind, except for the quality of player. So when I wrote it I didn’t have any specific players in mind, except for good players. And after I wrote it I decided who I wanted to perform it.

Have they rehearsed it yet?

Oh sure. They’ve been in rehearsal for quite a while.

Are there elements of improvisation, or is it strictly composed?

This piece is strictly composed. There’s a possibility there may be elements of improvisation, I have to talk to them about that. But in terms of the composed part, I’m sure they have that well in hand. If there will be any improvisation in that piece, I will allow them to interpret sections for themselves in order to develop any improvisational part.

You’ve been composing for more than 30 years now. Has your approach to it changed over time?

It’s constantly changing [chuckles].

In what way?

Well, it changes because you get different impressions at different times. You’re hearing other people do things, and you’re studying, you know, personal studies. So it’s constantly changing because you’re trying to improve it. And to learn from the environment itself, you know?

Tell me more about your personal studies. Are you studying technique, are you studying yourself or the world itself?

The world itself. Well, a little of all of it, actually. I don’t think you ever stop learning in terms of technical study. And self-study.

Can you give an example of something you’ve studied in the world or with other musicians and how it impacts on your own music or concept?

No, it’s nothing specific. It’s everything. It could be anything that might impress me. It can be any style of music.

At what point did you know that music would be your life?

Hm… [long pause]. I don’t know [laughs]. It just started to happen. I was quite young, of course.

This was in Chicago?

Oh yeah, sure.

Did you know Captain Walter Dyatt?

Sure. I knew him pretty well.

So I want to know more about that time in Chicago in the 50s. Walter Dyatt was there, you were there. Was Sun Ra around at that time?

Sure.

How involved were you with each other?

We were all on the scene. It was like a neighborhood, so to speak. Everyone knew everyone else and we were aware of everyone’s activities, and whatnot. We would perform in some of the same venues. It was a close community at that time.

You’ve been an important teacher for many musicians. Who were your mentors?

Two of my main mentors were the pianist and bandleader King Fleming, who’s still performing, and William E. Jackson who is now deceased. He taught me a lot about arranging music. They were my first real teachers, in terms of the approach I started to develop.

What inspires you outside of music?

Painting and visual art.

Anyone in particular?

No, all of the great masters; African artists, European artists. Chinese, Japanese, you name it. All art. My impressions of art and color, and rhythm and color have had a great impact on me in terms of music and art.

Have you ever composed for moving image, say film or video?

No. I’ve been asked that quite a bit, but no, I never have.

The reason I ask is that your music often evokes images for me and I wonder if there’s anything specific that you’re trying to convey, or is it just expressing a feeling inside of you?

Well, music has a basis that can sort of give impressions of drama and related type activities. And in my studies and observations, I more or less observe it all, especially functional music like movie music, so I guess some of it has to get into what I do, you know? Not as a deliberate situation. I don’t know, it’s a part of the music. And sometimes the impression is not to write a musical phrase. The impression might be to write a dramatic phrase. It’s very difficult to put into words, but it’s pretty close to what I could say concerning that question.

In recent years you’ve incorporated certain electronics into your music. Will you be playing those on stage?

Just a little bit.

How do you integrate them without them sounding inhuman? In other words, how do you make a machine sound natural?

I’m not trying to make it sound natural. I’m using it as an element of sound, you know? It’s just a part of the world of sound.

Do you hear sounds in your head that you cannot reproduce?

Sometimes. But it’s probably because I don’t have the instrument to produce it. Maybe the instrument is somewhere else in the world. Or maybe there’s a sound that I’m not sure what instrument could produce it, whether there is an instrument to produce the sound.

As the 20^th century is ending, is it time to create a new language for music, new vocabulary?

Well, I don’t think you’re going to create a new language for music because I think music is far beyond that which we know at this time. We’re just discovering more about it. In terms of this age of mankind, I think it’s infinite enough and far enough ahead of us that we’ll just be discovering more ways to approach writing and performing and appreciating music. So I think it’s more a question of that rather than inventing a new music that is different from the basic element inherent in what we call music today.

Do you still record for two different labels; Black Saint and New World?

I regularly record for Black Saint. New World was a side project; a good one and most enjoyable one, of course. But my regular recording work has been with Black Saint, and still is.

The reason I ask is you’re an artist, you’re a composer and instrumentalist, but you also have a foot in the world of commerce in the music business. Do you have difficulty reconciling those two worlds?

No. I think that time and necessity teaches one to become a businessperson in addition to being an artist. Now that’s not true in all cases, but I think in my case it’s true.

Is it distracting for you?

No. It’s two different things in terms of times of concentration. Like this hour you concentrate on the contract. The next hour it’s time to rehearse the music. So you do each particular thing with respect to its time.

I guess now’s the time for a radio interview.

Yes [laughs]

Can we clear up one discrepancy in your bio, the year of your birth? Ekkard Jost writes that you were born in 1929. The Grove Dictionary says it’s 1930. Which is it?

Well you have to go by what I say: 1930. I don’t know where Ekkard Jost got that from.

You’re very well known among creative musicians, but not as much among the general public. Is recognition important to you?

Oh, I think I’m known among the general public, but I guess it depends what general public you’re talking about. The Top 40 public does not know a lot of musicians because the mass media is broadcasting more commercial music, which is ok. And I think that’s the reason. But, on the other hand, if you’re talking about a certain segment of the population, in terms of your comment, then I don’t know. I couldn’t say why it’s that way. So it depends who you’re talking about.

But I’m still wondering whether recognition is important to you?

Of course recognition is important to most artists, in the sense that you want people to hear what you do, because, after all, that’s why you do it. In other words, that’s why you perform it. You want to perform and give it to other people. So of course recognition is very important. But it’s like the end result. You know what I mean?

This interview was broadcast on WPFW-FM in Washington DC on Oct. 6, 1996.

Photo: Larry Appelbaum

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/muhal-richard-abrams-musical-revolution

Postscript

The Musical Revolution of Muhal Richard Abrams

by Taylor Ho Bynum

November 3, 2017

The New Yorker

Image may contain Human Person Musical Instrument Piano Leisure Activities Grand Piano Musician and Performer

One of the most important figures in American creative music, Muhal Richard Abrams, died peacefully at home last Sunday, at the age of eighty-seven. “Pianist/composer” will be the description most commonly ascribed to him, but Abrams was so much more: organizer, philosopher, visionary, motivator, teacher, and always, learner. His innovation was not about developing a specific sound or style but in cultivating a certain kind of creative ethos that nurtured and launched some of the most extraordinary music and musicians of the past fifty years.

Born in Chicago, in 1930, Abrams was raised in that city’s rich musical culture, soaking in influences across genres. A dedicated autodidact from a young age, he spent his formative years working the jazz clubs and R. & B. circuits in the city and throughout the region, but recognized that his interests did not necessarily fit in those contexts. In the early sixties, he began leading a rehearsal band in which young musicians could explore new music without the pressures of pending gigs, jam-session showboating, or commercial restraints. Soon dubbed the Experimental Band, this ensemble became the incubator for a burgeoning family of brilliant outsiders beginning to congregate around Abrams.

The model of a philosophically inclined, avant-garde composer and pianist leading an exploratory big band had a strong precedent in Chicago—the Afro-futurist prophet Sun Ra emerged from the same city only a decade before. But where Sun Ra ran an extremely tight (space)ship, with all the ensemble’s activity in service to the leader’s vision, Abrams explicitly encouraged a more collective journey—any member of the group could bring in music, so long as it was original. This dedication to originality and self-sufficiency grew past the rehearsal room and expanded into the formation of a new organization—in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (A.A.C.M.) was born.

The brilliance of the A.A.C.M.’s first generation of artists, and their importance to the creative practice of musicians worldwide in the ensuing decades, cannot be overstated—neither can Abrams’s role as the organization’s co-founder, president, guiding light, and spiritual center. A crucial characteristic of the early A.A.C.M. was that it was never about a style—rather, it was about a creative process of self-actualization and investigation, resulting in a breathtaking diversity of approaches to the generative balance of composition and improvisation. In most artistic revolutions, a community of practitioners defines a new template, and the individuals find their voices within it. In the A.A.C.M., the musicians’ responsibility was even greater—not just to develop a personal approach to navigate a given structure but to continually reimagine the structure itself. Thus, Anthony Braxton’s philosophical schematics could coexist alongside Amina Claudine Myers’s gospel-drenched soul, Lester Bowie’s pop appropriations could rub elbows with Roscoe Mitchell’s austere angularities. The work might involve narrative poetry or funk rhythms, homemade instruments or full orchestras, graphic scores or interpreted movements—but it always represented the intent of the composer and the agency of the performer; it always acknowledged the past, lived in the present, and looked to the future.

It is not easy to convince a crowd of iconoclastic geniuses to work together and share ideas, or to maintain the premise that the strength of a collective is in the radical individualism of its members. Yet when it works, it is something special; and for a few years in the late sixties on the South Side of Chicago, under Muhal Richard Abrams’s inspired and indispensable leadership, the magic held. While, inevitably, the various parties pursued their separate paths, the unbridled curiosity, competitive drive, monastic dedication, and uncompromising commitment nurtured during those years spurred decades of musical innovation—and continues to this day, as evidenced by much-deserved recent accolades such as Henry Threadgill’s Pulitzer Prize or Wadada Leo Smith’s sweep at the Downbeat’s Critics Poll.

In celebrating Abrams’s organizational genius, we must not forget his profound musical gifts. As a pianist, he eschewed the dominant styles of Bill Evans’s impressionism or Cecil Taylor’s expressivity, instead crafting a spiky yet subtle touch that always sounded in complete control—whether striding through block chords or striking touches of ethereal minimalism. His long, lean body would crouch over the instrument like a praying mantis ready to strike, yet remain calm, almost meditative, even when the music was at its most explosive.

His solo recordings remain touchstones of the form, from the opening half of his album “Young at Heart/Wise in Time,” from 1969, to his commanding live performance on 2007’s “Vision Towards Essence.” His small-ensemble recordings, from his 1967 début “Levels and Degrees of Light” onward, are consistently compelling, demonstrating in condensed form the beguiling compositional voice that attracted all those musicians to the Experimental Band years before. Many of his collaborations with his A.A.C.M. colleagues have become modern classics, from his propulsive contributions to the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s “Fanfare for the Warriors” (1974) and the joyful conversations on Anthony Braxton’s “Duets” (1976), to the more recent interplay with Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis on 2005’s “Streaming,” where all three masters improvise with patient, mature wisdom.

However, my personal favorites in Abrams’s discography remain the series of orchestra recordings he made on the Black Saint label throughout the eighties and nineties. Listen to “Hearinga”—the opening and title track from his 1989 masterpiece, “The Hearinga Suite.” You hear echoes of Abrams’s heroes like Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford, you hear the influence of his A.A.C.M. peers, but the sound is wholly his own. It opens with a low-brass fanfare into a march-like call and response with the horns, leading to a knotty melody played with an alien timbre of flute, muted trumpet, glockenspiel, and synthesizer that unwinds over sharp punctuations from the rest of the band. The melody slips into a vamp that opens up the rhythm and introduces new melodies, finally releasing into a questing trumpet improvisation—but drops back into the march-like patterns and lines stacked with beautiful awkwardness. The tenor saxophone and piano make succinct statements as the “jazz” feel reëmerges, but before it gets too comfortable the band stumbles back into the awkward stacks and the knotty melody reprises, but this time with the instrumentation of a classic jazz combo—trumpet/sax/trombone. Just when you think it’s finished, a coda of yearning lyricism comes forward for the final thirty seconds, worthy of Billy Strayhorn or Charles Mingus at their most bitterly romantic.

I first heard this composition as a teen-ager, and it was a life changer—within its tightly constructed five minutes it seemed an impossible number of ideas and transitions and personalities came spilling out. Like so many before me, I found in Muhal Richard Abrams a gateway into a realm of fresh possibility and discovery—a creative world I have happily spent my life exploring. But the deepest lesson came a few years later, when I met him in person for the first time. After he moved to New York, Abrams established an A.A.C.M. branch in the city, which hosted a concert series at a community church in midtown (which continues to this day). Sometime in the early nineties, I attended my first N.Y.C. A.A.C.M. concert—honestly, I don’t remember who was playing. What I do remember is that Abrams was selling tickets at the box office, and Amina Claudine Myers was handing out programs at the door. I was stunned to see my musical heroes engaged in such humble tasks, but it was a message I took to heart. You don’t wait for anybody to give you anything if you can do it yourself. You do what you have to do, with hospitality and grace, to make the music happen. You support your fellow-musicians, and your fellow-musicians will support you. That way, you can make your own art, on your own terms: beautiful and weird and uncompromising and dangerous and joyful and original. Creativity matters, community matters, and it’s worth fighting for.

More:Music Muhal Richard Abrams Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/obituaries/muhal-richard-abrams-dead-idiosyncratic-pianist-and-composer.html

Muhal Richard Abrams, 87, Individualistic Pianist and Composer, Is Dead

Muhal Richard Abrams at Alice Tully Hall in Manhattan in 2004. — **Credit: Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times**

by Howard Mandel

November 1, 2017

New York Times

Muhal Richard Abrams, the autodidactic pianist, composer and educator who was known both for his diverse, unclassifiable compositions and improvisations and for establishing and sustaining the influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Richarda Abrams.

As a pianist, Mr. Abrams could spontaneously weave references to historical jazz styles — including ragtime, stride piano, the compositions of Duke Ellington, swing and bebop — together with his own fleet modernism, far-reaching harmonies and dissonance.

As a composer, he represented a similarly wide range. Steeped in the blues, he also created works for chamber ensembles and orchestras, sometimes but not always including improvisation.

Mr. Abrams, who was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010 and was the first recipient of Denmark’s generous Jazzpar Award in 1990, was critically acclaimed for the breadth, depth and originality of his music.

In his book “The Freedom Principle” (1984), the critic John Litweiler wrote that Mr. Abrams’s phrasing was “turbulent, broken, constantly busy, yet his soloing sounds flowing, freely lyrical.”

“Abrams has never lost his early wonder at the vast possibilities of free music,” he added.

Mr. Abrams explored those possibilities with the Experimental Band, which he organized in Chicago in 1962 to workshop new compositions and arrangements by a coterie of like-minded instrumentalists.

He helped found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians collective in 1965, teaming up with the pianist Jodie Christian, the trumpeter Philip Cohran (who died this year) and the drummer Steve McCall.

By not imposing or promoting a single aesthetic but instead encouraging unconventional originality, the association, which presented concerts and conferences, became an incubator for the genre-defying group the Art Ensemble of Chicago as well as the multi-instrumentalists and composers Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill, along with others who channeled the high-energy “free” jazz of the early 1960s into more organized works.

Mr. Abrams leading the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at Frederick P. Rose Hall in Manhattan in 2010. — **Credit: Matthew Murphy for The New York Times**

The first generation of A.A.C.M. musicians concentrated on sounds themselves, often employing so-called little instruments like bells, toy noisemakers and whistles to complement their performances. They investigated structured alternatives to standard song forms as well as the long, declamatory improvisations favored by New York City’s jazz avant-garde, exploring dissonance, serialism and polyphony, 20th-century concert music and non-Western idioms.

As Mr. Abrams did in his 1969 recording “Young at Heart / Wise in Time,” A.A.C.M. members acknowledged jazz, blues and other forms of African-American music as their heritage, but adopted Duke Ellington’s refusal to be defined by the past and Ornette Coleman’s break from chord progressions as an infallible guideline for improvisations.

Their presentations might involve performance art activities, multidisciplinary collaborations, abstract musical systems, newly invented instruments or anything else under the Art Ensemble’s inclusive motto, “Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future.”

Mr. Abrams was the first president of the A.A.C.M. and until his death was regarded as its eminence. Through its chapters in Chicago and New York, the organization continues to present concerts, provide promotional support and offer free training in theory, composition and instrumental mastery to young musicians.

Richard Louis Abrams was born in Chicago on Sept. 19, 1930. He was the second of nine children of Milton Abrams, a self-employed handyman, and his wife, Edna, who took the boy with her to weekly piano lessons at the Y.M.C.A.

Mr. Abrams took the name Muhal in 1967. Interviewed by the French magazine Jazz in 1973, he said that the word, its origin unclear, means “number one.”

A product of Chicago’s public schools, Mr. Abrams spent time in a reformatory for fighting and truancy, then entered DuSable High School. Although DuSable is noted for graduating many successful jazz musicians, he was more interested in sports and did not benefit from its music program. He left school in 1946, began studying with a pianist from his church and enrolled in Chicago Musical College.

By 1948 Mr. Abrams was playing professionally and engaged in a disciplined course of self-directed study of a broad range of subjects.

Mr. Abrams after a solo performance the Abrons Art Center in Manhattan 2010. — **Credit: Joshua Bright for The New York Times**

“I was determined to teach myself because that way I could go directly at what I wanted,” he was quoted as saying in “A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music,” a comprehensive history by George E. Lewis, a professor of American music at Columbia University and a MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow who first gained attention as an A.A.C.M. trombonist.

Mr. Abrams’s interests included not just music theory but also occult arts, esoteric religions and painting. Later in his career he taught composition and improvisation at Columbia University, Syracuse University, Stanford University and elsewhere.

In 1955 he began writing arrangements for the Chicago pianist King Fleming’s band and occasionally sitting in with it. In 1957 he played on, and wrote compositions for, “Daddy-O Presents MJT+3,” an album organized by the popular radio host Daddy-O Daylie.

Soon after that, the Chess Records producer Charles Stepney introduced Mr. Abrams to Joseph Schillinger’s two-volume work “The Schillinger System of Musical Composition,” which offered methods of composition based on mathematical operations.

Mr. Abrams worked in commercial bands and stage shows, at church socials and as a sideman for jazz headliners touring the Midwest. He eventually joined the Chicago saxophonist Eddie Harris’s band.

His interests in contemporary composition, electronic music and self-determination led him to convene the Experimental Band and eventually to help form the A.A.C.M., whose first meeting was held in the basement apartment that Mr. Abrams shared with his wife, Peggy Abrams.

Black artist groups and jazz musicians’ collectives were a nationwide phenomenon in the 1960s, but none evinced the staying power of the A.A.C.M., which conducted programs like the A.A.C.M. School, which opened in fall of 1967. Mr. Abrams attributed the organization’s strength to Chicago’s relative isolation from mainstream commercial pressures and temptations.

An indication of the collective’s impact on late-’60s Chicago culture was the casting of Mr. Abrams as a black militant in “Medium Cool,” Haskell Wexler’s fictional film that centered on the turbulence surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Muhal Richard Abrams, left, Jack DeJohnette and Henry Threadgill celebrating the 2015 release of their recording “Made in Chicago: Live at the Chicago Jazz Festival.” — **Credit: Sam Polcer for The New York Times**

Still, their ambitions led several members of the A.A.C.M. to depart for Europe in 1970. That same year, Mr. Abrams was among the collective’s musicians who performed their first New York concert as the Creative Construction Company. Judging New York City more open to new music than Chicago, Mr. Abrams moved there in 1976 and became involved in the burgeoning “loft jazz” movement.

By then, he had appeared on a half-dozen albums as a leader and more than twice that many led by A.A.C.M. colleagues or Mr. Harris. From 1977 to 1997, Mr. Abrams released an album of his own almost every year, including a dozen on the Italian label Black Saint.

His most recent recording, released on ECM in 2015, was “Made in Chicago,” with his onetime protégés the drummer Jack DeJohnette, the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and Mr. Threadgill.

Mr. Abrams recorded and performed in every small-group format from duets to octets. He also composed works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

A multi-instrumentalist, he played clarinet as well as piano on “Levels and Degrees of Light” (1967) and synthesizer on “The Hearinga Suite” (1999), for which he conducted a 17-piece big band. When he was inducted as an N.E.A. Jazz Master in a ceremony in New York, he performed an unaccompanied piano improvisation that segued into a score featuring members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Abrams is survived by his wife; two sisters, Dolores Abrams and Alice Rollins; four brothers, Milton, John, Michael and Mott Christopher; three grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Mr. Abrams’s music was sometimes criticized as remote or overly introspective. Reviewing a 1983 solo concert by Mr. Abrams at the Guggenheim Museum, Bernard Holland, a classical music critic for The New York Times, wrote, “One had the feeling of a highly literate but isolated meditation between player and piano, but one in which the process of the music seemed clearer and more natural to him that it did to his listeners, or at least this listener.”

Mr. Abrams shrugged off such remarks. “Art has to bring the abstract world into a much clearer view for viewers or listeners,” he told Musician magazine in 1990.

As a member of grant-processing panels for the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, he endorsed openness to unusual creative efforts, negotiating guideline revisions that promoted greater receptivity to idiosyncratic jazz notation and expression.

“Something new is rejected, but I think that has to do with one’s personal psyche,” he said. “People enjoy the familiar, and they have to wait a bit to enjoy the new.”

A correction was made on

Nov. 2, 2017

An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the surname of a disc jockey who organized a 1957 album on which Mr. Abrams played. He was Daddy-O Daylie, not Dailey.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 2, 2017, Section B, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Muhal Richard Abrams, Genre-Defying Composer and Educator, Dies at 87. Order Reprints Today’s Paper

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/11/01/561351129/muhal-richard-abrams-a-sweepingly-influential-jazz-artist-has-died-at-age-87

The Musicians

Muhal Richard Abrams, A Sweepingly Influential Jazz Artist, Has Died At Age 87

November 1, 2017

Heard on All Things Considered

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The late pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams, performing at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York in 2004. Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

Muhal Richard Abrams, a pianist and composer of staunch independence and sweeping influence, inseparable from his role as a founding father of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians [AACM], died on Sunday at his home in New York City. He was 87.

His daughter, Richarda Abrams, confirmed his death. No cause was given.

Abrams was a brilliant, mostly self-taught pianist who combined a strong foundation in the blues with keen attunement to the shadow art of vibration and overtone. While he came up in a hard-swinging jazz context, and created some of his early work in that style, he was serious about a non-idiomatic approach to improvisation. He is regarded as a paragon by some of the most acclaimed pianists now in circulation, including Jason Moran, Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer.

Among the roughly two dozen albums that Abrams released over the last 50 years are several that feature him in a solo piano setting, illuminating both the percussive rumble of his touch and the oblique yet holistic logic of his improvisations. You can hear this signature as clearly on an early effort like Afrisong, released on the India Navigation label in 1975, as on a late work like Vision Toward Essence, recorded in 1998 and released on Pi Recordings in 2007.

Abrams' piano can be heard on an array of albums by members of the AACM, including 1977's Nonaah, by the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, and 3 Compositions Of New Jazz, the 1968 debut by saxophonist Anthony Braxton. To hear an excellent example of Abrams' catalytic genius as a sideman, seek out a live Braxton album on the hatOLOGY label, Quintet (Basel) 1977.

As a composer, Abrams worked in a billowing sprawl of settings, from solo to quartet to big band and beyond. His large-canvas works have been performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra, among others. He also wrote chamber pieces for ensembles like The String Trio of New York, Bang on a Can and Kronos Quartet, which premiered his String Quartet No. 2 in 1985 at Carnegie Hall's intimate space now known as Weill Recital Hall.

Some of the standout titles in the Abrams discography are large-ensemble works loosely in the jazz continuum, including two back-to-back releases, The Hearinga Suite (1989) and Blu Blu Blu (1991). "On the basis of these thoroughly engaging works alone," writes the critic Gary Giddins in his book Visions Of Jazz, "he must be accounted a preeminent figure in the development of big band music in the period since the '60s."

But Abrams will probably be best remembered for his co-founding and stewardship of the AACM, which has been a stalwart presence in the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Established on the South Side of Chicago, it began in part as an extension of Abrams' Experimental Band, which he first convened in the early 1960s.

"I needed a place to experiment with the things I wanted to do with music," Abrams told me in 2008. "So I organized the Experimental Band, the forerunner of the AACM. And I fortunately attracted musicians who were interested in that. It included quite a few of the musicians that you know today that are very accomplished in what they do. The reason they could accomplish what they did is that they found a workshop where they could experiment and learn and test themselves as to what could be done with things they find out, in terms of research and study."

In a recent conversation, Roscoe Mitchell recalled the Experimental Band as a workshop of sorts. "Because you were invited to write pieces for the big band," he said. "Or bring your existing pieces in, have them played. And then if there was something you wanted to change about the piece, something you weren't happy with, you could bring that back the next week, have it played, and so on and so forth."

The AACM, which was formally established in 1965, mobilized around a handful of core principles, including an independence from the commercial apparatus of the music business and a stated commitment to original music. From early on, the organization flew a banner of Great Black Music, but under that banner, a diversity of voices and perspectives was welcomed, and even insisted upon.

"We believe that in general, in terms of humanity, we are first given individual rights to self-realize, which was part of our focus in terms of philosophy," Abrams told me. "The AACM is basically a group of individuals who agree to agree, and sometimes not to agree. Our cohesiveness has been intact because we respect each other's individualism."

Richard Lewis Abrams was born in Chicago on Sept. 19, 1930, to Milton and Edna Abrams, the second of nine children. He attended DuSable High School, but was compelled early on by his own interests.

Columbia University professor George Lewis, in his 2008 book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press), notes that Abrams had an early mentor in the trumpeter Will Jackson, a Jimmie Lunceford band alumnus who lived down the street and taught Abrams some of the fundamentals of orchestration. Jackson also introduced Abrams to the pianist Walter "King" Fleming, who became an early influence, and incorporated some of the young musician's arrangements in his band.

Abrams became a fixture in jam sessions at the Cotton Club, on the South Side. He made his first appearance on record in 1957 with the MJT+3, led by the drummer Walter Perkins. But he also became engrossed by the theories of Joseph Schillinger, whose mathematical and relational approach to music theory struck a deep chord. (Like many musicians in his orbit, Abrams was introduced to Schillinger's theories by Charles Stepney, a house arranger and producer for Chess Records.)

As the Experimental Band branched into the early AACM, Abrams maintained his role as a center of gravity and a source of counsel. "Muhal was the inspiration," the drummer Jack DeJohnette told me in 2015. "He helped us to be ourselves. He was curious about everything: numerology, orchestration. He taught himself everything, and listened to all kinds of music. All the pianists. He studied all of them. And he found something in there which gave him the freedom to explore the music and write and compose the music he's been doing all these many years."

Abrams moved to New York in 1976. That move, writes Gary Giddins, "hastened the internationalization of a music that had received little more than token support in the United States (outside of Chicago), despite having already scored high marks in Europe." Abrams created a New York chapter of the AACM and served as its president.

In time, a cascade of accolades found its way to Abrams. In 1990, Copenhagen's Danish Jazz Center created the JazzPar prize, a prestigious award, and selected Abrams as the first recipient. He was also a 2008 USA Prudential Fellow; a 2012 Living Legacy Awardee, bestowed by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation; and the recipient of two awards from the Doris Duke Foundation.

In 2010, when Abrams was named an NEA Jazz Master, he performed a solo piano improvisation at the induction ceremony and then conducted a performance of "2000 Plus The Twelfth Step," a piece originally commissioned and premiered by the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra.

In addition to his daughter, Abrams is survived by his wife, Peggy Abrams; four brothers, Milton, Jr., John, Michael and Mott Christopher; two sisters, Dolorez Abrams and Alice Rollins. His son, Richard, Jr., is deceased, but left him three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Abrams made his most recent notable appearance on record in the company of DeJohnette, Mitchell and the multi-reedist Henry Threadgill as well as the bassist Larry Gray. That album, Made in Chicago, was recorded at the 2013 Chicago Jazz Festival and released on ECM in 2015. Its release preceded another round of performances, including a momentous stand at the Newport Jazz Festival.

But the breadth of Abrams' reach may best be characterized not by a discography, a list of awards or a tally of performances, but rather by the widespread adoption of an attitude. I recently considered this legacy while attending the 2017 Ojai Music Festival, which was programmed by Vijay Iyer. The intensity of creative exchange at that event, across the usual boundaries of "jazz" and "classical" and "new music," stood as a testament to the durability of Abrams' vision.

And as if that weren't enough, Abrams performed on the festival as well, creating a mesmerizing hour-long improvisation with Mitchell and Lewis, as The Trio. It was my last hour in Abrams' company, musically, and I'm grateful that it was documented.

Ojai Music Festival YouTube

Muhal Richard Abrams

Ojai Music Festival 2017: The Trio, Sunday

Ojai Music Festival

June 16, 2017 Sunday, June 11, 2017: 10:00am- 11:15am Libbey Bowl Free Community Concert

The Trio: Muhal Richard Abrams, piano | Roscoe Mitchell, woodwinds | George Lewis, trombone and electronics

*** Program Notes: http://www.ojaifestival.org/2017-ojai...

Muhal Richard Abrams:

http://www.muhalrichardabrams.com/

Roscoe Mitchell: http://www.ojaifestival.org/roscoe-mi...

George Lewis: http://music.columbia.edu/bios/george...

Ojai Music Festival: http://ojaifestival.org/

https://www.pointofdeparture.org/archives/PoD-3/PoD-3_TurnAround.html

The Turnaround!

Previously Published Articles, Essays and Reviews
by Bill Shoemaker

jazztimes

This article originally appeared inthe March 1997 issue of JazzTimes. Appended to the article are the textsfor the Equipment and Listening Pleasures sidebars that were part of the magazine's format at the time, as well as the cited 1995 text.

Muhal Richard Abrams: Focus On The Vastness

Given the importance of Muhal Richard Abrams' role in American music over the past thirty years (for a synopsis, see 25 Who Mattered Most, in the September '95, Silver Anniversary issue of JT), there has been astonishingly little written about him in the US jazz press beyond the occasional record review. The reason is simple; Abrams' music and ideas, to appropriate his comments about his listening habits (see side bar), don't fit in the box. Abrams' newest album, Song For All (Black Saint), which features a sterling septet and, on the title piece, his daughter Richarda Abrams' rich contralto voice, is a case in point. Not only is each of the program's eight bold compositions thoroughly different from the others, their substance can only be approximated by the current critical lexicon of glib alliterations and funked-up hyphenated terms. It's not that the music is unapproachable; it's just spin-proof.

Nor is Abrams unapproachable. He is firm about the ground rules for interviews: he only wants to talk about the present, he doesn't want to comment on others, and he wants both the questions and the answers printed. In conversation, however, Abrams is engaging -- he is also an acutely active listener. He has the same impressive presence on the phone as he does in person, he has a warm resonant voice even when he's telling you you've got it wrong, and he has a pure laugh. And, he's willing to talk as long as it takes; the rub is that only about a half-hour of conversation will fit into the 2,000-word box.

Bill Shoemaker: It's been thirty years since the formation of the Experimental Band and the AACM, and even though one can consider your work as a composer and a pianist independently of the cultural, political, and economic issues addressed by the AACM, your work takes on a broader meaning, at least for me, when you also consider your leadership off the bandstand. So, for me, your activities provide a measure of the advancements creative music has made in the United States. What I see are advancements on what I would call an institutional level, in that the Chicago Jazz Festival presents a 30th anniversary Experimental Band performance, the Library of Congress, through its McKim Fund, commissions a work for violin and piano, facilitating an Orchestra performance in Washington, and so on. But, those occasions are rare, they take an extraordinary effort to realize, and there is not a corresponding set of market-driven forces to extend these gains. How do you assess the advancement of creative music over the past thirty years? What are the issues that you feel should be addressed?

Muhal Richard Abrams: First of all, I think we should focus on what one might view as one's mission, a path that one is all about. I think that focus on the music is not about success, and things of that nature. Of course, if you engage in a particular profession, you want to make a living at it. That has been pretty equal to my work through the years. I have subsisted from performing and composing music. That in itself, to me, is success. On the other hand, in terms of the music, I think the fact that the music is going, and the musicians are composing and performing, seems to focus on another area, an area that says that consistency in one's chosen work brings it own type of return. That's the important thing. We're talking right now; you know what I mean, because I'm still here. Right?

Shoemaker: And you took the call.

Abrams: I'm still here and you, thankfully, seem to be a person who appreciates what is going on and what has gone on before. I think that is equal to what the input has been. I think sometimes we have to look a situation for what it really is, and what outside forces would imagine it to be. The creation of forms sometimes gets confused with the imitation of appearances. They're both valid. Do you understand?

Shoemaker: I'm letting it sink in.

Abrams: Let me say this way. The creation of forms in a concentrated manner is a slow process, but the imitation of appearances is a quick process. General public perception and media focus are on the quick process because they don't focus long enough to see the creation of forms. That's why what I said first is the real answer to your question: what is the focus of the practitioner. That's the important thing, because the type of return one seeks determines his output.

Muhal01

Shoemaker: For me, that's the difference between commercial music and creative music. Commercial music is a commercial enterprise that involves music, something motivated by a financial return, something that's fueled by the bottom line, whereas creative music is something that someone gets into for the long haul for a much different set of purposes.

Abrams: Yeah, but I would also say this. It's ambiguous when you speak of creative music in that way. If you are speaking about people engaged in creative activity that extends beyond the mainstream, then OK. But, there are a lot of people doing creative things, and some of them are in the mainstream.

Shoemaker: Sure. Mainstream doesn't necessarily mean commercial. That's a good point.

Abrams: I think when an activity extends into the area where you find newly created forms, created from a personal point of view, then that's an extension. That's extended creative music. It's not totally dependent on the imitation of appearances. All music is good in the sense that somebody likes it, so I don't think one thing can cast an indictment on another. But, I think that when we approach the question of whether this particular activity, or that particular activity, has been successful, we have to assess the focus of the practitioner. If one engages in a purely creative endeavor in an attempt to create new and personal forms, then that person would have difficulties if they placed reward before the work. If that person is concerned with being accepted, they will have difficulties in a purely creative endeavor. That's why I say that the focus of the practitioner is equal to the output.

Shoemaker: How would you characterize your own focus?

Abrams: My own focus? Oh ... I love to create situations that I've never encountered before, which is not the easiest thing in the world because we're creatures of habit. There are so many possibilities. I have learned more about possibilities than I could ever use. I'm engaged in that, while at the same time, I am having a healthy respect for the past work of others. It lends itself to a whole music world. Does that answer your question?

Shoemaker: It connects to a sense I have about your work, that there are very few specific statements you can make about your work in terms of approach, method, or style, that hold up for long, that aren't undermined by your next work. To me, your music is about discovery, searching...

Abrams: That's not what I said, though I understand how you would interpret it that way. I'm not searching for anything. I'm addressing the whole revelation of creating a new way of doing something. I'm aware that there is more there than I could ever perceive or create in one lifetime. That's the way it is. There's too much there for everybody. But, the idea that it's there and that I can challenge myself to create some bit of personal concept of that vast storehouse of possibilities ... that's what I'm saying. It's not a search. It's a continuous work or effort to see a personal achievement in regards to what I see as the vastness of possibilities. OK?

Muhal02

Shoemaker: That's what's unique, in my interpretation, about your perspective, that the past is part of these possibilities, that you can make it new, and in effect the past becomes part of the present and future.

Abrams: True, the past is in there, because no one is above mimicry. We're not above mimicry because the imitation of appearances is part of our education. Mimicry is educational when someone wants to learn about a particular style. Take jazz -- that's what it is, a particular style of music. To learn about jazz, one has to investigate the collections of languages that have been developed and called jazz. So, that type of mimicry is like learning French or Spanish. You have to go study Spanish...

Shoemaker: Do the exercises, learn the grammar...

Abrams: Learn the grammar and learn all the parts to the language. Now, maybe your intention is to take the Spanish and combine it with the French and the German and the Portuguese and the Japanese and the Chinese you have learned, in order to become more appreciative and fascinated by the fact of languages. Then, you're in another area completely, because you're confronting the wonder of language itself, although you're aware, through the imitation of appearances, about these particular languages.

Shoemaker: Is there a point where the sophistication of usage from these language pools reaches a point where it becomes the creation of new forms?

Abrams: Yes, you can enter the world of creating forms and creating languages that way. Let's say we're having a conversation and I say two words in Spanish, three in Chinese, five in Japanese, three in German, and then I just made up some other stuff, and give it to you in one statement (MRA attempts such a statement, gets tongue-tied, and laughs) ... I didn't say it was easy. But, the idea is that at that point, you're starting to create a new form out of existing language pools you have learned from mimicry. In terms of my own view, my respect is keen for what I perceive to be the best in any particular style I have encountered. I have a healthy respect for it, but I'm aware that it was formed out of the raw material in that vast storehouse of styles and forms, so I know it's possible to create personal approaches. What you just said a few minutes ago is correct in terms of the work becoming different, personal. But, creating something personal is for your own purposes, it's not a case of trying to convince somebody to hear things your way. It's personal. It's a very slow process because you have to wade through your habits in order to reach a small portion of newly created form.

Shoemaker: Do you end up not using a lot of material because it's too imitative?

Abrams: No. I don't have any throwaways. From time and experience you learn how to refine your approach. I don't have any waste. If I'm writing some music on paper or performing it in an improvised solo concert, once it's there I don't take it away. If I'm performing a solo concert, the first note I hit becomes a challenge to make something. That's that.

Shoemaker: The process propels you to a conclusion in the work.

Abrams: To a continuum. Conclusion ... well, I don't know about that word. You stop at a certain point, but I don't whether I'd consider that a conclusion. You just had to stop.

Shoemaker: It's not that it's done; it's just you that's done.

Abrams: Yeah. The human thing comes in. You say, that's enough, I've played long enough, the piece is long enough, which is a form of conclusion I guess, but not the conclusion. Our minds and imaginations can go much further than we can physically. Usually. I know if I could sustain ten straight hours of playing -- oh, man. But, something is going to get in the way. The brain is going to say, wait a minute, that's enough for today. But, the process goes on.

Muhal Richard Abrams' Equipment:

Abrams does not endorse any instruments. Generally, in a concert grand piano, Abrams looks for "balanced registers, graded well for a nice ride up the scale." Abrams prefers "multi-timbral synthesizers that give me a lot of voices, and that has good sample sounds."

Muhal Richard Abrams' Listening Pleasures:

"It would be impossible to name just three recordings. I listen to a range of things all the time. I listen to so-called classical music, mainstream jazz music, the extended creative music, Spanish music, all kinds of music -- and it's all going on at the same time. And, then there's the silent listening that I do, if you know what I mean. I don't think my listening habits will fit into the box."

25 Who Mattered: Muhal Richard Abrams
by Bill Shoemaker

For its September 1995 Silver Anniversary issue, JazzTimes asked five writers to submit a lengthy list of names for consideration for 25 Who Mattered, and chose five from each. The others selected from Bill Shoemaker’s list were Steve Lacy, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and World Saxophone Quartet.

To discuss Muhal Richard Abrams’ impact on jazz’s last twenty-five years, a distinction between influence and usage must be made. Usage is mere appropriation. Countless saxophonists use John Coltrane’s vocabulary, but few have been sufficiently influenced by Coltrane’s quest for pure spiritual expression through a rapidly evolving art to discard Coltrane’s mannerisms for an original lexicon. Something of the inverse can be said of this founding father of the AACM, the Chicago collective that delineated post-Coleman jazz during the second half of the ‘60s. No one as pivotal to a jazz movement as Abrams has spawned so few imitators. But his influence -- the power to sway artists and affect the course of events purely by the example of his artistry, not just the stuff of his music -- is enormous. Abrams’ example has not only touched composers as diverse as Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, and Edward Wilkerson, and pianists ranging from Claudine Amina Myers to Don Pullen. He has also taken the polemics of artist self-determination he articulated through the AACM to countless conferences, grant peer review panels, and meetings of the board of directors for the National Jazz Service Organization, of which he is a charter member. Abrams’ example has touched everyone from the student musician to the corporate suit, and the music has benefited from it.

Still, were it not for his staggeringly diverse body of work, Abrams would not be such a formidable force. Abrams’ is an oeuvre that includes solo works utilizing piano, gongs, and tuned percussion, octets with six percussionists, piano duets, and numerable other departures from conventional jazz ensemble configurations -- his big band has even featured a whistler. Beginning with Levels and Degrees of Light -- a program that featured soprano voice, recitation, and Abrams playing clarinet as much as he played piano, this '67 date proved to be as portentous as the other historic albums in Delmark’s first wave of AACM dates – Abrams’ recordings have melded uncompromising spiritual purpose with exacting, erudite execution. Take the five orchestra albums Abrams has recorded for Black Saint in the last fifteen years as a representative sample: Mama and Daddy; Blues Forever; Rejoicing With The Light; The Hearinga Suite; and Blu, Blu, Blu. Whether delving into deep blues or shifting clusters through vividly contrasting instrument groupings, Abrams’s orchestra works are like ingeniously designed pieces of furniture, where the tight fit of the interlocking parts is reinforced by the mass of the wood and the pull of gravity. By joining abstract forms and traditional colors, particularly Chicago blues and Ellingtonian sepias, in unlikely combinations, Abrams has produced some of the most rewarding orchestra music of the past quarter-century. Still, that’s just one of his art’s many facets.

Muhal Richard Abrams

Pianist, Composer, Educator

Portrait of Muhal Abrams — **Muhal Richard Abrams. Photo by Tom Pich**

Bio

"I am honored to be chosen as an NEA Jazz Master. It is humbling, as well as encouraging, to have my name placed among the illustrious list of previous NEA Jazz Masters."

Muhal Richard Abrams—pianist, composer, administrator, and educator—was predominately a self-taught musician. He was highly respected by critics and musical peers as both a pianist and composer in a variety of musical styles, including jazz, extended forms of improvisation, and classical music.

In the 1950s, Abrams wrote arrangements for pianist King Fleming's Jazz Orchestra. From 1957-59, he played hard bop in Walter Perkins' group MJT + 3 (Modern Jazz Two Plus Three) and accompanied leading jazz performers during their visits to Chicago, including Kenny Durham, Art Farmer, Hank Mobley, Ray Nance, Max Roach, and Sonny Stitt. In 1961, Abrams began his foray into extended forms of composition and improvisation in his Experimental Band, which included musicians such as saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman.

Abrams was a cofounder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965, founder of the AACM School of Music, and president of the AACM New York Chapter. AACM, which has played a crucial role in the development of original approaches to extended forms of composition and improvisation, has produced such distinguished members as Anthony Braxton, Kalaparush Ahra Difda, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall, Amina Claudine Myers, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, and members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Abrams first traveled to Europe in 1973 while still residing in Chicago. After relocating to New York in 1977, he traveled extensively to Europe and Japan, gradually acquiring a greater international reputation. In 1990 he became the first recipient of the prestigious Danish JAZZPAR Award, and almost a decade later Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a proclamation declaring April 11, 1999, to be Muhal Richard Abrams Day. In 2008, he was chosen by United States Artists to be a Prudential Fellow in the field of music. In 2010, he was selected for the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Abrams' compositional prowess was evident even beyond jazz. His Tranversion Op. 6 was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and his String Quartet No. 2 was performed by renowned chamber ensemble Kronos Quartet.

During the last 30 years, Abrams taught jazz composition and improvisational classes at Columbia University, Syracuse University, Stanford University, Mills College, University of California in San Diego, the New England Conservatory in Boston, and the BMI Composers Workshop in New York City. He also taught internationally in Finland, Canada, and Italy.

Selected Discography:

Levels and Degrees of Light, Delmark, 1967
Spiral Live at Montreux 1978, Novus, 1978
Rejoicing with the Light, Black Saint, 1983
UMO Jazz Orchestra, Plays the Music of Muhal Richard Abrams, Slam, 1988
Streaming, Pi, 2005

Interview by Molly Murphy for the NEA
July 24, 2009
Edited by Don Ball

BEGINNINGS

NEA: You were born in 1930 in Chicago.

Muhal Richard Abrams: Yes.

NEA: Was music a significant part of your environment growing up? Were you going to clubs and hearing people playing in bars, or was it mostly recorded music?

Muhal Richard Abrams: [Music was] just about everywhere. I mean, musicians were playing in the neighborhood. There were musicians that had instruments like saxophones and stuff like that. And a lot of these people weren't actually professional musicians in the sense that they were out actively making a living playing music, but they were people who aspired to sound like Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. So they'd buy these saxophones and they would play them. So my contact to the idea of performing music sort of started there, although I didn't start then.

NEA: When did you start?

Muhal Richard Abrams: I started very late. I started in 1948 actually. Prior to that, I was dealing in sports and stuff like that.

NEA: What made you decide to start?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Well, I guess it grew in me through all those years. I would encounter on occasion professional musicians playing, and they had a lot of clubs near a 43rd Street. It's a big street in Chicago, on the south side. And they had a lot of clubs. Muddy Waters, all those kind of people, were playing, and I would go stand at the door. I was too young to go in. They kicked the door open in the summertime, wide open, so I would just stand there with my mouth wide open, listening to him. I had no idea that I would be a musician later. This was very early, but every time I'd hear the music, I was like a magnet. I would just go right and just stand there, mesmerized and would wonder, "How did they do that? " -- How were they were making those notes? What are they doing? What do they know to do that?

By '48, I decided one day, it just came over me. I walked out of the high school, third year or something like that, I walked out of the high school and I said that I wanted to go to a music school. I was never going back to a regular school again, and that's what I did. I went downtown to Roosevelt College and enrolled to study music.

NEA: Anybody could enroll?

Muhal Richard Abrams: No, they were just classes. You didn't have to be in the school as a full time student. You could take the music classes. I enrolled in the Roosevelt and I decided after a short time that wasn't enough for me because, by that time, I had started to perform, you know, improvising. I started to perform in the street with the musicians, just on the scene with the musicians because, at that time, jazz music wasn't in schools then. You learned it from recordings and being on the scene playing with other musicians, and that's the way you learned jazz music. So the university, Roosevelt, they didn't have the street approach. They had a more technical approach, which was okay.

The thing that really caused me to decide to leave was I was in a class once with a harmony teacher, and the teacher asked me did I know some standard piece. He knew I was playing locally around town and he asked me did I know some piece. I told him yes. So he said to me, "Yes, well a friend of mine was on a gig last night and they called this piece, and he didn't know it."

So he asked me, "How do you chord that piece? How do you make the chords to that piece? " So I showed him and then it dawned on me at the time that he was really talking about himself. He knew this theory but he didn't know [how to improvise on the song]. So I decided to leave the school. No offense against him but I decided it wasn't what I was after.

So from there on, I taught myself.

NEA: How did you have access to a piano? Did you have a piano in your home?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Not originally. What did I do for that first piano? Somehow, I scared together some money and bought a second-hand piano. I did odds and ends, jobs and things like that. I bought a second-hand piano, and that was the first piano I had. It was a studio upright piano, and I also used to service the piano because I didn't have money enough to have someone tune it or to make repairs. I taught myself to do that.

NEA: Do you remember the first time you played a really incredible instrument, like a grand piano that was in fantastic condition and the difference in that feeling and that touch?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Yeah, in later years, as I can't pinpoint a year, but it happened when I began to travel. The first very great piano that I played was at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, Joe Siegel's Jazz Showcase. That was the first year. In fact, some of us were the first musicians to participate. They started as jam sessions, and then Joe Siegel developed them into concert performances, first with local musicians, then he started to bring in national musicians -- you know, Max Roach, Miles Davis, those kinds of people. It grew into a very educational venue with a good instrument to play on. So I advanced my musical education further by participating in those sessions.

NEA: In your late teens, were you gravitating mostly towards jazz or were you playing whatever was available?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Let me say this. Blues and jazz were all the same then. It was all the same. There was no separation. There were musicians who only played blues and musicians who only played jazz. But the jazz musicians mostly all played blues because you had to learn the blues, rhythm and blues, to really qualify in a jazz setting. You had to because the blues, to most so-called jazz musicians, the blues is basic to what the feeling is that they feel they need to express jazz music.

So it wasn't separate. We played blues gigs, especially around Chicago. We played blues gigs and regular jazz gigs, dance gigs and all that kinda stuff, where you played standard pieces for people to dance and what not like that because people did a lot of dancing to the music, in the '40s, '50s, all through the '60s on up. The people did a lot of dancing.

INFLUENCES

NEA: Tell me about some of the pianists who influenced you. I think Bud Powell was someone who you admired. Describe what in his playing really captured your attention.

Muhal Richard Abrams: His energy, his timing, his technical facility and his wealth of original ideas that were based on the bebop idiom. I think Bud Powell had an influence during that period. Bud Powell had an influence on most jazz pianists. But the king of influence, it was Art Tatum, who influenced even Bud.

I'd have to include Hank in one of my influences for several reasons. Hank Jones is one of the few masters, along with Ahmad Jamal and Randy Weston. They're among the few masters of that period left on the scene, in my estimation. You know, there are a lot of great pianists, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea. But I'm talking about from that period of output that influenced quite a few of us. So I would have to add Hank to that. He's a master and he's been one for many, many years.

NEA: What about Monk?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Oh, of course. Monk influenced all of us. Hank, he influenced all of us.

NEA: Did you ever hear Monk play live?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Yes. Of course, when you spoke of Bud Powell, we have to get back to that period there: Monk, Bud Powell, Duke Ellington, Jay P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts, Jelly Roll. Those were influences. Tatum takes you back into that, and beyond too, when you look at Tatum. So all those people were influenced in terms of the piano. And also I have been influenced by classical pianists also.

NEA: Who?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Rachmaninoff. I have a recording of Rachmaninoff playing his own pieces. I've always studied classical music and jazz music once I started to technically study. I studied both. I've always been fascinated by the idea of composing and writing for different-sized ensembles, including the symphony orchestra. So I had to teach myself how to respect those structures. So a part of teaching oneself is to listen to the types of organizations or groups or orchestras that you want to write for and to determine how to use the apparatus properly, so listening is a great part of it.

THE EXPERIMENTAL BAND

NEA: In 1961, you formed the Experimental Band. Can you tell me about why you put that together?

Muhal Richard Abrams: The Experimental Band, I put that together because I had encountered a series of study methods: the Schillinger method [a musical composition system created by Joseph Schillinger based on mathematical processes] was one. I had compiled a lot of information from studying the Schillinger system and other areas of study also. I had amassed all of this information about composing and it wasn't necessarily a mainstream approach, so I needed some apparatus in order to write this music and express it. So as a result, I organized the Experimental Band for that purpose, and also to attract other composers so they could develop their skills in writing for the group ensemble also.

NEA: How did it feel to have a band that was a great platform for your compositions?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Well, it was gratifying and encouraging and it just grew. As a result, other composers within the group started to develop.

NEA: Where were you having opportunities to perform?

Muhal Richard Abrams: The audience was most of the people on the south side and north side [of Chicago]. Mainly our initial audience was all black. And then we would attract students and people like that, so the audience became mixed.

We didn't play clubs. We would print little cards and things and we could get them out to the people. It was very easy because we were all in close proximity. We used to put posters on poles, and we would perform at venues that we would rent or that were donated. There were a lot of donated spaces during that period. Churches, art centers. Even a child daycare center on the off days.

The first venue was, believe it or not, a lounge that featured regular jazz days in it. The C and C Lounge it was called, a big stage and big dance floor. Every night in the week, they had local musicians playing mainstream-type things and different kind of shows, comedians and all stuff like that. But in the daytime, we had access to it in order to rehearse. And that was our first rehearsal venue for the Experimental Band.

AACM

NEA: Tell me about founding the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

Muhal Richard Abrams: Four musicians got together and started to talk -- Jodie Christian, Phillip Cohran, Steve McCall, and myself. Jodie Christian is a very fine pianist in Chicago. Phil Cohran is a brass player and plays other instruments, harp, whatever like that. And Steve McCall, percussionist. And myself, you know, pianist/composer. We got together one day and sat down to discuss expanding the Experimental Band idea into an organization that would include any of the musicians on the south side that wanted to participate in a venture, whereas we would compose and perform original music. So we talked about it and talked about. As a result of us working the idea up, we decided to convene a meeting and invite musicians on the south side in. These were all musicians on the south side, black musicians. We'd invite them in to see who among them was open to the idea of having an organization that just dealt with original music, no standards, just original music. It didn't preclude them from doing things outside of the organization. We didn't have anything to do with that, but to concentrate on original music and develop a business sense of the music world. In other words, to start to take control of our destinies as musicians. The musicians who were open to the idea expressed it at the meeting and they stayed. So the result was the group that became the AACM as we know it.

NEA: How many members did you have at the beginning?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Initially, we must've had 30, 40 people I know.

NEA: How'd you get the word out?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Easy. We were all in close proximity. We all knew each other anyway. We just knew the musicians on the south side. Just called them up and asked them to come, but we all knew each other. Everyone in the room knew each other from some sort of association on the mainstream scene. There were no strangers among us, none whatsoever.

NEW YORK CITY

NEA: What made you decide to move to New York?

Muhal Richard Abrams: If you want to get a glimpse of some of the best from all over the world, you can get a glimpse of it in New York.

NEA: What was the loft scene in New York like?

Muhal Richard Abrams: It was quite a substantial atmosphere in the sense that there were musicians expressing new music all over the place. I can think of at least four or five venues where things were constantly taking place and could be categorized as lofts. It was just a pretty good period for new music. People wanted to categorize it as new jazz. There's no such thing. Jazz music is jazz music as we know it.

But anyway, during that loft period, we certainly saw these type of approaches develop, with new approaches to performing music. Now, let me say this though: the discipline that we learned from playing mainstream jazz also went over into this new music, because you cannot discount or leave behind the discipline that one has gotten from playing mainstream jazz music. That is not something that can be taught or that was taught, especially at that time, in some institution. You teach yourself by participating.

NEA: Had you been traveling to New York City and performing before you moved?

Muhal Richard Abrams: I had traveled here and I did come to perform here at one point with Eddie Harris. I used to play with Eddie Harris uptown. I forget the club. That was my first time to perform in New York. I was still living in Chicago, but there were other occasions where I would travel here to visit before I moved. And then I had come here to live before I actually moved family and everything here. I must've done that for a year or two before finally moving bag and baggage in 1977.

New York offered a more varied atmosphere because of the nature of the international nature of New York and the consistent challenge level. Not that you weren't consistently challenged in Chicago, but in New York you were challenged by an international mandate, so to speak, because you can hear musicians from many other countries and you get their concept. Also you travel in and out of the U. S. on a more frequent basis. It's possible to be in New York on Monday and Germany on Tuesday, just like that. It wasn't that immediate in Chicago.

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

NEA: What was your first international travel?

Muhal Richard Abrams: I was featured with my sextet at the Berlin Jazz Festival. I think it was 1973. It was our first trip to Europe and it happened in a very interesting way.

I was rehearsing my sextet and performing at a child daycare center on Sunday. Sometimes we'd get a nice audience and sometimes not. But we would just perform these pieces. So one day, a contingent of international representatives was touring Chicago. I think one person was from Mexico. Certainly one guy was from Germany. A guy from France. They were musicologists and people like that, and they expressed a desire to hear the AACM. So it just happened to be on this Sunday so the guide brought them over to this daycare center where we were performing. And the guy from Germany, after we performed, he asked me, would I be interested in coming to the Berlin Jazz Festival? I said sure. I didn't really believe it. I didn't think more about it. He took my information and lo and behold, not too much later, I was contacted by George Gruntz to really come to Germany with the sextet and that was the first trip.

NEA: In performing all around the world for such varied audiences, do you notice a difference in the way that people listen? People there grow up hearing much more varied kinds of music. How does that change the reception?

Muhal Richard Abrams: What you're saying is very true. I would've said the same thing you just said. But the audience that is an audience here, it's a good audience. It's not as vast an audience as in Europe for many reasons, commerciality and different things. But in Europe, they are never underexposed, in the sense of having access to all sorts of musical approaches, and classical, jazz, or whatever the case. And I think also, the fact that jazz came to them from the States, there's a different fascination, you know what I mean? It's a different fascination. I think the appreciation was something that came about because of their approach to culture itself. All of the culture is very important, notwithstanding the fact that there are some people that like red, some people that like green, some people that like blue, you know. So fine, let's have all of it.

And here in the States, the audience that does exist for jazz music and new music is a great audience, a great audience and we're fortunate that it is a mix of Americans.

AUDIENCES

NEA: When you're performing, how do you relate to your audience? Is it important to you to have a connection or do you withdraw?

Muhal Richard Abrams: No, I don't think about the audience. I do think about them but when you're performing, the connection is automatically made or not.

NEA: If there's no vibe, you don't feel any kind of rejection.

Muhal Richard Abrams: No because if I offer you an apple and you say "No, I don't like apples," I would be foolish to get offended. I mean, you don't like apples. It's okay, you know. I respect your individualism. I offer an apple and the person takes the apple to eat, fine. It's the same, because I have to respect both people, and one would be amiss if one didn't take into account individualism and preference. So when I perform, I concentrate on trying to be musical as best I can. Trying to be musical because that's what I'm there for, to express musical ideas. That's the connection between the audience and me when I perform, and I would think that would be the case with any performing musician.

NEA: Do you tend to try to steer away from categorization?

Muhal Richard Abrams: Of course, because I compose music that has to do with music itself. It has to do with music itself and respect for music as a whole, and not directed just towards a particular style of music. I don't engage in categories, you know, "the new jazz." What is new jazz? What is that? What is avant-garde? Well, avant-garde had a meaning at one time, and it was just taken and given to someone else for some reason or other. But these labels mean very little. I think the thing that means a lot is when any listener listens to music and decides what that is to him or her. That's the important thing, because even early on, Duke Ellington and quite a few musicians, even earlier than that, they refused to really accept the word "jazz" because they knew the music encompassed a much wider world.

Podcasts

December 17, 2015

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

TRANSCRIPT:

Music Credits:

Excerpts from: Muhal Richard Abrams' Experimental Band live at Saalfelden Jazz Festival 2012.

Muhal Richard Abrams, “Tribute to Julius Hemphill and Don Pullen” from the cd, One Line, Two Views. New World Records.

Ernest Dawkins, “Mesopotamia” and “Balladesque” from the cd, The Prairie Prophet, Delmark.

Lester Bowie, “Hello Dolly” from the album, Hello Dolly, Muse.

Anthony Braxton, “You Stepped Out of a Dream,” from the album, Five Pieces, Arista.

Anthony Braxton, “Opus 82” from the Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton, Arista.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago, “Charlie M” and “Magg Zelma” from the album Full Force, ECM.

Jo Reed: That’s 2014 NEA Jazz Master and member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Anthony Braxton. Welcome to Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed, who’s lost her voice and cannot seem to find it.

As many of you know, the National Endowment for the Arts is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. And we’re not alone. Also celebrating a half-century of musical innovation, creativity, and self-determination is the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, or the AACM. The AACM is a collective of musicians that emphasizes individualism—typically a bit tricky to pull off, but somehow, it’s worked for half a century. The AACM is a still vibrant force in music today with two chapters: one in New York and one in Chicago.

The AACM first came together in Chicago in 1965 when a group of musicians were determined to play their own compositions—a free-style form of music that was uncompromising and defied category. On top of that, they determined that it be taken seriously, which meant moving the music out of bars and clubs and into the concert hall.

Saxophonist, composer, and chair of the Chicago chapter of the AACM: Ernest Dawkins.

Ernest Dawkins: Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall, and, uh, Phil Cohran came together to start this organization. The organization was to produce new works in new venues – not the old, standard, in-the-bar kind of venue – libraries, concert halls, take it to the concert stage, et cetera, et cetera. And it was also to establish a free school of music in Chicago, to train youth.

Jo Reed: Saxophonist, composer, AACM member and 2014 NEA Jazz Master: Anthony Braxton.

Anthony Braxton: Among the primary axioms was to do your own music. You have to compose. You have to write. You can't just play the American song form tradition. You have to be a scholar of the music and you have to be a scholar of your own music.

Jo Reed: Co-founder of the AACM, head of its New York City chapter and 2010 NEA Jazz Master: Muhal Richard Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: We were in the '60s. There was quite a bit of music going on, of course. And we were about music. Politically, there was many things going on politically. You know, whole groups of people becoming self-sufficient and whatnot in their endeavors and their ideals and their rights. And the city was quite active, politically and culturally in terms of music and the other arts. We were associated as Chicago local musicians for many years prior to that. I had formed what I called the Experimental Band, Muhal Richard Abrams Experimental Band. It served as a forerunner to the AACM. So the other musicians, the other founders, suggested that we have a meeting to discuss forming a larger group of musicians based on the ideals that structured the Experimental Band. Those ideals were to develop a workshop and a forum whereby musicians could develop their individual perspectives on improvising and composing music. And so that was the basic premise that went into the initial structure of the AACM. We, uh, had a meeting with… we invited Chicago musicians, period – they were Southside musicians, of course, that's where we were – and, uh, we invited them to discuss whether they would be interested in composing and performing original music.And original music meaning music composed and performed by the members of the group, not the mainstream, standard type music. Outside of the AACM, people were free to continue performing and composing mainstream music. But within the AACM, we wanted to explore original music.

Muhal Richard Abrams: We weren't against anything. We just felt that the music that we were creating belonged in concert halls. We weren't against any clubs. A lot of us still played in clubs and things like that outside of the AACM. I played in a lot of clubs personally. <laughs> And there was a lot of great people in clubs. But no, for this process, the AACM process, we felt that the music deserved a concert forum.

Jo Reed: The AACM took the bull by horns; taking on the duties of an artist and a producer: composing, publishing, and performing. Renting the concert halls, advertising the concerts, and selling the tickets. And if there was money left over, paying the musicians. But the music and creative rigor was intoxicating. Anthony Braxton.

Anthony Braxton: I was in the Army for three years. And after coming home from South Korea in the first week, I went to a concert of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the AACM. And suddenly, I met men and women who were interested in the same kind of things I was interested in. Up until 1966, I had always found myself the odd guy out because many of the things I was interested in were not universally shared. It was only when I came into the AACM and met musicians like Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Kalaparusha Difda--musician composers who had formed the AACM. And so when I came back for a period of three years, I must say the experiences in the AACM would really define the route of my life in terms of what my interests would be and how I would look at my work and seek to evolve it. And I was able and I was fortunate enough to be accepted by this group. And so, for the next three years, lots of concerts, experimentation. Everyone was very excited about music. It was an incredible community of dedicated men and women.

Jo Reed: The musicians also found support for their music in their hometown. Muhal Richard Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: The audience was there all the time from the beginning. The people on the South Side of Chicago were with us. So once we started up, they became our patrons. The people in Chicago on the North and South Side included black and white people. Chicago became our audience; the population of Chicago. Music lovers; they became our students. One of our purposes was to teach young, aspirant musicians. And for that purpose, we started our school in order to teach young people music and assist them in seeing their individualism. And the outside world as well. It wasn't restricted in this teaching, just to what the AACM was saying. We, uh, insisted that they respect everything: mainstream, just original individual type things. All of it together.

Jo Reed: Ernest Dawkins was an early student at the school.

Ernest Dawkins: I went to the School of Music. It was in the community. By the time I started playing, I had played bass guitar when I was 12. I played percussion as a teenager, so I’d just graduated from school. And my father, he used to have this record collection, and when I was a kid I would listen to all these records. So I knew Billie Holiday, Lester Young. But anyway, I heard this guy playing like Charlie Parker. I had just graduated and I had an epiphany. I said, “That’s me.” So next day, I went and bought a saxophone and within a week, I had the horn. And my people said, “Well, you can’t practice in the house. We’re not going to support your whims. If you’re serious, you’ll find a way how to do it.” And so I went to the park. I go to the park every day and I would be practicing. This guy came up. He said, “Man, you here every day?” I said, “Yeah. Well, I want to try and learn how to play.” He said, “Well, my name is James Johnson.” He was a bassoonist and a saxophonist. He said, “You need to go to the AACM School of Music.” And without even knowing, I guess it was in my DNA or something, said, “Okay. Where is it?” <laughs> And then my first lesson, I think I had-- who was?-- I forgot exactly who was in my lesson, but I think it was somebody like Chico Freeman, Henry Threadgill. <laughs> And it is Jarman or Roscoe, my first lesson. <laughs> And I’m like, “Uh, okay.” And they had me trying to play “Hot House.”<hums tune> I’ll never forget that. And I was butchering that song bad, boy, but I was like, “I’m determined to get this song.” And after that, that’s when I said, “I’ll be back.”

Jo Reed: But it wasn’t just about the music. Anthony Braxton.

Anthony Braxton: Muhal Richard Abrams has played a very important role in my life. In many ways, he's been a father figure. He's been a teacher and we looked to him for many things, not just music; how to live, really. Muhal, he was an incredible influence to all of us and he helped us to stay straight and to value being positive. And don't be messin' around and be serious about your work. Learn how to respect people and do your best.

Jo Reed: Ernest Dawkins

Ernest Dawkins: You’re supposed to come into the school and you’re supposed to learn the ABCs of music. Of course, theory and harmony, take an instrument – we encourage percussion too, or piano –and then, uh, you’re supposed to write your own piece and you’re supposed to perform, just like an AACM member. So we would have, you know, recitals every half-year, half-semester. We still do.

Jo Reed: Muhal Richard Abrams remembers getting the school off the ground.

Muhal Richard Abrams: The first students, our very first students, their parents bought them instruments. Once they found out who we were and what we were doing, they began to appreciate it because their kids were occupied with something constructive at a very early age. You know, we would see them practically every day, you know what I mean? Because we were together every day composing and performing music.

Jo Reed: For Anthony Braxton, teaching contained life-changing moments.

Anthony Braxton: We used to go to the parents' homes and pick up the child and drive the child to the Lincoln Center in Chicago and give a nice hot lunch and then music instructions. I think one of the things I'll never forget the most about that period was a concert that Lester Bowie did with, uh, something like seven young guys and gals. They're playing “Hello Dolly”. Played “Hello Dolly” with Lester Bowie. It was such a beautiful concert. It was like, you know, that's what our responsibility is. We have to—we have to do this. If we don't do it, who's gonna do it?

Jo Reed: Although there was emphasis on individualism, there was expectations for AACM members. Ernest Dawkins.

Ernest Dawkins: Once you become a member of the AACM, within a year, you’re supposed to produce your concert. So, I produced my concert. We were always encouraged to go hear the AACM members perform. University of Chicago, we had a lot of concerts there. I remember seeing a lot of concerts over in that area.

And then, when you became a member, you’d have to pass out flyers. I remember flyer duty. We would have to take flyers out everywhere and scour the South Side and North Side with these flyers. And going to the concerts. So I saw a lot of interesting things in my early years. I saw a fantastic solo concert by Lester Bowie in the University of Chicago. It was one of the more interesting concerts that I saw. Of course, I saw the Art Ensemble over there in Mander Hall. And we had, uh, Fred Anderson would have a jam session. He would be all the way up north and we would catch the train. His jam session didn’t start till twelve o’clock at night. <laughs> We’d be up there from like twelve to maybe five or six in the morning. And then we would come back home. So it was all kind of those kind of things happening. And we would go jam in these lofts that was adjacent to the Chicago River back in those days. The things that we would do was like… And the guys, when I started playing… some guys moved on my block and they would play all night. Joe Henderson would come up there after he’d play at the Jazz Showcase. Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, you know? So these was like in the community and nobody would bother them. They were playing all night and people wouldn’t complain. They’d say, “Yeah, man, y’all really sound good.” <laughs> You know, they would tell them they sound good because the community was open to those kind of situations back then. Everything didn’t have to be so formalized.

Jo Reed: AACM members came together to form different musical groups and ensembles. All playing original music, all stressing the individuality of their players. But one group stood out. Muhal Richard Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: There were many groups in the AACM. The Art Ensemble was one of our premier groups that distinguished themselves very well. And they were quite successful. There were other groups. There was a trio with Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, and Wadada Leo Smith. And of course, my Experimental Band. And there were other, other groups, you know? We had many, many groups. And we're proud of all our groups, but of course, The Art Ensemble distinguished themselves in a grand manner. They really did.

Jo Reed: Ernest Dawkins

Ernest Dawkins: The AACM principles and attitudes and facilities and interpretation and concepts. With this music, you have to develop your own voice, for better or for worse, and ride it out. And that’s the key. And that’s what I liked about the eclectic kind of situations, in relationship to the AACM, because I could go hear Threadgill, then I could go hear Kalaparusha and I’m just talking saxophone players. I can go hear Roscoe. I could go hear Braxton. But I could go hear Fred Anderson and everybody played different. No one had the same sound. No one had the same approach. No one.

Jo Reed: But if originality was stressed, so was respect for other traditions. Muhal Richard Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: There are many countries, people in different countries, that speak different language and they have many different approaches. Everybody's music has to be respected. And so we start with our own process and from there it expanded out into the world and respecting the world's music. I think we realized that there's information everywhere about music and about life; about all sorts of things. Well, I, for one, I certainly don't want to be left out of that process with all that information available.

Jo Reed: Ernest Dawkins.

Ernest Dawkins: When Muhal and them would come around and give us workshops, he said, “Man, look, play everything. Don’t just be limited to one thing.” Because he knew that you have to work in different areas in this music. You know, Threadgill used to work shows. I’ve seen him works shows. I mean, guys did all kind of other kind of gigs. They played in churches. You know, Threadgill played in church. That’s what—that was his thing, you know? So that broadened my perspective, because I like to play tunes, I like to play what we call free music. I like to play all aspects of what we call this American music.

Jo Reed: As wonderful as Chicago was as a crucible for AACM, a good portion of its members began to move east. And some moved across the ocean. Anthony Braxton.

Anthony Braxton: I had discovered what my music could be if I worked hard. But it became clear to many of us in the AACM that it would not be possible to… to continue our work in Chicago because, one, there was very little work. And at that point I would go to live in Paris. Suddenly, the European experience would start.

Jo Reed: Muhal Richard Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: I started coming to New York City around 1973. I didn't move here until 1977 with my family, I mean. By that time, the first wave of AACM musicians anyway, we had become quite famous around the world because of the Delmark Records. And so I found it necessary to move to New York to function in a more expanded business atmosphere as well as musical atmosphere. It was wall-to-wall music. <laughs> Wall-to-wall music. Just great music. You know, there were people here from, as today, there're people here from all over the world. You know what I mean? People from all over the States. But the people from all over the States were really perpetuating and moving what some called "the tradition" forward. Which was great because the opportunity to learn from each other was just, uh, very great.

Jo Reed: But Abrams makes clear, when he came to New York City, he was not leaving the AACM behind. He brought its philosophy to New York City and eventually started the New York chapter.

Muhal Richard Abrams: we didn’t come to New York to join other people's bands. So, we came here and we created our own forums for performing our music, just as we did in Chicago. The AACM in Chicago kept going with what they were doing for that particular locale. We were chartered in New York, so there was two different chapters. The Chicago chapter was separate from the New York chapter.

Jo Reed: Meanwhile, the AACM continued to do its work in Chicago. Ernest Dawkins.

Ernest Dawkins: By that time, most of the guys were moving or gone, you know, to New York. And I realized, if anything’s going to happen, I’m going to have to make it happen myself. And that was still part of the essence of the organization because I think I got in around the tenth or eleventh anniversary of the AACM, somewhere around there. I mean, I was a student; eventually I became a member and I became a teacher, an officer, and the rest is kind of like history. Here I am today. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Not to blow our own horn, but throughout the years, both the Chicago and New York chapters of the AACM found vital support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Muhal Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: Oh, it helped us a lot. It helped us a lot to keep our programs going on; our yearly contract programs going on. There's always been great help from the Arts Endowment. It’s a great relationship actually. It’s a great relationship and, uh, it's in the records. <laughs>

Muhal Richard Abrams: Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Douglas Hewitt, George Lewis, Wallace McMillan.

Jo Reed: A list of the AACM members reads like a who’s who of creative musicians.

Muhal Richard Abrams: Thurman Barker, Amina Claudine Myers, Lester Bouie, Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarmon, Don Moyer. Many, and the thing is, I want to quit calling names because I'm being unfair. Because if I have to call names, I would have to call all of them. They're all great and we just mentioned a few, but there were many just as great. And we viewed each other as equally as great. You know, we viewed each other in that manner and we still do. Sure, we still do.

Jo Reed: AACM’s broader influence on both mainstream jazz and avant garde music cannot be denied. Anthony Braxton.

Anthony Braxton: And I feel that, coming from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians,that among the things we learned about was the real tradition is creativity, doing your best, and trying to meet the challenges of your time period. And you need to learn the fundamentals and respect the last 2,000, 3,000 years of documented music, but don't let that be an excuse to not find your own work.

Jo Reed: Ernest Dawkins.

Ernest Dawkins: Well, now, I hear more guys playing free than…they’re not playing change. I’m like, “These cats are not playing the changes. They’re playing free.” <laughs> It’s like the tides have turned. <laughs>

Anthony Braxton: We have fresh possibilities because fresh possibilities came out of the experimentation and exploration of fresh ideas about music, fresh ideas about harmony, fresh ideas about rhythm. And so the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. To discover this group of incredible musicians; very little work, nobody had any money, we all come from poverty, and no one would give an inch with respect to their aesthetics and their music, but we helped each other to stay strong. And everyone tried to do the best work that they could do.

Ernest Dawkins: I think it’s a cultural important half-century. That the organization has even survived half a century is amazing. I think it’s been a perfect example of an experiment in democracy. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Muhal Richard Abrams.

Muhal Richard Abrams: I think we will be remembered as being an example of what people can do as individuals when they come together to agree and, sometimes, not to agree. But yet, maintain the central idea of moving forward. The main thing is we had in common is respect for each other's individualism. That's what they had. That's quite a bit. That's quite a bit right there. You know, because it was one of the things that encouraged all of us to pursue our particular perspectives. Because we were among people who respected us. We respected each other. I think that's what got us here 50 years later. I really believe that.

Jo Reed: The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians has celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015. My thanks to Muhal Richard Abrams, Ernest Dawkins, and Anthony Braxton. You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts.

To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAarts on Twitter. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening. And thanks for putting up with my voice.

NEA Jazz Masters: Muhal Richard Abrams (2010)

National Endowment for the Arts

May 30, 2010

Muhal Richard Abrams -- pianist, composer, administrator, and educator -- is predominately a self-taught musician. He is highly respected by critics and musical peers as both a pianist and composer in a variety of musical styles, including jazz, extended forms of improvisation, and classical music. Jazz writer A.B. Spellman talks with Abrams about the many influences that have shaped his compositions. More information: https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/muha... Visit the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Masters Fellowships section to learn more about the recipients of our nation’s highest honor in jazz: https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz

Muhal Richard Abrams featuring Cecil McBee – Roots Of Blue

A Jazz Noise

June 13, 2023

Muhal Richard Abrams - piano

Cecil McBee - bass

Tracklist:

A1 Time Into Space Into Time - 00:00

A2 C.C.'s World - 05:53

A3 Metamor - 13:03

B1 Roots Of Blue - 21:18

B2 Direflex - 30:21

All compositions by Muhal Richard Abrams. Recorded at Classic Sound, New York City, January 7, 1986. Cover painting by Muhal Richard Abrams. RPR Records - 1986.

Muhal Richard Abrams & Rufus Reid Duo:

Wayne NJ

1984

Live at William Patterson College

Muhal Richard Abrams (Piano)

Rufus Reid (Bass)

NPR radio broadcast. photos: Jazz Hot (Muhal), Jazztimes (Rufus).

Compositions "J.G.", "March of the Transcience", and "Elegy" are by Muhal Richard Abrams

00:00 J.G.

10:08 Blue Monk (Thelonious Monk)

23:21 A Child is born (Thad Jones)

31:18 March of the Transcience

42:10 Elegy

55:55 ...

Sightsong/Two Over One

Muhal Richard Abrams - Topic

April 7, 2022

Sightsong/Two Over One ·

Muhal Richard Abrams (Piano) · Malachi Favors (Bass)

Composition by Muhal Richard Abrams:

Sightsong ℗ Kepach Music

Released on: October 13, 1975

"Seesall" --Composition by Muhal Richard Abrams

The Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra

The Hearinga Suite

℗ Kepach Music S.r.l.

Released on: 1989-12-28

The Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra:

Andrew Cyrille

Bill Lowe

Cecil Bridgewater

Charles Davis

Clifton Anderson

Courtenay Wynter

Dick Griffin

Diedre Murray

Frank Gordon

Fred Hopkins

Jack Jeffers

Jack Walrath

John Purcell

Marty Ehrich

Muhal Richard Abrams

Patience Higgins

Ron Tooley

Warren Smith

Muhal Richard Abrams' Experimental Band at the Chicago Jazz Festival

Chicago Jazz Fest

July 4, 2016

Muhal Richard Abrams' Experimental Band at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park September 6th 2015:

Muhal Richard Abrams - piano, composition Roscoe Mitchell - alto saxophone Henry Threadgill - alto saxophone LaRoy Wallace McMillan - baritone saxophone, flue Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet Amina Claudine Myers - piano George Lewis - trombone Leonard Jones - bass Thurman Barker - drums, vibraphone Reggie Nicholson - drums, marimba

Improvisation for John

New Music USA

May 12, 2016

Performed by Muhal Richard Abrams (Solo Piano)

Part of A John Duffy Celebration presented by New Music USA, in partnership with the Duffy Estate and Roulette Intermedium May 3, 2016

Sound Projections

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, August 5, 2023

WELCOME TO THE NEW SOUND PROJECTIONS MUSICAL ARTISTS SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE ARCHIVE

Muhal Richard Abrams

(1930-2017)

Biography by Thom Jurek

Muhal Richard Abrams

Interview by Frank J. Oteri

NewMusicBox

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

About the AACM

INTERVIEWS

Muhal Richard Abrams:

The Advancement of Creative Music

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/muhal-richard-abrams-musical-revolution

Muhal Richard Abrams, 87, Individualistic Pianist and Composer, Is Dead

The Musicians

Muhal Richard Abrams, A Sweepingly Influential Jazz Artist, Has Died At Age 87

Ojai Music Festival 2017: The Trio, Sunday

Muhal Richard Abrams

Bio

Interview by Molly Murphy for the NEA July 24, 2009 Edited by Don Ball

Podcasts

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

NEA Jazz Masters: Muhal Richard Abrams (2010)

Muhal Richard Abrams featuring Cecil McBee – Roots Of Blue

Muhal Richard Abrams & Rufus Reid Duo:

Wayne NJ

1984

Sightsong/Two Over One

Muhal Richard Abrams' Experimental Band at the Chicago Jazz Festival

Improvisation for John

Muhal Richard Abrams track 01

2016

Muhal Richard Abrams track 02

2016

Muhal Richard Abrams track 03

2016

Editor's Bio

Blog Archive

Labels

Interview by Molly Murphy for the NEA
July 24, 2009
Edited by Don Ball