Posted inMusic

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival’s richly varied program opens doors to musical growth with new alliances

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival may bear the name of a single neighborhood, but it’s a world-class event. The programming draws heavily from local talent, but Chicagoans such as saxophonist Ari Brown and vocalist Dee Alexander have earned international profiles. And the performers from elsewhere include the likes of Detroit drummer Louis Hayes and Philadelphia […]

Posted inMusic

The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2023

In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]

Posted inMusic

Rising star David Virelles joins jazz eminences Andrew Cyrille and Reggie Workman in Trio Imagination

Drummer Andrew Cyrille (born 1939) and double bassist Reggie Workman (born 1937) have worked with many of the most profoundly influential figures in post-1950 jazz; a short list of artists with whom one or both musicians have recorded includes Art Blakey, Alice and John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Cecil Taylor, Marion Brown, Peter Brötzmann, Mal Waldron, […]

Posted inMusic

Xylouris White’s introspective new album delivers a paradoxical kick in the seat

Xylouris White’s fifth and latest LP, April’s The Forest in Me (Drag City), stands apart from everything else in the duo’s discography. Cretan folk musician George Xylouris—who contributes laouto (lute), lyra (upright fiddle), and vocals—and Australian MVP (most valuable percussionist) Jim White have typically recorded music that feels a lot like their live performances. Their […]

Posted inMusic

The Magic Number convenes six veteran improvisers for an unprecedented celebration of creative uncertainty

The Magic Number is three. It’s the number of musicians that gallerist, record label proprietor, and music scholar John Corbett deems to be ideal for an improvisational encounter. And since he’s organizing this event—which coincides with his observation of a significant birthday that’s divisible by three—he gets to pick the terms of engagement under which […]

Posted inMusic

Pianist Pandelis Karayorgis renews his Chicago connections and makes some new ones

Pandelis Karayorgis is all about connections. On The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project, a fantastic trio session released last year by Driff Records, the Boston-based keyboardist explores the overlapping idiosyncrasies of fellow pianists Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, and Hasaan Ibn Ali. In other settings, he has delved deeply into the music of Misha Mengelberg, Duke […]

Posted inMusic

Tinariwen enhance the Tuareg blues of Amatssou with touches of country-and-western and ambient

In 2017, Reader critic Peter Margasak noted Tinariwen’s recurring practice of featuring rock musicians as guests on their records. Their new album, Amatssou, doesn’t change that approach, but it perfects it. Originally, the long-running ensemble of Tuareg musicians (also known as Kel Tamasheq, meaning speakers of Tamasheq) intended to make the album at Jack White’s […]

Posted inMusic

Two guitar-oriented instrumental ensembles with their sights set on transcendence share a bill at the Hungry Brain

This spring, east-coast instrumental duo Elkhorn released On the Whole Universe in All Directions (Centripetal Force), and Chicago’s Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble released the equally game-changing III (Astral Spirits). Though their sounds are distinct, the two bands aim at a common goal of musical transcendence—which may help explain how they ended up on this bill together. […]

Posted inMusic

Local venue Constellation celebrates its first decade of nurturing and presenting cutting-edge music

Given the relentless corporatization of American life, any place you can find that isn’t a front for a faceless, rent-seeking conglomerate feels special. Certain independent music venues earn a special reverence by establishing a center of gravity for communities and movements in need. Since April 2013, when Constellation opened on Western Avenue in a shared […]

Posted inMusic

Improvisers Mats Gustafsson and Joachim Nordwall make blockbuster-worthy music on a new collaborative album

Free improvisers, experimental musicians, and foley artists differ in their methods, but practitioners of all three arts can unite around their attraction to sounds that’ll raise your hackles. This collaboration between improvisational woodwinds player Mats Gustafsson and electronic musician Joachim Nordwall (of the Skull Defekts and the iDealist) could soundtrack a bookshelf full of straight-to-video […]