Paul Steinbeck

Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM

Founded on Chicago’s South Side in 1965 and still thriving today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is the most influential collective organization in jazz and experimental music. In Sound Experiments, Paul Steinbeck offers a sonic history of the collective, analyzing AACM artists’ best-known compositions and their farthest-reaching formal innovations. The compositions examined in Sound Experiments span the entire history of the AACM, from 1960s and 1970s works by Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, and Anthony Braxton to recent pieces by Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell, and the Artifacts trio. Sound Experiments shows how the creators of these extraordinary works pioneered new approaches to instrumentation, notation, conducting, and technology while continually renewing the AACM’s commitment to musical experimentation.
 

• Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM

"Present at the Creation: A meditation about the origin and future of creative music"

The AACM’s achievements made it the most significant Black collective in the history of jazz and experimental music, and its members’ commitment to reinvention ensured that creative music would remain in the vanguard for decades to come.

• "Present at the Creation: A meditation about the origin and future of creative music by Paul Steinbeck."

Theme for Lester

• Theme for Lester

The Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago est regardé depuis sa création en 1966 comme l’un des groupes les plus influents du jazz et de la musique expérimentale. Dans ce livre, Paul Steinbeck suit en détail sa trajectoire jusqu’à la fin des années 2010. Il analyse ses performances et explique comment les membres de l’Art Ensemble sont capables d’improviser ensemble dans de nombreux styles différents tout en s’appuyant sur un vaste répertoire de compositions notées.

La nouveauté de la théorie de l’improvisation qui anime le groupe ressort également des dimensions intermédiales de leurs performances, qui intègrent la musique à la poésie, au théâtre, aux costumes et au mouvement. Au-delà de l’activité proprement musicale du groupe, l’auteur éclaire enfin un modèle distinctif de relations sociales, de pratiques de coopération et d’autonomie personnelle que ses membres ont adapté de l’Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), collectif dont The Art Ensemble of Chicago est issu.

• The Art Ensemble of Chicago

‘Like a Cake Made from Five Ingredients’

Paul Steinbeck, “‘Like a Cake Made from Five Ingredients’: The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Social and Musical Practices,” in Free Improvisation: History and Perspectives, eds. Alessandro Sbordoni and Antonio Rostagno (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2018): 3–13.

• Paul Steinbeck, “‘Like a Cake Made from Five Ingredients’: The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Social and Musical Practices,” in Free Improvisation: History and Perspectives, eds. Alessandro Sbordoni and Antonio Rostagno (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2018

George Lewis’s Voyager

Paul Steinbeck, “George Lewis’s Voyager,” The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies, eds. Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, and Tony Whyton (New York: Routledge, 2019): 261–270.

• “George Lewis’s Voyager,” The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies, eds. Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, and Tony Whyton (New York: Routledge, 2019): 261–270.

“Improvisation and Collaboration in Anthony Braxton’s Composition 76” Journal of Music Theory, 62/2

This article examines Anthony Braxton’s Composition 76, a landmark work for three multi-instrumentalists. The score for Composition 76 employs graphic techniques (colors, shapes, and codes) as well as traditional notation on five-line staves. Original transcriptions of two studio recordings illustrate the strategies that the performers use to realize Braxton’s complex score, uncovering the structure of a composition previously thought to be resistant to analysis. The article also sheds light on the diverse influences that can be seen in the graphic score—and heard in the performances—from John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen to the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

• Journal of Music Theory

Talking Back: Performer-Audience Interaction in Roscoe Mitchell’s "Nonaah"

Many music scholars, particularly in jazz studies, have investigated performers’ real-time sonic interactions with one another. Very few, though, have asked how musicians interact with their audiences. The following article examines a performance that demands this kind of analysis: a 1976 concert in which saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is confronted by an audibly hostile audience.

• Music Theory Online 22/3

Listening to Voyager

In this introduction to composer, musician, and interdisciplinary scholar George E. Lewis, music theorist Paul Steinbeck, a former student of Lewis’s at Columbia, sheds light on the intertwined histories of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and Voyager, the computer system with which Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell will perform at CTM 2018. As he argues, Voyager, like all Artificial Intelligence, is not a neutral system but rather reflects the aesthetic values and experiences of its human creator(s).

• CTM Magazine #5

Grande Musica Nera: Storia dell’Art Ensemble of Chicago

Raccontare l’Art Ensemble of Chicago significa attraversare buona parte delle esperienze artistiche più innovative del secondo Novecento. Senza mai allontanarsi dalla cultura afroamericana in cui si sono formati (la musica delle chiese nere, quella delle comunità locali, le bande dell’esercito, il jazz di ogni epoca), i suoi membri hanno saputo influenzare l’arte performativa di tutto il pianeta, sintetizzando nel concetto di Grande Musica Nera ciò che la diaspora africana nel mondo ha regalato alla cultura contemporanea. Fin dalla metà degli anni Sessanta, sul palcoscenico i membri dell’Art Ensemble creavano un irresistibile intreccio di esperienze spettacolari, suonando centinaia di strumenti, recitando poesie, dando vita a episodi teatrali, mascherandosi e usando costumi d’ogni provenienza. Emerso dal formidabile calderone espressivo della Chicago nera degli anni Sessanta, il gruppo si è affermato in una Parigi che era stata appena attraversata dai fermenti del Sessantotto e ha poi trionfalmente conquistato il pubblico di tutti i continenti.

In questo volume Paul Steinbeck esplora nei dettagli la storia dell’Art Ensemble of Chicago. Unendo l’analisi musicale alla ricerca storica, propone un’approfondita interpretazione che ne lega insieme tutte le innovazioni: i diversi modelli d’improvvisazione, l’ampio repertorio di composizioni, la dimensione intermediale e quel concetto cooperativo di interazione sociale che ha permesso al gruppo di attraversare con successo i decenni. Nonostante infatti la dolorosa scomparsa di due fondatori, Lester Bowie e Malachi Favors, e il ritiro di Joseph Jarman, il creatore del gruppo Roscoe Mitchell lo guida ancor oggi assieme a Don Moye, caso più unico che raro nella storia della musica. L’avventura dell’Art Ensemble continua.

• Quodlibet

"The Inner Sleeve" The Wire, 404

Paul Steinbeck discusses the artwork of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's album The Third Decade.

• The Wire

Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago

Message to Our Folks is the first book about the Art Ensemble of Chicago, one of the most influential groups in jazz and experimental music. Unlike many texts in jazz studies and improvisation studies, Message to Our Folks combines musical analysis with historical inquiry. The book offers a detailed history of the Art Ensemble, from its 1966 founding on Chicago’s South Side to its final performances in the 2010s. But the book’s greatest contribution to music theory (and a range of other disciplines) may be its analyses of the Art Ensemble’s performances. Message to Our Folks proposes a new theory of group improvisation that explains how the Art Ensemble members are able to improvise together in many different styles while drawing on an extensive repertoire of notated compositions. The book also examines the intermedia dimensions of the Art Ensemble’s performances, which integrate music with poetry, theater, costumes, and movement. Additionally, Message to Our Folks investigates the connections between the group’s performances and its distinctive model of social relations—practices of cooperation and personal autonomy that the group members adapted from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Chicago collective from which the Art Ensemble emerged.

• The University of Chicago Press