The AACM at 60:  The Colsons, Thurman Barker, Reggie Nicholson

Since its formation on the virtually all-Black South Side of Chicago in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians has come to exercise an important and internationally recognized influence on the development of experimental music. The composite output of AACM members has explored an unprecedentedly wide range of methodologies, processes, and media, developing new and influential ideas about timbre, sound, collectivity, extended technique and instrumentation, performance practice, intermedia, the relationship of improvisation to composition, form, scores, computer music technologies, invented acoustic instruments, installations, and kinetic sculptures. 

In May 1977, students at Columbia University brought a large cohort from the AACM to New York for an ambitious four-day series of concerts.  At that time, a kind of Great Migration of AACM members from the organization’s Chicago birthplace to New York was already underway.  However, this concert was the first time that New York was treated to what the AACM was really about: the unique combination of individual creation and collective spirit.  

Among the many AACM members who participated in this historic concert were Adegoke Steve Colson, Iqua Colson, and Thurman Barker, who along with Reggie Nicholson are the four AACM composer-performers whose work will be featured this evening in collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble.  ICE has often acknowledged its strong debt to the AACM, but this is the first time that the Ensemble has entered into formal collaboration with a group of AACM composer-performers. 

A New Yorker review of the 1977 concert quoted an unidentified member of the organization:  “The AACM sound? If you take all the sounds of all the AACM musicians and put them together, that’s the AACM sound, but I don’t think anyone’s heard that yet.” Thus, in listening to the most recent ideas of Thurman Barker, Reggie Nicholson, and Iqua and Adegoke Steve Colson, even the fullness of what we experience will only be just a small slice of the infinite possibilities of AACM creativity.  In this collaboration with AACM members and ICE, what we hear is mutual openness to new ways of knowing.  What audiences can expect are exciting hybrids of improvisation and composition, the results of intense work in rehearsals that will result in unpredictable moments of striking beauty and introspection.

In 1977, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians was just twelve years old.  Now in its sixtieth year, with chapters in Chicago and New York, the AACM continues to ever more strongly exemplify the very sound of freedom.  

George E. Lewis is Artistic Director, International Contemporary Ensemble and author of A Power Stronger Than Itself:  The AACM and American Experimental Music.