For Glen Echo, Azita Youssefi’s first album in more than eight years, she played and recorded every instrument herself.
Tag: Rob Mazurek
Posted inMusic
David Grubbs, Rob Mazurek, and Mats Gustafsson take a musical road trip as the Underflow
The Underflow take their name from the Greek record store where guitarist David Grubbs, cornetist Rob Mazurek, and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson played their first trio gig in May 2019. But the connections joining the three musicians were forged in the 1990s, when Grubbs and Mazurek were associated with Chicago’s postrock scene and the Sweden-born Gustafsson […]
Posted inMusic
Rob Mazurek’s latest with his Exploding Star Orchestra finds hope in the cosmos
Dimensional Stardust is a splendid sonic antidote for the spirit-damping insults of a year that can’t end soon enough—growth and transcendence are programmed into the album’s DNA. The Exploding Star Orchestra’s leader, multi-instrumentalist Rob Mazurek, started out playing idiomatically correct hard bop in Chicago’s jazz bars in the 1980s. These days he lives in Marfa, […]
Posted inMusic
Damon Locks’s greatest moment in Chicago music history
Black Monument Ensemble founder Damon Locks still feels the ripples from Soul Train 50 years after its Chicago premiere.
Posted inMusic
The Chicago Underground Quartet bottle their lightning again
For 19 years, the Chicago Underground Quartet’s first album was their only album—but now longtime collaborators Rob Mazurek, Jeff Parker, and Chad Taylor have recaptured the group’s freewheeling jazz spirit.
Posted inMusic
The Reader’s guide to the 2019 Chicago Jazz Festival
This year’s lineup details a sprawling cross section of the genre, including world-changing explorers the Art Ensemble of Chicago, trad band the Fat Babies, venerable guitarist George Freeman, and restless experimenter Rob Mazurek.
Posted inMusic
Rob Mazurek refracts melody and groove through cosmic complexity
Trumpeter and polymath Rob Mazurek returns to his old hometown with the adventurous quartet Desert Encrypts Vol. 1.
Posted inMusic
Mike Reed honors the modern golden age of Chicago jazz
Bandleader and drummer Mike Reed assembles an ensemble of composer-performers from The City Was Yellow, a “real book” documenting 30 years of the city’s jazz scene.
Posted inMusic
George Lewis is the guest of honor at this year’s Experimental Sound Studio Gala
Experimental Sound Studio has been assisting boundary-pushing artists since 1986. It provides studio services, opportunities to perform and show work, events that facilitate dialogues between artists and audiences, and archiving resources for avant-garde and exploratory music materials that might otherwise be lost. This year’s ESS gala fund-raiser has a twofold purpose: to help finance upgrades […]
Posted inMusic
Genre-defying composer and improviser Rob Mazurek explores different parts of the world across three new recordings
Rob Mazurek came up through Chicago’s jazz community, and the Chicago Underground Duo (his long-standing partnership with drummer Chad Taylor, which has past lives as a trio, a quartet, and an orchestra) attests to his ongoing identification with the city’s heritage of genre-defying improvisational music. But Mazurek, whose artistic practice encompasses free improvisation, large-scale composition, […]
Posted inBlogs
Masterful but overlooked Chicago jazz drummer Robert Barry has died
Onetime Sun Ra associate Robert Barry passed away on January 8 at age 85.
Posted inBlogs
After decades as everybody’s sideman, Chicago bassist Matthew Lux finally steps into the spotlight
Thursday at Constellation, ubiquitous bassist Matthew Lux celebrates his overdue transition from support player to bandleader.
Posted inBlogs
Texas label Astral Spirits weds the cassette resurgence to the ‘new wave of heavy free jazz’
On Thursday at Constellation, Astral Spirits celebrates tape releases by Billington/Shippy/Wyche and Matt Lux’s Communication Arts Quartet.
Posted inMusic
International Anthem brings punk idealism to progressive jazz
Chicago label International Anthem puts in the sweat to bring progressive jazz the audience it deserves.
Posted inMusic
Our favorite music of 2014
Six Reader music writers share their favorites from 2014 with year-end lists that do more than just put the same records in a different order.