The 1960 oil painting Garden of Music—the magisterial centerpiece of a knockout survey of the art of Bob Thompson— shows Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and a half dozen other jazz luminaries coexisting in a pastoral landscape. Some figures are silhouettes, while others are rendered with distinct features. How the painter balanced so many disparate elements […]
Tag: jazz
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Chicago’s 1920s nightlife incubated world-changing musical and social experiments
The Roaring Twenties have often been portrayed as a time of wealth, glamor, and social change. Technological advances, including more widespread electrification and increased use of automobiles, plus the growth of mass media such as radio and movies, drove a booming economy—though then as now the benefits were inequitably distributed. Inspired by movie stars and […]
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Singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada conquers heartache on her debut Marchita
On her exquisite debut album, Marchita, Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada dissects the many bruised facets of a breakup in 11 intimate, elegant tunes. Estrada colors her compositions with her experiences growing up in a family of classical musicians and luthiers as well as her jazz studies at the University of Veracruz. On Marchita, she traces […]
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Wadada Leo Smith joins forces with guitarists Henry Kaiser and Alex Varty on the aquatic Pacifica Koral Reef
Trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith, who turned 80 earlier this year, is seemingly at the height of his creative life—despite having already catalogued decades of accomplishments across dozens of releases, both in the company of AACM masters and as a bandleader. In May he issued a pair of three-disc sets, one focused on solo […]
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Percussionists Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang return to in-person performance for their annual solstice concerts
Six years ago, I characterized Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang’s winter solstice concert series as “an anchor, a beacon, and a seasonal tradition in its own right.” The two drummers began performing as a duo at Links Hall in 1990; surrounded by percussion instruments from around the world, they would begin by candlelight, then play […]
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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” […]
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Chicago electronic group Courtesy go pop but stay weird
Chicago group Courtesy have always staggered and glitched across the line between experimental and pop electronics. Their first album, 2011’s Idmatic (Tape Deco), recorded by members Drew Ryan and Kirk Rawlings in Memphis and Chicago, is filled with ambient drone and feedback noise but also illustrates their pop sensibilities; on “Sisters,” for instance, percussive clang […]
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On the new Seven Bridges, Charles Rumback gathers together the many sounds he’s mastered
Update on Fri 11/12: The Charles Rumback show at Constellation on Sat 11/20 has been canceled. No rescheduled date has been announced. It’s the drummer’s job to make everyone else in the band sound good, and Charles Rumback does it very well. Whether he’s playing folk rock with the Horse’s Ha, baroque pop with Steve […]
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AACM repertory ensemble Artifacts establish their own sound
Flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Mike Reed initially formed Artifacts as a repertory group; the music on their 2015 debut album, Artifacts (482 Music), includes compositions by founding or early members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, among them Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Myers, and Roscoe […]
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Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor concentrate their shared history in Mind Maintenance
Mind Maintenance is Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor, two musicians whose concord transcends time, distance, genre, and instrumentation. They’ve been playing together since the 1990s, when they both lived in Chicago, and their collaborative relationship has endured since Taylor headed east 20 years ago. They’ve jointly backed the likes of singer Sam Prekop and cosmic […]
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The Reader’s guide to Chicago in Tune
The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events originally planned to celebrate the Year of Chicago Music in 2020. Then the pandemic diminished those festivities to the point that the city declared 2021 the Year of Chicago Music too. The ongoing surge of the Delta variant means the U.S. won’t be rid of the pandemic […]
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Chicago has nurtured jazz since its infancy
There’s been jazz in Chicago for nearly as long as there’s been jazz. While jazz is commonly said to have ridden the rails to Chicago around 1916, when the Great Migration of African Americans from the south to the north kicked into gear, Dixieland bandleader Wilbur Sweatman had played gigs on the city’s south side […]
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The Preservation of Fire series brings the cosmos to Millennium Park
In 2019, Chicago event producer and teacher Alejandro Ayala, who DJs as King Hippo, received a grant from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) to produce a two-night concert series called the Preservation of Fire. The concerts, hosted by Co-Prosperity in Bridgeport and broadcast live on Worldwide FM and Lumpen Radio, […]
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Quin Kirchner puts a contemporary spin on mid-20th-century jazz
Quin Kirchner blew into Chicago in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated his old hometown of New Orleans. He wasted no time making himself essential as a drummer, and since then he’s played with a wide variety of acts: Afrobeat combo Nomo, tropical pop band Wild Belle, singer-guitarist Ryley Walker, and countless jazz ensembles. In all […]
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Angel Bat Dawid finds creative kinship in Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty
Brotherhood, meet sisterhood. Those who know clarinetist, composer, and self-described “sonic archaeologist” Angel Bat Dawid from the incisive October release LIVE likely associate her with her stalwart seven-piece band, Tha Brotherhood, which backs her on that album. It was recorded during a fraught, frustrating 2019 European tour, but when the pandemic shuttered venues and stilled […]