Finally back in print! People in Sorrow by Art Ensemble of Chicago
After much anticipation, this landmark free jazz album is finally back in print — available now on vinyl and CD . Originally released by EMI’s Pathé Marconi imprint in 1969, People in Sorrow — a 40-minute work by the four-piece lineup of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, and Malachi Favors — has long been unavailable on vinyl and CD, and then only in hard-to-find European and Japanese issues. It is arguably the finest and most ambitious of the 14 studio albums recorded by the Art Ensemble during their 23-month sojourn in France, which launched the American group internationally. (In 2023, play loud! reissued Les Stances à Sophie , the AEC’s celebrated soundtrack for Moshé Mizrahi’s like-titled film, also recorded in France and first issued by Pathé.) People in Sorrow can be viewed as the culminating event in the Art Ensemble’s inventive and revolutionary approach to collective improvisation, counterpoising clamorous free-blowing intensity with expanses of hushed conversatio...