Three years ago wildly imaginative producer and MC Residente (aka René Pérez) disbanded Calle 13, the shape-shifting hip-hop and reggaeton project he started with his stepbrother Eduardo José Cabra Martínez (aka Visitante) in 2004 in their native Puerto Rico. That project catapulted the duo to global fame, and it gave Residente the resources to pursue […]
Author Archives: Peter Margasak
Posted inBlogs
Music critic Peter Margasak says farewell and thanks to the Reader and to Chicago
A sign-off and an appreciation—plus some favorite stories from the past 25 years
Posted inMusic
Arlington Heights native and saxophonist Brian Krock leads a Chicago-based lineup of his big band Big Heart Machine
It’s no secret that in today’s world running a big band is a daunting prospect. It’s difficult enough to wrangle 18 musicians together to perform, let alone rehearse complex, harrowing scores, not to mention finding venues with stages large enough to fit the entire ensemble. But saxophonist and composer Brian Krock, a 29-year-old Arlington Heights […]
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Progressive bluegrass combo Punch Brothers settle into a hybrid sound with a sharp melodies
I’d hoped to make it through my life without hearing a host of A Prairie Home Companion break out in a rap, but with the new Punch Brothers album, All Ashore (Nonesuch) that desire has been shattered. Toward the end of the second song, “The Angel of Doubt,” mandolinist, singer, and inheritor of Garrison Keillor’s […]
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Odetta Hartman holds her bricolage of folk, electronic beats, and field recordings together with whimsy
In our posteverything world it’s hard to envision the current model of a New York-style artistic vagabond—a creative who had a bohemian childhood and found ways to connect the detritus of the past with a forward-looking present. Singer Odetta Hartman offers one such version on her recently released second album, Old Rockhounds Never Die (Northern […]
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The Art Institute presents a dazzling 12-performance showcase of music by John Zorn throughout its galleries
In recent years the sprawling variety and prolificacy of works by musician, composer, and community force John Zorn have been showcased in appropriately ambitious, multiconcert marathon events presented all around the world with enormous casts of musicians. Last month I experienced one of the largest such efforts when Jazz em Agosto, in Lisbon, Portugal, turned over […]
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Horse Lords saxophonist Andrew Bernstein delivers a different strain of intensity on his visceral new solo album
Saxophonist Andrew Bernstein is a major contributor to the churning intensity of noisy Baltimore art-rock band Horse Lords, and while the music on his forthcoming second solo album, An Exploded View of Time (Hausu Mountain), isn’t nearly as loud or propulsive, its concentrated sound and cycling patterns are hardly chill. With the exception of the […]
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Five portraits of the 40th annual Chicago Jazz Festival
The extended lineup of the 2018 Chicago Jazz Festival brims with compelling and adventurous artists—including Afrofuturist visionary Nicole Mitchell, avant-garde pillar Matthew Shipp, and tireless explorer Chris Speed.
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Avant-garde reedist Chris Speed grows into tradition
Chris Speed brings a trio to the Jazz Festival that lets the avant-garde reedist tread the ground of the old masters without losing himself.
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Pianist Matthew Shipp can make magic with the perfect partner
Pianist Matthew Shipp has released more than a dozen albums with Brazilian saxophonist Ivo Perelman just in the past two years, and their Jazz Festival set is the first time they’ve played together in Chicago.
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Seun Kuti keeps the Afrobeat concocted by his father Fela, nicely simmering
Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti turned 35 early this year, and he’s already nearly two decades into his career. In 1997, when he was just 14, he took the reins of Egypt 80, his father Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s explosive working band. I was thrilled by his promise when he first surfaced internationally in 2006, and by […]
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Chicago experimentalists Mako Sica find a sweet spot with master percussionist Hamid Drake
Since I first encountered it nearly a decade ago, I’ve repeatedly tried to engage with the music of Chicago trio Mako Sica. The determinedly exploratory ensemble couches improvisational impulses within meditative, expansive prog-rock modes more concerned with using chants, texture-rich guitar, and spacious rhythms to carve out space than with displaying hollow virtuosity. Unfortunately, their […]
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Round Robin offers improvised duets from Chicago jazz, rock, experimental, and hip-hop musicians
In 2010 Adam Schatz, a New York musician who’s been one of the driving forces behind his city’s sprawling Winter Jazzfest, launched Round Robin, a program focused on free improvisation where musicians with disparate approaches and backgrounds improvise in a steady stream of five-minute duos. The evening begins with a solo performance by one of […]
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Sophisticated Norwegian pianist Håvard Wiik debuts a new project with a group of Chicago improvisers
Pianist Håvard Wiik, a Norwegian native who lives in Berlin, is best known for his key role in the Scandinavian free-bop quintet Atomic, for which he writes much of the material. In that context he’s exhibited a strong interest in 20th-century classical music (you can’t miss his love for Morton Feldman), but his roots are […]
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Seattle organist Delvon Lamarr brings serious funk to his nimble organ trio
Although the sound of the jazz organ trio—where the keyboardist lays down bass lines with foot pedals while a guitarist plays chords and a drummer adds propulsion—has never gone away, it has changed since being popularized in the 50s by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Baby Face Willette, and Jimmy McGriff. In the 1960s some […]