The Third Decade

Third Decade is the first record I bought by Art Ensemble of Chicago, in the days when I started to listen and explore jazz music. It is a record that slightly shifts from the expressive free/ambient jazz for they are famous for, containing much more melodic tunes, solos, and accessible arrangements. When I got deeper into their music, I found even more joy in their previous releases, especially those for the ECM label, but this album remained one of my personal favorites. Some critics didn’t find this turn towards melodic compositions to be a good thing. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD reviewed the album negatively, calling it "nothing so much as the atrophy of a once-radical band." The Allmusic review by Stephen Cook was more gentle: "Third Decade marked both the end of their relationship with the ECM label and the beginning of a more streamlined stretch of music making".

The album was recorded and released in 1994, featuring performances by the original Art Ensemble of Chicago lineup: Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors Maghostut, and Don Moye. Very groovy, with the recognizable flow between the musicians, and with imaginative solos and interplay, something by which the group is well-known.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz group that grew out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the late 1960s. The ensemble integrates many jazz styles and plays many instruments, including "little instruments": bells, bicycle horns, birthday party noisemakers, wind chimes, and various forms of percussion. The musicians wear costumes and face paint while performing. These characteristics combine to make the ensemble's performances both aural and visual. While playing in Europe in 1969, five hundred instruments were used.