Revolutionary Ensemble
Leroy Jenkins, Sirone and Jerome Cooper. Violinist Leroy Jenkins was dispatched to New York in 1970 as a representative for Chicago's AACM. On the east coast, the musicians, by and large, still viewed performance in the competitive terms of the ‘cutting contest’ and ‘fighting for your space’. Chicago's music had been geared toward collective endeavour; to get the message across, Jenkins needed a band. The Revolutionary Ensemble explored chamber-music textures in an unstuffy way, was often the quietest and most subtle band in the new music, used multi-instrumentation undemonstratively, juxtaposed broken-time nerve-pulse playing with drummer/pianist Cooper's often tribal-sounding rhythms, while Jenkins's acid-edged violin skirled on and on. Bassist Sirone saw the group as ‘interpreters of Nature's Music. We find that everything on the earth contributes to its harmony.’ The group's example was a big influence on the ‘Loft movement’ of the mid-70s but, by 1978, the Ensemble players were pulling in different directions and the group disbanded. At Sirone's instigation, the Revolutionary Ensemble re-formed for a one-off appearance at the Nickelsdorf Festival in Austria in 1990.