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 […]
Tag: Matt Gold
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inMusic
Gustavo Cortiñas explores Latin American history, culture, and resilience on Desafío Candente
The third release by Gustavo Cortiñas, Desafío Candente (“Incandescent Defiance”), is an epic set of jazz and spoken word inspired by Las Venas Abiertas de Latinoamérica (“The Open Veins of Latin America”), an iconic series of historical essays by Uruguayan author and poet Eduardo Galeano. The Chicago-based drummer and composer invited more than 30 musicians […]
Posted inBlogs
Drummer Jeremy Cunningham steps out as a leader
Jeremy Cunningham celebrates his strong debut album with a concert Sunday at the Hungry Brain.
Posted inMusic
Saxophonist Greg Ward returns to Chicago on Mingus wings
A multidisciplinary project inspired by Mingus’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady helped lure Chicago saxophonist Greg Ward back from New York—and it could make for his biggest album yet.