The double album Houston 2012 captures a two-day encounter in October 2012 between English tabletop guitarist Keith Rowe and the experimental-music community of Houston, Texas. Rowe’s visit came about thanks to the initiative of Saint Louis double bassist Damon Smith, who lived in Texas at the time. While there Smith developed a strong working relationship […]
Tag: improvised music
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Strings that sing on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was created by illustrator and musician Rei Alvarez, who lives in Richmond, Virginia.
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Natural Information Society reaches a new ecstatic peak with Evan Parker
While it’s impossible to pinpoint a single peak in John Coltrane’s vast discography, Ascension is one of his most intense expressions of transcendental intent. Local musician Joshua Abrams knows his Coltrane, so it’s no accident that he’s given the name Descension to this summit between his group Natural Information Society and English saxophonist (and fellow […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
The pandemic pushed indoor music into the parks
Saxophonist Dave Rempis and drummer Tyler Damon played regular concerts in Margate Park this past summer and fall.
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Finding ways to play through the pandemic
Chicago improvisers Tim Daisy and Matt Piet have responded to the challenges of COVID by learning new ways to record alone.
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The Best of the Miyumi Project celebrates 20 years of Tatsu Aoki’s culture-combining ensemble
Tatsu Aoki left his native Tokyo in 1977 to study experimental film and settled in Chicago two years later. In addition to making films, he improvises, composes, and conducts music, playing bass, shamisen, and taiko drums, and by the early 1990s he’d connected with the local jazz scene, developing a particular affinity with past and […]
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Veteran pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn releases her first album as a bandleader
No one else plays the pedal steel guitar like Susan Alcorn. She combines a command of the instrument’s orchestral range with an improvisational fluency that lets her take the instrument far beyond its usual idiomatic settings. She began playing professionally in Chicago country bars in the mid-1970s, then went on to hone her chops in […]
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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 […]
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Chicago jazz-fusion unit Cordoba actualize their ambition on Specter
When The Sick Muse interviewed Chicago jazz-fusion sextet Cordoba in 2019, vocalist Brianna Tong talked about the ways improv-based music can be a megaphone for protest movements. “I don’t think it’s revolutionary, but I think it can deepen the things that are in the lyrics of those songs, and provide an outlet to feel more […]
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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 […]
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Imperial Triumphant’s Alphaville soundtracks our civilizational suicide by capitalism
The overlap between extreme metal and avant-garde improvised music is admittedly slight, but that tiny patch of ground produces some extravagantly bizarre fruits—among them New York City trio Imperial Triumphant. Drummer Kenny Grohowski frequently collaborates with downtown-scene daddy John Zorn, most notably performing his music in Simulacrum with guitarist Matt Hollenberg of Cleric and organist […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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The transnational Rempis/Lopez/Packard trio converges in Chicago
The seven tracks on the Rempis/Lopez/Packard trio’s superb debut CD, The Early Bird Gets (Aerophonic), are named after prehistoric avian animals. Anytime a jazz band invokes birds, the ur-Bird—Charlie Parker—inevitably comes to mind. And while no one’s going to mistake the trio’s music for bebop, it does swing more than you’d expect given the backgrounds […]
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The 2020 Frequency Festival announces a lineup of world-class experimental music
Highlights of the 2020 Frequency Festival include a fusion of Carnatic music and jazz, a solo vocal piece for Diamond Reynolds, and programs of work by Eliane Radigue and Annea Lockwood.