17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur

Among all else of great note that shall happen in music this year, 2008 marks the magnificent return to record of the legendary Bill Dixon: composer, trumpeter, teacher and all-around musical force. Dixon's pioneering work as a musician and organizer in the early 1960s helped lay the foundation for today's creative improvised music scene in New York and beyond. In 1964, he founded the all-star artists collective, the Jazz Composers' Guild, and produced and organized The October Revolution in Jazz, an unprecedented New York festival that helped put the so-called 'new thing' on the cultural map. A mentor to countless musicians, through both his teaching and his role as a producer for the Savoy label, Dixon turned his focus to education in the late 1960s, serving nearly 30 years on the faculty at the prestigious Bennington College, where he founded the historic Black Music Division in 1973. While he has never stopped composing (prolifically at that), and has produced a series of rarified small ensemble recordings from the '70s-'90s, his work for expanded, orchestral ensemble has gone unrecorded and/or unreleased since his momentous album Intents And Purposes (RCA, 1967). And now, this album -- a tour de force of orchestral composition, conduction and improvisational exploration -- fully composed by Bill Dixon and performed with The Bill Dixon Orchestra. 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur was specially commissioned by Arts for Art, Inc. (producers of the Vision Festival).