The sixth decade from Paris to Paris : live at Sons d'hiver

"Jazz album of the month" - "Among hardcore free-blowing and delicate sound-into-silence tiptoeings, Mitchell's wistfully lyrical "Leola" becomes a pulsating low-register drone, aided by a swathe of cymbal showers, classical-choral voices, and rousing spoken word from Ayewa [aka Moor Mother]. Other highlights include the coolly swinging "Kumpa" (by Senegalese griot and AEC sidekick Dudu Kouate), the riffy electric groover "Funky AECO", the slinkily bass-walking Ensemble signature theme "Odwalla", and much more. It's heartwarming to hear the AEC's devoted heirs so ready to carry the story on".

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"'The Sixth Decade' presents Art Ensemble Of Chicago - as defiantly daring avant-garde as that first night in Paris, 1969 - giving no quarter whatsoever in their lifelong, diasporic pursuit of creation unbound. Breaking at the pace of a dream, surviving co-founders saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye return to the moment of conception with a two hour, double disc set, a sprawling, decades-spanning, mind-spinning live celebration of over fifty gregarious years. So the music is never really what the listener suspects or expects an AEC concert to be - thus its beauty, its challenge, its mission. Blending, merging, immersing, the aesthetic is a percussive wave which encompasses all - chamber, free jazz, opera, chorale, traditional, spoken word. All musics from Chicago, Haiti, the Congo. The story of the drum - the anthropology of dance ... AEC has lost none of its fervor over the years".

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"'The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris' was recorded (...) to celebrate the anniversary of Art Ensemble of Chicago's arrival in Paris in 1968. It changed their lives, and ultimately jazz history ... This is a two-hour-plus example of AECs 21st century aesthetic with African-American musical forms - jazz, blues, R&B, gospel - that coexist alongside art song, chorales, and chamber music ... 'The Sixth Decade' is wondrous. It's chock-full of AEC's trademark musicality, variety, stewardship, and indomitable creative spirit".

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"The fact that surviving members Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye chose to add younger compatriots and expand the group into a chamber orchestra for its 50th anniversary shows is on-brand. Growth, sustenance and community are paramount for these guys".