- Tony Buck
Berlin-based Australian drummer Tony Buck has played a number of gigs in Chicago over the past few weeks, turning in two sets with his peerless trio the Necks at the Empty Bottle (you can find a fine Necks set recorded live last month at New York’s Issue Project Room over at the swell Free Music Archive) and more recently joining an ad hoc group with pianists Magda Mayas and Jim Baker and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm at Heaven Gallery. He’s known best as top-notch improviser, and the broad sonic palette and sharp skills as a listener that he’s developed in that discipline are a big part of why Ken Vandermark chose Live in Nickelsdorf by the trio Aus (with Buck, bassist Clayton Thomas, and trombonist Johannes Bauer) as one of his favorite albums from 2009. Yet throughout his career Buck has played on several terrific, if somewhat twisted, rock albums.