Kabalaba: Live At Montreux Jazz Festival

Recorded in Montreaux, Switzerland on July 4, 1974.
Personnel: Joseph Jarman (flute, clarinet, sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, percussion); Roscoe Mitchell (flute, sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, percussion); Famoudou Don Moye (whistle, congas, bongos, timbales, bells); Lester Bowie (trumpet, percussion); Muhal Richard Abrams (piano); Malachi Favors Maghostut (acoustic bass, percussion).
Audio Remixer: Roxie Russell.
Recording information: The Montreux Jazz Festival (07/1974).
One of several recordings issued by the Art Ensemble's own label and the only one to document the group as a whole, Kabalaba is a live, 1974 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival by the same augmented band (with the addition of Muhal Richard Abrams) that recorded the superb Fanfare for the Warriors album for Atlantic. While not as heady as that release, Kabalaba offers a typical example of the Art Ensemble's live concerts from around that time.
There are several percussion interludes and solo horn features interspersed among stronger thematic pieces such as Theme for Sco, which gets an energetic workout here. Roscoe Mitchell produces an especially acerbic solo alto piece, Improvization A2 [sic], all gnarls and bitter asides, followed by one of Lester Bowie's patently puckish, smear-filled outings. The concert ends with a free-for-all multi-horn blowout that dwindles off without apparent conclusion, though the group sees fit to add several unnecessary minutes of audience applause to conclude the album. This recording contains several fine episodes, but the interested listener would do better to hear the aforementioned Atlantic album for a full picture of this particular Art Ensemble incarnation's great powers. ~ Brian Olewnick