It’s been four months since we’ve had a Bandcamp Friday. In case you’ve somehow forgotten, Bandcamp introduced them shortly after COVID-19 eliminated stateside touring in March 2020, and they’ve since become something of a tradition, helping countless musicians make ends meet without their usual road money. For the 24 hours of each Bandcamp Friday, the […]
Tag: Makaya McCraven
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From the husk of the old Morton Salt factory, a new music venue rises
For as long as Bruce Finkelman can remember, the Morton Salt factory has set his heart racing. It’s not that he gets salt cravings any worse than the next guy. Rather, he remembers that when he was 12 years old, in the car with his parents on the Kennedy, the sight of the umbrella-toting girl […]
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Makaya McCraven doubly decodes Blue Note classics with Deciphering the Message live shows
Drummer Makaya McCraven has always been a bit of a rabble-rouser. He mixes audio from his live gigs with studio overdubs in intricately layered tracks that feel like jazz approached with a DJ’s sensibility. Like McCraven’s 2020 Gil Scott-Heron tribute, We’re New Again (XL Recordings), last year’s Deciphering the Message remixes snippets from a source […]
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The year’s last Bandcamp Friday arrives
Since the start of the pandemic, Bandcamp has passed along its usual share of sales revenue to artists and labels 17 times, usually on the first Friday of the month. You probably already knew that, since you clicked on a story about the 18th such Bandcamp Friday—but you might not be aware that the site […]
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Makaya McCraven remixes jazz history
It’s been more than a decade since Blue Note Records released an album by a Chicago artist. The last time anyone based here appeared on the roster of this definitive jazz label, it was vocalists Patricia Barber and Kurt Elling, whose most recent Blue Note records as bandleaders arrived in the 2000s. But on November […]
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The Hyde Park Jazz Festival takes a step back toward normalcy
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. […]
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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: […]