Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra
Jazz / Classical
Bill Dixon's consistent refusal to compromise and a lengthy career in education - he taught at Bennington College from 1968-1996 - prevented the kind of widespread acclaim accorded to contemporaries and/or past collaborators like Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Alan Silva, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane. In the early 60s he was a crucial figure on the developing free jazz, or "new thing" happening in New York, and in 1964 he organized and programmed the highly influential October Revolution in Jazz, an event that practically introduced free jazz to a broad public. He also co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild, a highly practical organization to sought to function like a union, giving cutting edge members like Paul Bley, Sun Ra, and Shepp increased leverage with record labels and concert promoters. He went on to record a couple of albums with Shepp, and worked as a sideman on recordings by Taylor (Conquistador, Blue Note, 1966), but by the time Dixon recorded the classic Intents and Purposes in 1966 it was clear that he had much more in mind than free jazz, creating one of the most distinctive and original albums in the history of the music. Within two years he was essentially missing from the scene, and although he never stopped playing and writing, education took much of his time, and he no longer performed as much as he'd done earlier in the decade.
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