People in Sorrow cover

People in Sorrow

Released

During their sojourn in Paris, which lasted from 1969 to early 1972, the Art Ensemble recorded over a dozen albums; this is among the most striking. A single 40-minute piece stretched across two sides of vinyl, it was made before drummer Famoudou Don Moye joined, so it begins as a meditative, sparse soundscape — the horns whisper and keen as Malachi Favors’ bass rumbles along and occasional splashes of hand-held percussion mark intervals — but in its final third it builds to multi-horn polyphony, sometimes quite beautiful, as one member, likely Roscoe Mitchell, subverts it all by producing a seemingly endless wavering tone like a malfunctioning door-buzzer from an unidentified reed instrument.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Mexican Pavilion, New Orleans 1884 cover

Mexican Pavilion, New Orleans 1884

Ramiro González Jazz Trío
Hero Trio cover

Hero Trio

Rudresh Mahanthappa
Meditations cover

Meditations

John Coltrane
Uneasy cover

Uneasy

Tyshawn Sorey, Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh
Our Man In Jazz cover

Our Man In Jazz

Sonny Rollins
REVERENCE cover

REVERENCE

Muriel Grossmann
Stones cover

Stones

Mats Gustafsson, Colin Stetson