Roscoe Mitchell Trio

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Bezanson Recital Hall   8:00 pm
$12 general, $7 students

One of the top saxophonists to come out of Chicago in the mid-'60s, Roscoe Mitchell is a strong and consistently adventurous improviser. He has recorded 87 albums and has written over 250 compositions ranging from classical to contemporary, from free jazz to ornate chamber music. His instrumental expertise includes the entire saxophone family, from the sopranino to the bass saxophone, as well as clarinet, oboe, flute and piccolo. "Roscoe Mitchell's improvisations exercise extraordinary discipline and intellectual rigor, "writes Chris Kelsey, in the All Music Guide. "He's at once a patient and impulsive improviser, prone to alternating episodes of order and chaos, clarity and complexity. He is a technically superb - if idiosyncratic - saxophonist. Whether playing soft or loud, slow or fast, Mitchell's playing is invariably suffused with passion and intensity." An icon of avant-garde, Roscoe Mitchell is a founding member of both the Art Ensemble of Chicago, one of most radical and influential jazz ensembles of the past 30 years, and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the most successful musician-run collective in the country.