The 15th Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which took place last Saturday and Sunday, may have been the best ever. That’s a tall statement, given how many great ones there have been—but it’s less about ranking favorites and more about how good it felt to see such a beloved event getting back to its old self. […]
Tag: Makaya McCraven
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Dezron Douglas and Brandee Younger address cultural issues from lockdown on Force Majeure
For the past few months, bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger have dealt with the necessity of social distancing with their own kind of intimate gigs: a series of quietly uplifting performances streamed live through a shared microphone from their Manhattan apartment. Force Majeure collects a dozen of these songs along with brief, perceptive […]
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Bandcamp Friday > Black Friday
Bandcamp Friday lets you be sure that basically all your money will reach the people who made what you’re buying.
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A eulogy for Danny’s Tavern
For decades, Danny’s nurtured a devoted and welcoming community of music lovers—but it couldn’t survive the pandemic.
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Jumaane Taylor, tap dancer
“I’ve been on this journey to be able to present within the jazz community. . . . To be a union of creative beauty.”
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Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson showcase their telepathic collaboration on the hushed Chicago Waves
In 2005, Los Angeles percussionist, DJ, arranger, and producer Carlos Niño began collaborating with fellow Angeleno Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music director. That year, Atwood-Ferguson joined Niño’s expansive soul-jazz collective, Build an Ark, and helped record studio albums by two of Niño’s other projects: With Voices, the final full-length from progressive hip-hop production […]
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Celebrated guitarist Jeff Parker builds electrifying jazz songs out of experimental demos on Suite for Max Brown
Chicago music remains interesting and vital partly because of how local subcultures overlap and intersect. The city has plenty of tight communities of musicians focused on specific sounds, but the borders around those communities are porous; improvising multi-instrumentalists collaborate with rappers, hip-hop producers take in jazz gigs, and rock musicians immerse themselves in hardware-centric underground […]
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Cellist Lia Kohl on a joyful live series that randomly collides improvisers
Current musical obsessions of drummer Tim Daisy, cellist Lia Kohl, and Reader music editor Philip Montoro
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Keeping the beat
Chicago’s beat scene has to do without the attention the city’s rappers get, but it’s a vital incubator for adventurous, ambitious instrumental hip-hop.
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Why? and the Meat Puppets bring their disparate sounds to the eclectic Do Division lineup
Weeks before the official start of summer, Do Division helps Chicago kick off music-festival season. Empty Bottle Presents and Subterranean programmed its East and West stages, respectively, with a lively mix of bands and DJs from Friday night through Sunday evening. Among this year’s notable acts are two groups that have recently celebrated career milestones: […]
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An edited loop on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was created by designer Aaron Lowell Denton, based in Bloomington, Indiana.
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Jazz drummer Makaya McCraven hones his skill at crafting compositions from improvisations
By now, the distinctive methods with which jazz drummer Makaya McCraven composes albums are well-known. Many of us learned about his prowess as a producer from 2015’s In the Moment, an expansive double LP on which McCraven spliced together parts from more than two dozen of his live sets to form a cohesive, free-flowing groove […]
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Angel Bat Dawid taps into the root of all black music
Chicago singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid talks about the improvisation and inspiration that shaped her new album, The Oracle.
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Makaya McCraven showcases jazz’s bright contemporary scenes throughout Universal Beings
At 35, Chicago jazz drummer, producer, and bandleader Makaya McCraven possesses the wisdom of a musician twice his age. In a July interview with Passion of the Weiss, McCraven shared the reason why he decided to record his new Universal Beings (International Anthem) in New York, Chicago, London, and Los Angeles. “Each scene has its […]
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Chicago’s first Red Bull Music Festival is all over the map, with Pusha T, Makaya McCraven, Merzbow, and more
Tickets go on sale Tuesday, September 25, for Red Bull Music’s sprawling November festival of concerts, showcases, and lectures.