The end of the year is a time for traditions that affirm social and spiritual priorities, and one of Chicago’s most enduring annual rituals comes from its music community. Since 1990, local percussionists Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang have convened at Links Hall to perform a concert that celebrates the season but doesn’t align with […]
Tag: improvisation
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best visual artists turned improvising music group
On a chilly early evening in fall 2021, during the only proper opening that west-side backyard gallery the Franklin held all year, a crowd gathered to hear improvised music. Of the handful of live-music events I’ve attended since the start of the pandemic, it was easily the most magical. The vibe was relaxed and informal, […]
Posted inMusic
Dave Rempis and Avreeayl Ra’s saxophone-drums duo comes in from the COVID cold
Bennu, the first duo recording by saxophonist Dave Rempis and drummer Avreeayl Ra, takes its name from an avian Egyptian divinity that created itself and also helped bring the world into being. It’s a fitting title for a completely improvised performance, especially one that ended the longest stretch without a gig that either had endured […]
Posted inCity Life
From the gallery to the Alley
Upcoming events and recommendations for the weekend and beyond
Posted inMusic
Chicago duo Cleared atomize their stark rock sound on The Key
Recording studios have reputations, and Chicago’s Electrical Audio is well-known as the place to go if you want to capture how your band really sounds. But when Michael Vallera and Steven Hess of local duo Cleared entered that establishment in spring 2019, they were in the early phase of a transformation. Their first four albums […]
Posted inMusic
Creative collisions on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was created by artist and performer Cristal Sabbagh with assistance from Natalya Sturlis and Scott Rubin.
Posted inMusic
Old comrades Peter Brötzmann and Fred Lonberg-Holm reunite on Memories of a Tunicate
German reeds player Peter Brötzmann turned 79 in March, so it would be developmentally appropriate for him to take a look back. But memories are a mixed blessing for a devoted practitioner of improvised music. While they can build up a shared understanding between partners, making it easier for them to come up with something […]
Posted inMusic
Improvising trio Icepick renew jazz’s love affair with the El on their third LP, Hellraiser
Sun Ra may have told everyone he was from Saturn, but the Afrofuturistic avant-gardist spent the 1950s in Chicago. While he was here, he recorded “El Is a Sound of Joy,” jazz’s greatest tribute to the city’s public transport system. No one in improvising trio Icepick—bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and drummer Chris […]
Posted inMusic
Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Kris Davis get to the heart of their collaboration
Like so many other musicians based in New York, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Kris Davis migrated there. Davis moved from Canada in 2001; Laubrock was born and raised in Germany, then spent nearly a decade in England before moving to the U.S. in 2009. For as long as they’ve lived in the same neck […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago saxophonist Dave Rempis releases a second record with his all-star quintet
When you want to put together an improvising ensemble whose interactions will be unpredictable as well as satisfying, it helps to recruit someone who has your back and someone else who isn’t afraid to push the music somewhere you didn’t think it would go. For one night in December 2018, Chicago alto, tenor, and baritone […]
Posted inMusic
Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon’s marvelous improvised concert at the May Chapel rings out again
Has it really been just two months since the Illinois shelter-in-place order went into effect? Sometimes live music seems like a fading memory. But when the original experience is especially vivid, it’s not hard for a record like To Catch a Bird in a Net of Wind to bring it all back. The album captures […]
Posted inMusic
A pair of Italian experimentalists help Ken Vandermark and Hamid Drake cross into new territory
For decades, percussionist Hamid Drake and reedist Ken Vandermark have sustained a partnership founded upon a deep engagement with the history of free jazz. Both within and outside the DKV Trio, their long-running ensemble with bassist Kent Kessler, their improvisations often arise from rhythmic foundations. But they’re also restless explorers, and on Open Border a […]
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Texan interdisciplinary artist and guitarist Sandy Ewen releases her first solo LP
Sandy Ewen’s music is a constant series of negotiations. She’s constantly seeing what new sounds she can get out of her guitar, using found objects such as steel-wool scrubbing pads, dowels, bolts, cat-grooming brushes, and lengths of chalk. She’s also an inveterate collaborator who relishes chances to test her compatibility with new acquaintances or to […]
Posted inMusic
Three restless musicians—Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, and Paul Lytton—push one another to new horizons
Update: The Nate Wooley/Ken Vandermark/Paul Lytton trio have canceled their tour. This show will proceed with Kuzu and a duo of Vandermark and Lytton. Local clarinet and saxophone player Ken Vandermark, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Nate Wooley, and English percussionist Paul Lytton played their only handful of gigs as a trio in 2011, but their collective history […]
Posted inMusic
Franco-Japanese quartet Kaze use dueling trumpets and contrasting compositional approaches to open up improvisational possibilities
Whether she’s playing keyboards or leading a jazz orchestra, Satoko Fujii revels in the dynamic range of the sounds at her disposal. On Fukushima (Libra 2017), she elicits sounds of forlorn birdsong and mass destruction from a group of New York musicians, and with her band Gato Libre, the most recent to visit Chicago, her […]