When AEC trumpeter Lester Bowie died in November 1999 at the age of 58, the jazz world lost one of its great originals –­ a flamboyant sound-painter, a great soloist, a musical philosopher, and a charismatic performer. On this memorial album his friends and colleagues give a sense of his freewheeling, larger-than-life character. Powerful and uncompromising, “Tribute To Lester” is the first new Art Ensemble recording on ECM in almost 20 years, and one of their very finest discs.