In 2019, the Tang Museum at Skidmore College presented The Second Buddha: Master of Time, an exhibition concerning Padmasambhava, the guru credited with bringing Buddhism to Tibet during the eighth century. Along with lectures and exhibits both visual and virtual, the museum commissioned a concert—conceived as a “musical bardo exploration”—by Susie Ibarra, a Philippine American […]
Author Archives: Bill Meyer
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Simon Joyner shows all sides of the story on his latest LP
If things look bleak to you, Omaha-based singer-songwriter Simon Joyner won’t contradict you, but he might complicate your understanding of the darkness. The narrator of “Caroline’s Got a Secret,” the first cut on his new LP, Songs From a Stolen Guitar (Grapefruit), seems blind to the fact that the confidence he’s breaking involves Caroline’s suicidal […]
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Acoustic guitarist Glenn Jones savors the bittersweetness of memory
Vade Mecum translates from Latin as “go with me.” When Glenn Jones makes such an offer, anyone who appreciates a vivid musical trip shouldn’t think twice. The 68-year-old guitar and banjo player from Cambridge, Massachusetts, began working as a solo acoustic musician in the early 2000s, after spending years playing with surf-meets-experimental-rock combo Cul de […]
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Saxophonist and former Chicagoan Aram Shelton is back in town and playing better than ever
Early experiences count for a lot. After reedist Aram Shelton moved to Chicago in 1999, fresh out of college, he became an integral part of an interdependent community of jazz musicians who were ready to realize one another’s concepts. Shelton left town in 2005, but he’s continued his practice of embedding himself in a scene, […]
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Drone adepts Pelt return to Chicago for the first time in a decade
As we navigated shutdowns and venue closures throughout 2020, many of us observed that time seemed to slow down. But when it comes to dilating time, COVID-19 is a rank dabbler compared to Pelt. Even in their early incarnation as a Sonic Youth-inspired noise-rock band based in Blacksburg, West Virginia, they were prone to sludgy […]
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Chicago bassist Nick Macri celebrates some roots and branches on his first solo release
Chicago bassist Nick Macri is the model of versatility. He has appeared with a formidable gallery of jazz, folk, and rock musicians, including Ken Vandermark, James Elkington, Laetitia Sadier, Bobby Conn, and instrumental combo Stirrup. Adept on electric bass guitar and acoustic double bass, he can be unassumingly supportive or assertively tuneful, depending on what […]
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Cellist and former Chicagoan Fred Lonberg-Holm revives some local projects
Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm lived in Chicago for 22 years. During that time, he was ubiquitous on the city’s improvisational music scene, playing in bands and ad hoc groupings with so many essential players that any list that could fit in this preview would be ridiculously incomplete. He was also a tireless touring musician who represented […]
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Thumbscrew are an all-star ensemble where no one is the star
The members of Thumbscrew are nonpareil instrumentalists. Drummer Tomas Fujiwara easily balances ornamentation and propulsion at any speed; double bassist Michael Formanek plays with a woody tone whose bulk belies his ability to invest each note with its own expressive inflection; and guitarist Mary Halvorson employs fluid phrasing and adroit manipulation of delay effects that […]
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Wayfaring return after three years with a new set of spiritually informed folk jazz
James Falzone’s music has always spanned aesthetics. The Chicago native, who plays clarinets, shruti box, and percussion, has led and participated in ensembles that create various combinations of jazz, classical, and Arabic traditional music; he’s also served as an instructor at Columbia College and as music director of Grace Chicago Church. In 2016, he moved […]
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Freakwater and the Mekons unite to sing about coal’s dark, transatlantic legacy
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, retail clerks, day-care staff, public-transportation employees, and many other workers learned what coal miners have known for a very long time: that the authorities who deem their labor essential don’t necessarily feel the same way about their lives. Freakwater and the Mekons have each sung folk ballads […]
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Shane Parish brings electrified sea shanties and improvisational explorations to Elastic Arts
There’s no pinning down Shane Parish. On acoustic guitar, he spins webs of bright, densely packed notes; plugged in, he dips into a deep well of jagged rhythms, gnarled chords, and elongated ribbons of humming sound. Stylistically, he seems equally at home meditating upon American folk tunes, negotiating high-speed hairpin turns with mathy combo Ahleuchatistas, […]
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A concert-by-concert guide to the Frequency Festival
After a COVID gap year, the Frequency Festival returns on February 22. The six-day event is an outgrowth of the Frequency Series, which is programmed by former Chicago Reader staff music critic Peter Margasak and hosted by Constellation. Founded in 2013, shortly after drummer and promoter Mike Reed opened the north-side venue, the series presents […]
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Matchess draws music from the resources of memory on Sonescent
For roughly a decade, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Whitney Johnson maintained a fairly steady developmental arc with her solo project, Matchess. Her songs, which comprised layers of viola, organ, tape loops, drum machine, and voice, progressively materialized out of a murky, analog fog; the hooky, propulsive tracks on the 2018 release Sacracorpa glided like a lucid dream […]
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Basque musician Elena Setién makes sense of a changed world on Unfamiliar Minds
Basque singer and multi-instrumentalist Elena Setién began working on her latest English-language recording, Unfamiliar Minds, just as the first wave of COVID shut down Europe down. She uses both sound and language to get its pandemic-times message across: the echoing piano chords on the opening song, “2020,” evoke the numbness wrought by accumulating uncertainty, while […]
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Chicago’s Black musical visionaries charted paths for their communities in the 1950s and ’60s
Since the 1950s, Chicago has hosted a succession of visionary Black musical groups and societies. They’re best known as purveyors of avant-garde jazz, but that characterization sells short Sun Ra and his Arkestra, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and Phil Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble. Each was—and in some cases still is—a […]