musical areas once likely year's-best-list item like The Shad- thought to be mutually exclusive, making mobility integral to his aesthetic. Mobility is perhaps the owgraph Series. As Lewis talks at length about specific multimedia aspects of his work, the underlying issues of all these ac- most important tool Lewis has used to galvanize UCSD,and the Left Coast as a whole. Just in the limited arena of record- tivities are so finely meshed, that talking about one quickly brings them all into the mix. Additionally, regardless of his starting point, Lewis evokes the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) paradigm in short order. His eru- ings, Lewis' mobility has contributed to one of the year's more rewarding al- dite scholarly postulations and strategies for student empowerment flow directly from the AACM's inclusive African-Ameri- practices program, and the more solitary pursuit of writing the forthcoming Power bums, The Shadowgraph Series: Compositions for Creative Orchestra (Spool). Stronger Than Itself The album fills in two glaring discographical gaps: It is the first recording de- can perspective and its aversion to labels. Lewis cites early AACM events as a foundation for his cross-platform work with The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians for the University of Chicago Press. "You have to ignore a lot of things to have the mobility required to be an experimental artist," says Lewis, who established his own mobility immediately upon voted exclusively to Lewis' orchestra music, and it contains first recordings of pieces from Lewis' "Shadowgraph" series of composition from the '70s; more importantly, it documents Lewis' ongoing work with Vancouver's NOW Orchestra, which Lewis considers to be "one of the finest large cre- artists from other fields. But Lewis' articulation of a mobility agenda is ultimately born of his own diverse interests. "A lot of this mobility talk comes out of scholarship, but the scholarship is related to life experience," Lewis reflects. "Basi- arrival on the international scene in 1976. In a span of months, he toured with the Count Basie Orchestra, joined Anthony Braxton's fabled quartet and recorded th e recently reissued Solo Trombone Album ative ensembles active in the last 20 years." Throughout the bracing program, which ranges from pore-opening Latin grooves to cally, I got involved in writing through being a professor at UCSD,and realizing that a lot of students coming through our interdisciplinary program, Critical Studies for Sackville. The Sackville CD is a fine starting point for mapping Lewis' mobility, as it includes ear-twisting realizations of graphic notation, the Vancouverites hand in strong individual contributions, confirming what and Experimental Practices [CSEP],within the music department, really needed a field in which they could talk about their con- inspired takes on blues, jazz balladry and a Lewis calls their ability "to code switch, to work back and forth between the scores cerns. They are crossing so many boundaries-they come out of music, they're and their own improvisational approaches without getting stuck." Even though Lewis' teaching, scholarship and participation in collaborative open to collaboration, performance, composition, installation and technological work. They're seriously confronting cul- crucial first step in integrating technology into his work: "Starburst," a bracing, 20minute composition, realized through overdubbing three complex parts. Technology took on an increasing role in Lewis' music, beginning with the electronic drones of late '70s albums like Homage to Charles Parker (Black Saint), and continuing with his original interactive public-art installations are well under the radar of a recorded-media-driven press, they are arguably more essential to understanding Lewis at this juncture than even a software on '93's Voyager(Avant), and the use of text samples on 20oo's Endless Shout (Tzadik). While this caused some culture-police agents to question his Great Black Music bona fides, Lewis' immersion in technology nevertheless facilitated his transit into international computer music and electroacoustic circles rarely accessed by African-Americans. Other doors opened for Lewis through his early encounters with Derek Bailey, Misha Mengelberg and other principals of the European free-improvisation scene. tural issues of race, gender and so on. There didn't seem to be a place within traditional music scholarship to address that." Lewis is dismayed that much of the related issues driving the work at CSEPis "written from a strict ethnomusicological perspective, which is so narrow." Instead, Lewis employs a broader cultural approach in essays like 'Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity and Culture in Voyager" (Leonardo Music Journal 10; 2000), by citing visual artists like Africo- ing to when they said they don't like to be labeled. People want to be free to work in any media, work across media and to address the entire spectrum of creativity they are involved in. That's why within the AACM you find computer music, performance art and various approaches that are outside a specific style. So, what do you do with that? What you start to find is that words like 'tradition' are very impor- stadt Jazz lnstitute's renowned collection of jazz periodicals. "There wasn't any particular dogma. And, even if someone tried to impose a litmus test, they would be in dialogue with people who felt free to ignore them. As a composite unit, there was no way to impose a unitary style or ideology in the AACM. This was bra arts movement leader Jeff Donaldson, and against-the-grain scholars like anthropologist and improvising cellist Georgina Born, among others. tant, but when they are used for cultural policing, then mobility is reduced. That's Lewis claims that the shortcoming of most of the current literature stems from the presumption "that you have to have a where we start thinking that we don't have to pay attention to the cultural police." Lewis has repeatedly encountered focus, which implies that all this interdisciplinary activity is not focused. What we're many of these issues in writing Power Stronger Than Itself. reinforcing his con- say and do, but in the AACM, everyone can say and do. When you take that approach into the academic environment, I see it as my responsibility to make sure that the students have mobility." focusing on is getting as large a handle on the situation as possible. And that's a mo- viction that the AACM "is the source of the mobility discourse. Nobody in the AACM Mobility is not instantaneously attained, Lewis cautions. It requires carefully laid bility issue. The real focus is accounting for as many different stories and perspectives as you can. What you run up against really talked about what you should be doing," says Lewis, who conducted nearly 100 interviews and pored over both the voluminous AACM archives and the Darm- foundations, the first being the atmosphere that promotes mobility. "One of the things you hear about on the tapes of the early is what people in the AACM were respond- encapsulated by a comment by Joseph Jarman, who was confronted with a comparison between the AACM and Sun Ra's Arkestra: In Sun Ra's group, Sun Ra can Continued on page 102 ECM Dave Holland Quintet Charles Lloyd Not For Nothin' Hyperion With Higgins "There may be no better jazz band working today." "A summit meeting of some of the most subtle artists working in jazz today" Charlie Haden/ Egberto Gismonti In Montreal Boston Globe An historic concert recording from 1989. San Francisco Chronicle Charles Lloyd Hy;:,ar;cnW,11'Hi,111jn:, scholarly literature on improvisation and listening pleasures John Coltrane "Naima" from Live at the Village Vanguard Again! (Impulse!) Steve Coleman Genesis & the Opening of the Way (RCA) Greg Osby Banned in New York (Blue Note) Jon Jang/Jiebing Chen/Max Roach Beijing Trio (Asian Im prov) Sam Rivers Rivbea All-Star Orchestra Inspiration and Culmination (RCA) Roscoe Mitchell The Flow of Things(Black Saint) Subsequently, Lewis has flourished in 60 OCTOBER2001 JAZZTIMES.COM JAZZTIMES I 61