Edward Wilkerson

Edward "Ed" Wilkerson Jr. ( born July 27, 1953 in Terre Haute, Indiana) is an American jazz musician (tenor saxophone, alto clarinet, flute, piano and percussion), bandleader and music educator.

Life and work

Edward Wilkerson began his musical career in the Chicago jazz scene and soon became one of the members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians ( AACM ), in the music school he later taught composition; for a time he was also chairman of the AACM.

By the mid- 1970s, Wilkerson worked with musicians of the AACM collective, as El'Zabar with percussionist Kahil; then became a founding member of Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and remained until 1997 in the group until he was replaced by Ernest Dawkins. Wilkerson worked on the first albums like Three Gentlemen From Chicago ( Moers Records, 1980), Hang Tuff (Open Minds ) and Dance With the Ancestors ( Chameleon ).

Wilkerson then also launched their own projects, such as the formation Founded in 1979, Shadow Vignettes, in a total of 25 musicians worked ( and Others Reggie Nicholson, Ameen Muhammad and Ernest Dawkins ) and the dance, poetry, visual arts einbezog. The music of the Shadow Vignettes took loans from the big band work of Muhal Richard Abrams, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Sun Ra. The Shadow Vignettes took an album ( Birth of a Notion ), which was released in 1985 on Sessoms Records.

In January 1985, Wilkerson then founded his ensemble 8 Bold Souls, an octet, with whom he regularly appeared in concerts in Chicago and eventually became his working band. With the Clarinet Choir, which included also JD Parran and Mwata Bowden, he joined in 1986 in Moers.

Wilkerson worked outside the formations 8 Bold Souls, the, Shadow Vignettes and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble nor with the AACM Big Band, with Roscoe Mitchell, Douglas Ewart, The Temptations, Chico Freeman, Geri Allen, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Muhal Richard Abrams Aretha Franklin and George Lewis.

Currently Wilkerson works with the formation frequency with Nicole Mitchell, Harrison Bankhead and Avreeayl Ra. and play a mix of free jazz, African influences and concrete sounds.

Wilkerson received award from the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Meet the Composer program and the Community Arts Assistance Program.

Disco Graphical Notes

Albums under his own name

  • Shadow Vignettes - Birth of a Notion ( Sessom, 1984)
  • 8 Bold Souls: Sideshow ( Arabesque, 1991)
  • Light on the Path (sound aspects, 1994), with Rod McGaha
  • 8 Bold Souls: Antfarm ( Arabesque, 1994)
  • Frequency ( Thrill Jockey )

As a sideman

  • Zahir El'Zabar: Anchestral Song ( Silkheart, 1987)
  • Zahir El'Zabar: 21st Century Union March ( Silkheart, 1995)
J. D. Parran George Lewis (trombonist) Nicole Mitchell (musician) Richard Cook (journalist)
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