Art Ensemble of Chicago

LP version. Back in print after 25 years! This epochal recording of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Sept. 9, 1972, performance at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival is the third play loud! reissue of an AEC classic, succeeding the soundtrack for the film Les Stances à Sophie and the sprawling collective improvisation People in Sorrow. The LP captured the spirited free jazz quintet's very first U.S. festival appearance, just months after their return from nearly two years of work in Europe. The resultant album became their first American major label release and awakened a much-broadened homeland audience to their genius.

Atlantic Records spent three days in the Michigan college town capturing the festival, which was co-produced by the notorious counterculture czar John Sinclair, who managed the MC5, the Detroit auteurs of another legendary live album, Kick Out the Jams. A two-LP set comprising 19 highlights from the fest was issued by the label in 1973, but the AEC's storming 45-minute appearance was issued separately, in its entirety. "This spectacular performance earned the Art Ensemble a standing ovation," the band's historian Paul Steinbeck noted. This extraordinary set, crisply remastered by Moritz Illner and newly annotated by American music journalist Chris Morris, restores what is arguably the band's finest and most intensely focused concert work.

Recreation of the original 1973 artwork and sound. The vinyl LP includes an inlay with detailed liner notes by Chris Morris, while the CD Digipak comes with a 12-page booklet containing the same material. The album has been newly remastered from the original tapes by Moritz Illner (Duophonic), who also handled play loud!'s reissues of Les Stances à Sophie and People in Sorrow.