Musical Association With M-Base
There her focus turned towards improvisation. Heavily influenced by singers Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, she fine-tuned her vocal phrasing and scat while studying ear training with trombonist Grachan Moncur, III. Frequenting jam sessions under the tutelage of pianist Sadik Hakim, a Charlie Parker alumnus, she met alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, who encouraged her to look beyond the standard jazz repertoire in favor of developing original material. She would become the vocalist and one of the founding members of the M-Base collective in which Coleman was the leading figure, a stylistic outgrowth of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and Black Artists Group (BAG) that re-imagined the grooves of funk and soul within the context of traditional and avant-garde jazz. Peter Watrous in an article for the New York Times states: "...the M-Base group in Brooklyn, working with both jazz and pop forms, makes music that at first sounds like funk from the 1970s. Like the music played by Mr. Marsalis (and his brother Wynton) the music made by M-Base - Steve Coleman, with Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson and Geri Allen – is, at its best, filled with subtle ideas working behind the mask of popular music. In Mr. Coleman's group a singer is supported by an electric bass, guitar, drums and electric keyboards, a shiny musical mix that has familiar rock and funk references; yet, because of all its rhythmic and metric manipulations, sounds new."
Although the voice – typically treated as the focal point of any arrangement in which it is included – was not an obvious choice for M-base's complex textures or harmonically elaborated melodies, Wilson wove herself into the fabric of these settings with wordless improv and lyrics. She can be heard on Coleman's debut as a leader Motherland Pulse (1985), then as member of his Five Elements on On the Edge of Tomorrow (1986), World Expansion (1986), Sine Die (1987) and on M-Base Collective's sole recording as a large ensemble Anatomy of a Groove (1992).
At the same time, Wilson toured with avant-garde trio New Air featuring alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill and recorded Air Show No. 1 (1987) in Italy. A decade her senior and an AACM member, Threadgill has been lauded as a composer for his ability to transcend stylistic boundaries, a trait he and Wilson share.
Read more about this topic: Cassandra Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or association:
“I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)