Bill Dixon
Sat., Dec. 5, 8 p.m., $20, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, arsnovaworkshop.com.
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jazz
Dwelling somewhere on the fringe of the fringe, trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon's contributions to the development of free jazz have long been obscured by the scarcity of recorded evidence. But Dixon was an early collaborator with the likes of Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp and founded the Jazz Composers Guild, a sort of strength-in-numbers musicians' union that was perhaps doomed to fail given the extreme iconoclasm of its members. (Sun Ra, Paul Bley, Shepp and Taylor are each mercurial to the extreme on their own; impossible to believe they ever banded together, even briefly.) Dixon began a stint at Vermont's Bennington College in 1968, remaining hidden in plain sight — though influencing countless students — for decades. He's experienced a career renaissance of late, being feted by New York's Vision Festival in 2007 and collaborating with a younger generation of innovators. They include Chicago cornetist/composer/visual artist Rob Mazurek, whose Exploding Star Orchestra provides a suitably cosmic setting for Dixon's nebular horn.
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