Why did it take six years for this album to be released? It didn’t take long to make: electric guitarist Jeff Parker, double bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Nasheet Waits spent just one day recording Eastside Romp in a Pasadena studio in late May 2016, and it’s been mixed since 2018. The music certainly hasn’t […]
Tag: Jazz music
Moor Mother’s Jazz Codes needs little decoding
Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, has always been one to cite her sources. In addition to performing as a member of Philly-based free-jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements, the contralto wordsmith has frequently paid homage to the jazz, blues, and gospel canons in her solo work, beginning with her 2016 debut, Fetish Bones, and continuing through last […]
Wayfaring return after three years with a new set of spiritually informed folk jazz
James Falzone’s music has always spanned aesthetics. The Chicago native, who plays clarinets, shruti box, and percussion, has led and participated in ensembles that create various combinations of jazz, classical, and Arabic traditional music; he’s also served as an instructor at Columbia College and as music director of Grace Chicago Church. In 2016, he moved […]
Sons of Kemet go Black to the Future at Lincoln Hall
Barbadian-British reedist Shabaka Hutchings can’t contain his creativity within a single group—right now he has three. His most expansive is Shabaka & the Ancestors, a sextext featuring several South African musicians rooted in Johannesburg’s freewheeling jazz scene. His tightest, the three-man the Comet Is Coming, brings the same spiritual profundity within a harder-rocking, more synth-saturated […]
Jazz saxophonist Melissa Aldana looks inward on 12 Stars
For her 2019 record Visions, jazz saxophonist Melissa Aldana looked outside herself, crafting songs around meditations on the work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. But on her new Blue Note debut, 12 Stars, the 33-year-old bandleader taps into the realities of the pandemic era to explore inward, plumbing familial links and self-care as well as […]
All-star indie quintet the Royal Arctic Institute make twangy space jazz on From Catnap to Coma
The Royal Arctic Institute is a group of New York- and New Jersey-based musicians who made indelible marks on the east coast’s underground rock heyday of the 80s and 90s as members of Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, and Cell. This instrumental band operates with a core trio: guitarist John Leon (who’s played with Roky […]
Percussionist and bandleader Kahil El’Zabar starts his sixth decade of making restorative rhythms
It’s probably not possible to give a brief overview of Kahil El’Zabar’s resumé—the Chicago jazz percussionist has been a crucial part of the city’s musical heritage since he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians at age 18 in the early 1970s. (He also served the AACM as its chairman for a few […]
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 […]
Obama is making his return to public life with a speech at the University of Chicago Monday, and other news
Also, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is again threatening to revoke federal funding for Chicago.
Underrated pianist Bill Carrothers headlines the Green Mill
Bill Carrothers, as solid a pianist as anyone in mainstream jazz, plays the Green Mill tonight and tomorrow with his European rhythm section.
Sun Ra’s Chicago days–in Philadelphia
“Pathways to Unknown Worlds,” the knockout exhibition of Sun Ra art and ephemera that debuted here in 2006, opens Thursday at the ICA in Phillly.
Village Voice Jazz Poll
The Village Voice publishes its 2008 jazz poll, and this year I’m part of it.
The man on the bottom
If you go see saxophonist Donny McCaslin this weekend at the Green Mill, pay attention to his bassist, the imperturbable Hans Glawischnig.
The Morse Theatre in Rogers Park opens tonight
Hard bop drummer Winard Harper opens the Morse Theatre in Rogers Park tonight.
Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers projects makes its Chicago debut
Oak Park native Amir ElSaffar gives the Chicago premiere of his Two Rivers suite on Thursday.