In October 1982, members of seven LGBTQ+ concert and marching bands from across the U.S. met in Chicago and formed the Lesbian and Gay Band Association. Though the LGBA changed its name to the Pride Bands Alliance in 2021, it still provides “an international network of LGBTQ+ and affirming bands in all stages of development” […]
Tag: Damon Locks
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best use of cicadas on a jazz album
The dense, iridescent drone of an untold number of singing cicadas seeps into Now, the 2021 sophomore full-length by Damon Locks’s Black Monument Ensemble. In August and September 2020, 11 of the collective’s members gathered to record at Edgewater’s Experimental Sound Studio, both inside and out back in the garden behind the building—and the environmental […]
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Chicago joins seven other cities on two continents to host the Catalytic Sound Festival
Avant-garde jazz musicians have been uniting to better control their opportunities to perform, record, and engage with their communities at least since the 1960s, when the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) first convened in Chicago and the shorter-lived Jazz Composers Guild (which included Carla Bley, Sun Ra, Bill Dixon, and Archie Shepp) […]
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Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble’s Now is an essential album of the moment
Flipping through television channels. Flicking through radio stations. They’re quotidian actions—until they’re not. When you’ve lived through a year like 2020, every frequency delivers the same nightmare from a different angle. On Now (International Anthem), Chicago sound collagist Damon Locks and his Black Monument Ensemble confidently grasp the tuning dial of history. Like 2019’s Where […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Experimental Sound Studio has turned a streaming series into a virtual community
With its ongoing Quarantine Concerts, ESS has built connections faster and cheaper than it could have in person.
Posted inMusic
Catalytic Sound launches a streaming service to support improvising musicians
Catalytic Sound launches a streaming service to support improvising musicians, rapper-producer Rashid Hadee collaborates with the Primeridian, and more
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A eulogy for Danny’s Tavern
For decades, Danny’s nurtured a devoted and welcoming community of music lovers—but it couldn’t survive the pandemic.
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Rob Mazurek’s latest with his Exploding Star Orchestra finds hope in the cosmos
Dimensional Stardust is a splendid sonic antidote for the spirit-damping insults of a year that can’t end soon enough—growth and transcendence are programmed into the album’s DNA. The Exploding Star Orchestra’s leader, multi-instrumentalist Rob Mazurek, started out playing idiomatically correct hard bop in Chicago’s jazz bars in the 1980s. These days he lives in Marfa, […]
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes it to the streets
With short sets from small groups in unexpected spots, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival creates a communal experience that’s pandemic safe.
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Thirty-five moments that brought Chicago music to the world
The Year of Chicago Music has had less music in it than anybody anticipated, but we still have plenty to celebrate.
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Damon Locks’s greatest moment in Chicago music history
Black Monument Ensemble founder Damon Locks still feels the ripples from Soul Train 50 years after its Chicago premiere.
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Olivia Junell, codirector of Experimental Sound Studio
“Right before the shelter-in-place got announced, we started thinking: OK, how can we help?”
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Chicago jazz guitarist Tim Stine drops an engagingly off-kilter new trio album
Chicago jazz guitarist Tim Stine drops an engagingly off-kilter new trio album, a 26-track compilation benefits the staff of the shuttered Crown Liquors, and more.
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Damon Locks’s Black Monument Ensemble drop a live video to buoy a locked-down city
Damon Locks’s Black Monument Ensemble drop a live video to buoy a locked-down city, self-described “bohemian electronics” act Sip releases its first studio album, and more.
Posted inMusic
The best Chicago albums of the 2010s: the critics’ ballots
Here’s where to see who voted for what and how the points got divvied up.