Ernest Dawkins New Horizons Ensemble: Chicago Now - Thirty Years of Great Black Music, Vol​.​2 (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"The music on Chicago Now! is dedicated to the 30th Anniversary of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians)." There was a sharp sense of pride in the voice of reedist-composer Ernest 'Khabeer' Dawkins. Leaders of one of the most exciting and adventurous working groups today; the New Horizons Ensemble, Dawkins has much to be proud of The accolades of media and audiences worldwide attest to its new found success.

Builders of new parameters in modern black music, the AACM'ers have placed a valued importance on capturing the social essence of history, its meaning and purpose. Hence the guiding credo of the grassroots organisation: Great Black Music Ancient To The Future. This is particularly fitting when discussing artists known for framing their social/political visions through their art. Ernest Dawkins and New Horizons are no exception.

They are a marvelous example of just how the music has richly absorbed the impact of history, events and the moment. These are men who could capture the passion and glory of an era - in just a fragment, in just a second of artistic virtue. 

This vision of tradition runs deep within the mind, heart and soul of Dawkins. The music has baptized and cleansed him. Part of a new generation of AACM'ers; among them Kahil El'Zabar's...  more

1. Monk's Temptation 10:58

2. Running from the Rain (alt) 09:35

3. Planet East 10:38

4. Zera (alt) 12:56

5. Improvisation #3 11:04

6. Looking for Ninny 04:34

7. Many Flavors 13:04

Ernest Dawkins alto sax, tenor sax, flute, percussion, vocals

Steve Berry trombone, percussion

Ameen Muhammad trumpet, percussion, vocals

Jeffery Parker electric guitar

Yosef Ben Israel bass

Reggie Nicholson drums, percussion

Ernest Dawkins New Horizons Ensemble: Chicago Now - Thirty Years of Great Black Music, Vol​.​1 (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Ernest Dawkins' Chicago Now (vol 1) is definitely in the category of lively, colorful music and is full of surprises and unpredictable music. He and his versatile sidemen perform a wide variety of originals. Improvisation #1 evolves from sound explorations to a riff section and back while Improvisation #2 is a lowdown but spacey blues. The longer pieces tend to be episodic and a little reminiscent of Charles Mingus in the way they reinvent the past a bit to form a new and uncertain future. Dawkins' fiery alto playing on Dream For Rahsaan is a tribute to Roland Kirk. The final three numbers are consistently exciting, trumpeter Ameen Muhammad adds power to the group, trombonist Steve Berry blends well with Dawkins' alto and the pianoless rhythm section is alert and driving. This is a highly recommended disc that keeps alive the Chicago AACM tradition." 

Scott Yanow, Cadence, December 1996 

Surprise. Of the three albums on which Ernest Dawkins has led his New Horizons Ensemble, this one presents the group at their most exciting, their most accessible and yes, their most surprising. In fact, "Chicago Now" may startle all but the most loyal fans of this truly contemporary sextet. With this outing, the level of their musicianship seems to have risen yet again. The musical and...  more

1. Improvisation #1 06:25

2. The Time Has Come 14:37

3. Improvisation #2 (My Baby Blues) 03:37

4. Bold Souls 07:44

5. Dream For Rahsaan 10:20

6. Zera 10:53

7. Flowers for the Soul 12:20

8. Runnin' from the Rain 06:04

Ernest Dawkins alto sax, tenor sax, flute, percussion, vocals

Steve Berry trombone, percussion

Ameen Muhammad trumpet, percussion, vocals

Jeffery Parker electric guitar

Yosef Ben Israel bass

Reggie Nicholson drums, percussion

Ernest Dawkins New Horizons Ensemble - South Side Street Songs (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Given the strength of South Side Street Songs, it is almost frightening to think that this band probably still has a lot of unrealized potential. Certainly the broad stylistic terrain mapped out here would reward further exploration. In the meantime, we have this noteworthy milestone, which ranks with the best of Silkheart's stellar jazz catalog."

Glenn Good, Cadence, June 1994

HOT JAZZ - bold and brash, music with energy, music that stimulates the nerves and spirit; the term "hot jazz" is irresistibly linked to Chicago jazz. Great Chicago bands such as King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Louis Ammstrong's Hot Five and Seven, Jelly Roll Morton's original Red Hot Peppers are famous examples (remember, those bands never played in New Orleans). More than that, the players in those bands complemented, supported, and inspired one another. Both the heat and the true band spirit were evident in the finest jazz that emerged from Chicago a few generations later by the early Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams groups, Air, and the Art Ensemble.

And now Chicago presents Ernest Dawkins and the New Horizons Ensemble. Like their illustrious predecessors, they play hot band music, and they, too, are among the finest jazz bands of their time, anywhere. It's exciting music to hear - New Horizons' music is enthusiastic, energetic, and perhaps inevitably, Chicago being the kind of city it is, rich with the substance of the blues.

This disc's title is perfect: "I want to call it SOUTH SIDE STREET SONGS," says Ernest Dawkins. the delightfully startling alto saxophonist, composer, and leader of New Horizons. "The compositions came out of the environment that I grew up in as a little boy, hearing the watermelon man, the fire engines, the riots, the first man on the moon, the scenes on the streets - the sweet and sour kinds of sounds, the melodious and atonal things that you see and hear, and some things are bizarre, too - all of that." 

There was music around him, too. Anthony Braxton and Chicago bop tenorman Sonny Seals lived nearby, and Emest heard them practising their saxophones. Since he grew up in the '50s and '60s, his first loves included the likes of Smoky Robinson and the Temptations. On the other hand, his father played Charlie Parker records for him and took him to that grandest of Chicago theaters, the original Regal, to hear Count Basie and Duke Ellington (many years later, Ernest was told that trumpeter Willie Cook was a distant relative). In boyhood he had a chum, Ameen Muhammad, and, "When I was eight I used to play bass and Ameen used to play guitar. After that I started playing drums and he started playing clarinet." About 1973, when Ernest settled on the saxophone, "My father said, 'I'm not buying you anything else, you're going to have to get it yourself'. My first saxophone was an old World War II silver Conn that my friend's father sold to me for $15 it's still a good horn." 

By then, jazz was clearly Ernest's music While practising in Washington Park one day he met bassoonist James Johnson, who encouraged him to attend the AACM School. There, on his first day, Ernest's teachers "tried to have me play 'Hot House', or some other hard Bird tune I was just learning. I was, 'Okay, you got me this time, but I'll be back."' He enrolled at the Vandercook College of Music, "got my thing together, and after 6 or 7 months I came back." His AACM teachers included Joseph Jarman, Chico Freeman, and Douglas Ewart, "It was original, and I was young and inquisitive I went everywhere to see everything "I came through a tradition - there are certain things you're supposed to do, certain people to study with. You're supposed to go to Von Freeman's jam sessions on Monday nights, then you're supposed to play in the AACM Big Band, and I played in Jimmy Ellis's workshop band. Then we had our own jam sessions, that's the only way to learn how to play, hands-on "

By 1979 he'd met Ben Israel and the expansive drummer Reggie Nicholson, and with old friend Muhammad he formed New Horizons; in another year or so Steve Berry joined. From the beginning New Horizons' fire was manifest. They embraced free jazz, modes, and hard bop, for, says Emest, "That's one thing Muhal taught me: Play it all, don't limit yourself. Some guys learn a period and style of jazz and they become that period and style. I was told, you learn it, then even if always you try to throw it away, it's always there. People can't pigeonhole us, because we carry the elements of traditional jazz but we also have the elements of the other side of music " New Horizons grew together. Its foundation was the very best possible kind: the terrific swinging drive of Ben Israel's bass, over which it would surely be impossible to play without fire and swing. The ecstatic abstractions of Muhammad's trumpet grew in time to embrace more lyrical lines, while the lyricism of Berry grew in ingenuity and expressiveness and Dawkins' alto sax art gained potent structural definition.

Throughout the '80s they played plenty of concerts, then added club dates, festival dates, and toured in Europe and America. Late in the decade, when Nicholson moved to New York, Avreeayl Ra was moving back to Chicago after extensive tours with Sun Ra's Arkestra; the master of a world of rhythmic intrigue, he inflamed New Horizons with his excitement. In 1992, then, Dawkins met Jeff Parker: "When I heard him, I said, 'That's the other ingredient, a little spice in this jambalaya.' All the ingredients unto themselves are meals, and when you mix it up, you make this dish." 

Ah, those ingredients. The growly solo that Muhammad molds out of a rude phrase in the first "Maghostut", the heat and mocking humor of his "Whence to Whither" solo, the marvelous interplay of trumpet and drums in "El Hajj". If Muhammad virtually defines 'hot jazz', Berry at least seems more intimate yet even his somber solo at the beginning of "Whence to Whither" is superbly varied in phrasing, and there are his very much alive solos in both "Maghostut"s. In contrast to his mates' rugged extroversion Jeff Parker plays guitar with a sweet sound - note especially his lovely tones and melodies in "Whence to Whither". Dawkins' phrase structures are recurringly call-answer in shape and his solo forms theme-derived, cherish Ameen Muhammad his bite and staccato lyricism "Goldinger", his brief passage of lovely, singing alto that concludes "Half-Step for Granny", his long, dramatically staged "Just Is Me" solo, eventually propelled by Ra into the extreme alto ranges, and the richness of sound and near-bop phrasing of his (for a change) tenor sax in "Maghostut". Ra, whose ever-active interplay inspires so much of this music, makes "Ashes and Dust" his showpiece, while Ben Israel, whose swing and harmonic instincts are crucial to this disc's success, offers a fine solo in "Just Is Me". 

All are lyric improvisers, oriented to swinging. It's the compositions that unite them into a band, and Ernest's writing has grown in color, detail, and authority over the years. Originally, he says, he composed brief tunes; now, "I try to do more extended pieces. The writing is a little more angular now. Most of my harmonies are melodic, but some weren't as atonal as they are now. I think a composition can stretch the group's imaginations and capabilities out into another approach, to another level. I want to go a little further. When I get to the level of Braxtoniancy, then I know I'm there." 

This program is a typically varied selection of inside and outside grooves. "'Ashes and Dust' is one of our old standards - we've been playing it since the group started. Though its inspiration was a meditation on 'the end of life as we know it on this earth - the bodies turn to ashes and dust, but the spirit lives on', the performance proves to be a musical forest fire, Ra pouring gasoline on the flames. And New Horizons has been playing "Just Is Me", with its stunning opening phrase, since the mid- 1980s. The rest of these works were composed in 1992. "Half Step for Granny" is dedicated to Ernest's late grandmother, Linnie Benjamin. "El Hajj" is El Hajj Malik El Shabazz - Malcolm X - and the tempo is medium-up, the harmonic setting earthy. The fast "Goldinger", not to be confused with gilded fingers, was composed for a black artists' group concert at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Two works are, I think, especially formidable settings for New Horizons' mastery. "Whence to Whither" is an abridged version of a long work that Ernest composed for a Meet The Composer grant. New Horizons first played it at Southend Musicworks, which with Hot House, is Chicago's leading new music showcase. It is a succession of moods and tempos, recurringly changing, and arriving at some complex interplay of truly sustained improvising.

The other is "Maghostut" (the 'g' is silent), dedicated to Malachi Favors Maghostut, the master bassist who replaced Ben Israel on New Horizons' first European tour in 1986; it's also dedicated to the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Not only do the two versions here capture the Art Ensemble's subversive humor, with bursts of chatters, growls, collective wailing, and perverse tempos - the theme is one of those get-next-to-you lines that sounds as if it was more discovered than composed-something inherent in jazz's chromosomes, like Monk's "Blue Monk", Morton's "Dead Man Blues", Fred Anderson's "Saxoon", Henry Threadgill's "Bermuda Blues". It's no accident that New Horizons offers an encore version of "Maghostut" on this disc, for the way they play it, with their contrasting sounds and lyricism, their wit and fire, certainly does call for more. Hot jazz, indeed!, from one of the most gifted and stimulating jazz bands of the 1990s.

John Litweiler
Author of Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life

1. Whence to Whither 14:03

2. Maghostut 08:50

3. Goldinger 06:17

4. Half-Step for Granny 03:49

5. Ashes and Dust 05:46

6. El Hajj 04:54

7. Just is Me 13:06

8. Maghostut Two 08:59

Ernest Dawkins alto sax, tenor sax, flute

Steve Berry trombone

Ameen Muhammad trumpet

Jeffery Parker electric guitar

Yosef Ben Israel bass

Avreeayl Ra drums