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 […]
Tag: free jazz
Posted inMusic
Malachi Ritscher gave Chicago’s fringe music his whole heart
Listen to a raw and raucous Nirvana concert at Metro in 1990. Hear Slint performing a knockout cover of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” at Club Dreamerz. Check out a rare live set from local postpunks End Result, or New York’s ESG in 1984 at Lakeview’s long-defunct countercultural nightclub Medusa’s. Or peruse more than 1,000 […]
Posted inMusic
Guitarist Jeff Parker contains multitudes on Forfolks
With credits as diverse as Chicago postrock collective Tortoise and free-jazz band Ernest Dawkins’s New Horizons Ensemble, guitarist and composer Jeff Parker owns a unique vocabulary. He’s been able to muster expressions of self within groups and as a bandleader across 30 years of work, and now he offers a new solo dispatch, Forfolks. “Suffolk” […]
Posted inMusic
On May You Be Held, Sumac are a beast of free improvisation, noise, and metal
There’s a lot of room in the vast and aesthetically diverse landscape of metal, but one powerhouse trio occupies its own sound-deconstructing universe: Sumac. The heady metal-centric music that guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom), bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles), and drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) churn out is such a left-field beast […]
Posted inMusic
The Chicago Underground Quartet bottle their lightning again
For 19 years, the Chicago Underground Quartet’s first album was their only album—but now longtime collaborators Rob Mazurek, Jeff Parker, and Chad Taylor have recaptured the group’s freewheeling jazz spirit.
Posted inMusic
Mars Williams brings his Albert Ayler Xmas across Europe and back home to Chicago
This year’s free-jazz holiday tour includes two shows at the Hungry Brain with his band Witches & Devils and special guests.
Posted inMusic
Subversive guitar god James Blood Ulmer plays a rare Chicago show
Guitar gods don’t come much more sagelike, subversive, and utterly distinctive than James Blood Ulmer. Born Willie James Ulmer in North Carolina, this towering figure of free blues guitar, now 79 years old, started off in 1960s soul-jazz combos in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, before settling in New York in 1971. In the Big Apple […]
Posted inMusic
Extraordinary Popular Delusions play free jazz two centuries deep
The members of Extraordinary Popular Delusions bring vast and varied experience to this underappreciated ensemble’s regular weekly shows—which follow no rules but their own.
Posted inBlogs
Reedist Aram Shelton reconnects with old friends on his first return visit since 2015
Aram Shelton gigs with current Copenhagen comrade Håkon Berre and long-running Chicago collaborators Tim Daisy, Jason Roebke, and Josh Berman.
Posted inBlogs
Singular pianist and musical mind Cecil Taylor has died at 89
Cecil Taylor belonged to a rare class of uncompromising visionaries who changed music and the way we think about it.
Posted inBlogs
Italian quartet Roots Magic illuminate the links between rustic blues and earthy free jazz
Roots Magic, who make their Chicago debut at Elastic on Thursday, find commonalities between Julius Hemphill and Charlie Patton, Henry Threadgill and Blind Willie Johnson.
Posted inMusic
Chicago saxophonist Dave Rempis builds an intentional community in jazz
Dave Rempis organizes concerts, mentors young musicians, and connects players from across the States and abroad—modeling the commitment and generosity that keep the jazz scene viable.
Posted inBlogs
Devouring the Guilt injects new energy into Chicago’s free-jazz scene
Scrappy free-improvising trio Devouring the Guilt—saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher, bassist Eli Namay, and drummer Bill Harris—are part of a potent group of performers releasing music through the Amalgam label.
Posted inBlogs
Pianist Dave Burrell deftly straddles jazz history
The Philadelphia-based veteran, who’s just as fluent in the music of Jelly Roll Morton as he is playing Eurocentric free improvisation, performs Friday night with Harrison Bankhead.
Posted inBlogs
Texas label Astral Spirits weds the cassette resurgence to the ‘new wave of heavy free jazz’
On Thursday at Constellation, Astral Spirits celebrates tape releases by Billington/Shippy/Wyche and Matt Lux’s Communication Arts Quartet.