Chicago

The story of Chicago is tightly bound to that of its musical journey. In the heart of this Illinois metropolis – among the most populous in the United States, after New York and Los Angeles – African American blues, jazz and R'n'B cultures took root, mirroring a coexistence that was difficult but, over time, increasingly fruitful in terms of cross-pollination between ethnic groups. At the center of it all are not only live music venues, but also institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the many universities – the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago – renowned for their visual and performing arts programs. Another special relationship between urban context and community is represented by developments in architecture and urban planning, which have defined the city since its origins: alongside the splendid buildings of Louis Sullivan, father of the Modern Movement, the experiments of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies Van Der Rohe, or the skyscrapers of Bruce Graham, sit projects that harmonize structures with nature, such as the plazas and lobbies housing works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Joan Mirò, or Millennium Park, designed by Frank Gehry next to the Art Institute, at whose center stands Cloud Gate, the mirrored sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

From the big bands, like Benny Goodman's, music has accompanied and shaped the emancipation of the urban African American community and, as a result, the creation of personal languages that could serve as a bond between people. This is where Sun Ra relocated from Alabama, spending the first part of his career in the 1950s transforming the swing he had always known into the cosmic jazz of tomorrow, forming the Arkestra and creating that Afrofuturist imagery that remains so influential today for many musicians, including Shabaka Hutchings (Shabaka & The Ancestors, The Comet Is Coming, Sons Of Kemet) and Rob Mazurek – one of the protagonists of the stories that follow – who recalls being struck like lightning by a concert given by the Birmingham synth-pianist. This is where, starting in the late Sixties, the communal free jazz experiments of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, led by Roscoe Mitchell and Lester Bowie, developed, merging free-form expressiveness and composition with elements of avant-garde music. This is where the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was founded by Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall and Phil Cohran, a non-profit organization that, from 1965 to today, starting from traditional genres and cross-pollinating with the erudite, democratic research of John Cage, has laid the groundwork for the artistic awareness of African American musicians of the caliber of Jeff Parker, Matana Roberts, Mike Reed and Tomeka Reid; an intergenerational experience made possible by the creativity and charisma of figures such as Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell and the members of the Art Ensemble.

It is from the trajectories of certain collaborations that the peculiarity of the windy city's underground scene emerges, presenting a series of clusters that work together, intersect and influence one another: the post-rock cluster of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, Codeine, Gastr Del Sol, Tortoise, Isotope 217, June of 44; the orchestral and/or electronic jazz cluster of the Chicago Underground collective, centered on Mazurek; the avant-garde, free and impro cluster running from Jim O'Rourke to Ken Vandermark; the contemporary avant-jazz cluster – largely championed by the International Anthem label – of a new generation of musicians now at the center of the global scene: Makaya McCraven, Angel Bat Dawid, Damon Locks, Jaimie Branch, Tomeka Reid and Junius Paul.

The Nineties represent a boiling point for Chicago, in jazz and beyond: Ken Vandermark, a saxophonist and clarinetist with a degree in film, arrives in the city and gives further energy to the impro scene; versatile musicians who started out in punk and rock mature and move elsewhere, such as Jim O'Rourke and Dave Grubbs (Squirrel Bait, Bastro, Codeine, Gastr Del Sol, Red Krayola), John McEntire (Bastro, Gastr Del Sol, Tortoise, The Sea & Cake), Jeff Parker and John Herndon (Tortoise, Isotope 217, Chicago Underground), Doug Sharin (Codeine, June of 44); "all-round" jazz musicians take shape, such as Mazurek, Jeb Bishop, Joshua Abrams and Dave Rempis. Indeed, it is these last few, together with Vandermark, who often turn up under "horns" on albums such as Stereolab's "Dots And Loops" (Elektra, 1997), and O'Rourke's "Eureka" (Drag City, 1999) and "Insignificance" (Drag City, 2001). This group of musicians is joined by veterans such as Fred Anderson, who offers a stage to new talent at his Velvet Lounge, or John McPhee, who also duets with Bishop, while artists from the European avant-garde often pass through the city, such as Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker (who made "Chicago Tenor Duets" with McPhee in 2002) and Mats Gustafsson (Fire!, The Thing – who recorded "Xylophonen Virtuosen" with O'Rourke in 1999).

Just as in the Sixties numerous talents had emerged from shared spaces of collective artistic practice, so in the Nineties the shape-shifting Chicago Underground collective came to life on the stage of the Green Mill through a workshop led by Mazurek – whose various lineups will fill quite a few lines of this feature, intersecting with the trajectories of post-rock bands and thus defining the peculiarity of the contemporary jazz scene – and at the end of the decade Elastic Arts was founded, a performance space whose curators include Dave Rempis and Angel Bat Dawid.
Recording studios became central (Airwave Studios, O'Rourke's Steamroom, Steve Albini's Electrical Audio – where Zu also recorded "Igneo" in 2002) along with their sound engineers (John McEntire above all), as did a group of labels – Thrill Jockey, Drag City, Okka and Delmark – to which Austin's Astral Spirits, Aerophonic and, above all, International Anthem have recently been added, a hub of jazz research now so deeply rooted in the city's scene.

The Nineties in Chicago also mean Tim and Mike Kinsella and the cluster of musicians who dissolved the hardcore fervor of Cap n' Jazz into the daring art-rock of Joan of Arc, the sophisticated emo of American Football and the intimate songwriting of Owen; and of course two other key figures of the rock scene of the era should not be overlooked – Wilco (Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline, to be precise) and Smashing Pumpkins – whose shadow constantly looms over the city. But it is the underground movements that interest us most in outlining this post-jazz-rock genealogy, because in the underground, music flows and cross-pollinates within the spaces where it is produced and experienced live: on the research-music side, the AACM was founded precisely to expand the contexts for creating and sharing musical experience and to educate young musicians; on the popular-music side, just as blues, swing and be-bop had once filled the city's dance halls, so in the Nineties house music did the same, centered on the emergence of African American personalities and groups, first and foremost the DJ, turning Chicago, along with Detroit, into the electronic heart of the Midwest.

Among the guiding spirits of the local contemporary jazz scene are undoubtedly the hard-bop and electric mutations of Miles Davis, the transcendent, free post-bop of John Coltrane and Archie Shepp, the free evolutions of Ornette Coleman, who had a close relationship with architecture (particularly that of Buckminster Fuller), the search for African roots of Don Cherry and the conscious spirituality of Albert Ayler.

The selection of 35 records we present here – enriched by a final appendix dedicated to the pandemic year 2020 – is a partial cross-section of an extremely varied and articulated body of work, whose timeline ideally begins with the release of "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" (Thrill Jockey, 1996) by Tortoise, already a milestone on OndaRock's digital pages. Our goal is obviously not completeness, but rather to offer a set of windows of varying size through which to look out onto the dense contemporary cartography of the city, snapshots and musical suggestions of a scene that has become a paradigm of cross-pollination between punk, jazz, post-rock and avant-garde subgenres and stylistic traits. We have also tried to convey a sense of the collaborative trajectories, the trans-genre, trans-generational hybridizations, through meticulously composed records and radically improvised recordings, of the encounters between musicians who have sought to keep pushing the language of jazz further forward. Beyond the aural, toward the visual and the visionary.

Isotope 217 – The Unstable Molecule (Thrill Jockey, 1997)

Jeff Parker was already part of the Tortoise entourage when, a few months before the band's official recording debut, the debut of the Isotope 217 project came out, shared with Dan Bitney and John Herndon, the two drummers/percussionists of the mothership. "The Unstable Moment" also features the ever-present Rob Mazurek (cornet), Matthew Lux (bass) and Sara P. Smith (trombone). The atmospheres of this scant half hour are truly distinctive, with the players tackling jams that mostly blend jazz and rock elements, often finding common ground in a relaxed funk that nonetheless always carries a hint of unease, leaning toward the spatial and the sci-fi, as in certain dissonant chords (the opener "Kriptonyte Smokes The Red Line") and certain melodic progressions searching for new scales and colors in the manner of Sun Ra (the stretched-out mirage of "Prince Namor", toward the end). Then again, a title like "La Jetée" alone would almost be enough to guarantee Parker and his cohorts' interest in the unknown and the futuristic, a reference to Chris Marker's hallucinatory 1962 sci-fi photo-novel, later reworked by Tortoise for "TNT" under the film's English title, "Jetty".
"The Unstable Moment" is a small but fascinating and significant instrumental work, also for the place and moment in which it was released. As it happens, it's also a little gem that still holds up to repeated listens today.

Tortoise – TNT (Thrill Jockey, 1998)
The record from which everything starts. The one that definitively showed how Tortoise – unlike other post-rock entities, often far less dynamic and indeed prone to aging badly and quickly – were a platform-for-saying-something-else for a group of extraordinary talents.
Recorded starting in November 1996 and released in early spring 1998, "TNT" is the album marking Parker's official entry into the lineup, alongside deus ex machina John McEntire (Bastro, Gastr Del Sol, The Sea & Cake) and drummer John Herndon, not forgetting Dan Bitney, as well as Douglas McCombs and ex-Slint member David Pajo. Not only that: Mazurek's horn contributions also help shape the final result.
Given these premises, it's not hard to see why these twelve, densely packed tracks sound far removed from the classic "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" (Thrill Jockey, 1996), less dub, less electronic; they resemble instead a Nineties version of Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew" (Columbia, 1970), given the impressive cut-and-paste work after the fact on which "TNT" is essentially built entirely: none of these tracks, McEntire recalls, was ever played live in the studio by all the musicians simultaneously, and in fact the band found itself having to learn the pieces from the record for the subsequent tour.
There's lounge-aperitif jazz in here; there's the repetitive minimalism of certain percussive structures; there are shimmering twangy guitars, often dealing in single suspended notes; there's an evident interest in a remix culture born of the possibilities offered by digital technology, with light traces of techno and d'n'b. A highly personal fusion that surprisingly manages to become easy listening, not too far removed from the territory Stereolab were exploring on "Dots And Loops" (Elektra, 1997) – it's no coincidence that McEntire co-produced that record too.
Received rather coolly at the time, "TNT" has rightly been reappraised over time as the band's last absolute classic, though it's not hard to understand the reasons for the bewildered critical reception, now almost a quarter century ago. A perfectly logical record, though, for a creature in constant motion like Tortoise, hardly inclined to follow anything but its own inspiration. Parker himself put it well: "People expect things to be obvious. But life isn't like that, so why should music be?"

Gastr Del Sol – Camoufleur (Drag City, 1998)
Among the seminal albums of the windy city's post-rock is the final work by the duo of David Grubbs (Squirrel Bait, Bastro, Red Krayola) and Jim O'Rourke (Brise-Glace, Red Krayola), with John McEntire, Darin Gray and Markus Popp (Oval), who contributed to the writing – an art-rock masterpiece of perfect synthesis between pop and avant-garde. Just listening to the refined songwriting of "Each Dream Is An Example" is enough to understand it: a song with a horn arrangement in a split form, drawing on the lesson of Brian Wilson. Alongside the band we find Rob Mazurek on cornet, Ken Vandermark on clarinet, Jeb Bishop on trombone and a string section, capturing, like Isotope 217, the mutual cross-pollination between the post-rock scene and the avant-jazz scene, a collaboration that helps set the coordinates for a generational renewal spanning genres and approaches now settled into more familiar territory, including that – ever inexhaustible – of Roscoe Mitchell and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
The tracks on "Camoufleur" follow an unusual path that, on a macroscopic level, avoids repetition only to employ it on a microscopic level, placing the voice at the center in the best tradition of the American song. The album is airy and full of distinctive compositional and arrangement choices, evident from the opening "The Season Reverse", or from the soft electronics and reverberated horns of "Blues Subtitled No Sense Of Wonder", a track with a B/A/B/A structure à la the Beatles' "Yesterday", in which A is, however, an instrumental limbo.
Countless genres have their stylistic traits reworked here: folk and bluegrass in "Black Horse", Americana in "Mouth Canyon", the cacophonous weirdness of "A Puff Of Dew". The influence of jazz can be glimpsed beneath the surface in the idea of a malleable form, in the search for timbre and in choral construction, in a direction that is, for once, pop, also influenced by Frank Zappa. O'Rourke's guitar style aligns with that of John Fahey – with whom he had worked on "Womblife" (Table of Elements, 1997) – including in the use of loops ("Bauchredner"). The album is a masterpiece of modern songwriting.
After this experience, both Grubbs and O'Rourke would pursue experimental artistic paths hybridized more with jazz in the former's case, and with noise and art music in the latter's, who would also become a member of Sonic Youth for a few years.

Chicago Underground Orchestra – Playground (Delmark, 1998)
1996 is the year in which the core of the Chicago Underground collective forms, involving Rob Mazurek, Jeff Parker and Chad Taylor. From here, a thousand branches and configurations would unfold: CU Duo, CU Trio, CU Quartet, São Paulo Underground, Pharoah & The Underground (with Pharoah Sanders), but also Exploding Star Orchestra and Rob Mazurek Pulsar Quartet. In 1998 – the year that saw the release of Tortoise's "TNT" and Gastr Del Sol's "Camoufleur" – the prolific collective's discography begins: both the debut of the duo with Mazurek (cornet, bells, flute, trumpet, piano), Taylor (drums) and Parker's contributions (guitar, cowbell), and its expansion into an orchestral ensemble with Sara P. Smith (trombone, glockenspiel, voice, cymbals) and Chris Lopes (bass, flute, voice), came out.
"Playground" is made up of eight original tracks and two tributes, including – emblematically, as the opener – the theme from "Blow Up" written by Herbie Hancock for Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film of the same name, presented here with John Herndon and Dan Bitney on percussion. It's a statement of intent regarding the desire to create a form of total, imaginative and synesthetic jazz, at the crossroads of different artistic expressions, seeking the union of visual and performing arts that underpins Mazurek's artistic practice. The other tribute is to Duke Ellington's suite "Le Sucrier Velours", performed with his orchestra, composed in 1959 at a time when Ellington was influenced by the European music of Tchaikovsky and Edvard Grieg. Despite the cool jazz imprint, the two symbolic tributes and Mazurek's Davis-like style, "Playground" already shows the influence of Sun Ra and Edgar Varèse, especially in the title track, which is a perfect blend of the two. Worth noting is the post-rock/jazz ballad "The Inner Soul Of H", essentially a duet between Mazurek and Parker with the light presence of Tony Pinciotti on percussion, worthy of an Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack.

Tortoise with the Ex – In The Fishtank 5 (Konkurrent, 1999)
All praise to Konkurrent for gifting us, over the span of a dozen years, the fifteen releases of the "In The Fishtank" series, which brought together some of the finest names for anyone who, between the late Nineties and the start of the new millennium, loved sounds you could tag with prefixes like "alternative-" and "post-" (Low and Dirty Three, Sparklehorse and Fennesz, Motorpsycho and Jaga Jazzist).
The fifth instalment of the series documents the two days Tortoise spent in the studio with legendary Dutch punks The Ex, who from then on would pursue increasingly frequent collaborations in the experimental and jazz spheres – with Han Bennink, Anne-James Chaton, Getatchew Mekurya and, crucially, Brass Unbound (namely Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Roy Paci and Wolter Wierbos). There's little or no jazz in the classic sense across these twenty-two minutes, but "In The Fishtank 5" testifies to how central improvisation was to the Chicago underground. The Ex's devastating noise and loose-limbed grooves lead the charge, while Tortoise stay more in the background, working on details and interfering from the shadows, yet still managing to be essential.
If the listening experience is a singular one, the recordings themselves are unquestionably worthwhile: honorable mention for the mighty opening instrumental "The Lawn Of Limp"; for the steel-mill clang of the guitars on "Central Heating", set against a vague folk melody sensed in the distance; for the signal disruption of "Huge Hidden Spaces", which brings to the fore what had previously been hidden behind walls of electricity. "History Is What's Happening" (More DPM, 1982), read the title of the Dutch band's second album — a concept that's fundamental to this selection too.

Vandermark 5 – Burn The Incline (Atavistic, 1999)
This is where jazz-core comes from – well, along with Bill Laswell, NoMeansNo, Minutemen, Naked City and Ex. Free jazz, dirty but still orderly, cross-pollinated with blues, funk and rock. That's how the fourth record from the unstoppable Ken Vandermark's outfit (clarinet and tenor sax) sounds, alongside Jeb Bishop (trombone, guitar), Dave Rempis (alto and tenor sax), Kent Kessler (bass) and Tim Mulvenna (drums). From the opening track "Distance (For Joe Morris)" onward, the quintet's music moves between Ornette Coleman and the Lounge Lizards, shifting from a sinuous stride to a skewed gait, with distorted, dissonant surges resurfacing from Bishop's punk past. The rhythm section is rock-solid, and over that bedrock the vigorous phrasing of Vandermark and Rempis moves in lockstep, in solos and unisons alike. "Late Night Wait Around (For Ab Baars)" could have come off a post-rock record, its repetitive, minimal guitar line providing the base over which a rich architecture of horns is built. Where "Roulette (For Nate McBride)" is vigorous and choral, "Accident Happening (For William Parker)" is wildly free; where "In Focus (For Per Henrik Wallin)" is cool, "Ground (For The Ex)" is core. "Burn The Incline" is an explosive album.

Jeb Bishop Trio – Jeb Bishop Trio (Okka, 1999)
Bishop has been active on the Chicago scene since the early Nineties. Before giving a name and musical identity to a project of his own, he made the free-jazz album "The Brass City" (Okka, 1997) with John McPhee, the veteran multi-instrumentalist and driving force of the impro scene alongside Ken Vandermark; he took part in both post-rock and ambient-pop albums such as Gastr del Sol's "The Harp Factory On Lake Street" (Table Of The Elements/K9, 1995), Jim O'Rourke's "Bad Timing" (Drag City, 1997) and Stereolab's "Dots And Loops" (Elektra, 1997); and he finally made his debut with a series of duets immortalized on "Duets 98" (Wobbly Rail, 1998), which find him on trombone in dialogue with Joshua Abrams (The Roots, Town & Country with Ben Vida, Tortoise and Godspeed You! Black Emperor), the ever-present Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, Fire!), Wadada Leo Smith (Roscoe Mitchell), Fredrick Lonberg-Holm (John McPhee, Peter Brötzmann) and Hamid Drake (Fred Anderson, William Parker).
In 1999 Bishop released his first trio work on the local label Okka, composed by him, alongside Kent Kessler (bass) and Tim Mulvenna (drums), already his bandmates in Vandermark 5. Spirited and urgent, "Jeb Bishop Trio" showcases the vitality and instrumental wit of three musicians from Chicago's new jazz generation, and a personality that was breaking free of its punk roots to move toward a blend of bop and free jazz; an album that presents compactly structured pieces built on theme-phrase-solo forms, while at the same time opening up to avant-garde solutions ("Big Stubby").

Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet – Stone/Water (Okka, 2000)
More than an album, this is a cathartic live experience in the world of free wind instruments, recorded at the Festival de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Canada. Gathered at the court of maestro Peter Brötzmann is a remarkable section of composers and improvisers, featuring Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Mars Williams, Jeb Bishop, Joe McPhee, alongside Fred Longberg-Holm on cello and the rhythm section of Kent Kessler, Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang. This is multiform, incendiary free jazz, only seemingly chaotic but in truth guided, organized and narrative in nature.
The first reference that comes to mind is a non-musical one: the city symphonies, that avant-garde cinematic form from the early twentieth century created by director-artists like Walter Ruttmann, Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand and Rudy Burckhardt to capture and chase, through images, the rhythm and sounds of modern metropolises like Berlin and New York, seized in their systematic chaos. In the same way, the nearly forty uninterrupted minutes of the live suite "Stone/Water" are a metaphor for the sonic landscape of the mass-society city, emblematic of the crossroads of encounters and cross-pollinations of the Chicago impro scene, where many European musicians, like Brötzmann and Gustafsson, would regularly turn up.

Chicago Underground Duo – Synesthesia (Thrill Jockey, 2000)
Speaking of city symphonies? If anything recalls the opening of the Mazurek/Taylor duo's second album, it's precisely the pioneering electronic music Louis and Bebe Barron made for the sci-fi film "Forbidden Planet" (1956) and for the city film "Bridges Go 'Round" (1958) by independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke, one of the founders of the New American Cinema Group and the Filmmakers Cooperative in New York City. Likewise, the Duo's music works on the imaginative, synesthetic dimension implied by its programmatic title, looking once again to the electric, visionary Miles Davis of "Bitches Brew" (Columbia, 1970), but also to the history of the visual arts and avant-garde moving images, in perpetual search of an expressive and conceptual synthesis through musical elements like rhythm and timbre. Don't expect a jazz record here, though, and don't assume post-bop either: picture instead a sonic journey, abstract and rarefied, between electronic and art music, where jazz is the source code — as if Sun Ra's synthesizers had been run through Christian Fennesz's machines. Around this same period, thanks to collaborations with Jim O'Rourke on "Eureka" (Drag City, 1999) and with Stereolab, L'Altra and Calexico, Mazurek was consolidating a career as both a jazz musician/composer and a musician/collaborator in the indie/post-rock world.

Chicago Underground Quartet – Chicago Underground Quartet (Thrill Jockey, 2001)
An illuminating record for understanding how to fuse jazz attitude with the logic of guitar-driven post-rock, chasing the trajectories of Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot – the former in John Zorn's Naked City; the latter in the Lounge Lizards, in Zorn's Masada project and, with Chad Taylor and Henry Grimes, in a new trio: all of them under the shadow of Albert Ayler.
It's with these models in mind that Jeff Parker on guitar and Noel Kupersmith (Brokeback) on bass officially join the CU Duo of Mazurek/Taylor, giving the tracks a firmer harmonic structure that favors more melodic phrasing. The perfect synthesis of the two souls can be found in "Welcome", which opens with a Parker melody built over a dense drum weave, only to break apart into an abstract, dissonant free/noise chaos via Mazurek's cornet, recovering fragments of the theme only in the closing section.
If the record's first section is more intense and phrasing-oriented – starting with the polyrhythmic "Tunnel Chrome" – "Three In The Morning" foreshadows the Brazilian atmospheres that would become central to São Paulo Underground, whose melancholy nuances the schizophrenic "Nostalgia" dissolves into more abstract, molecular electronic passages. There's also room for pockets of improvisation, like the crepuscular "Sink, Charge, Fixture".
An unmissable debut for understanding not only the experience of the Chicago Underground collective, but above all the specific character of the windy city's post-jazz-rock scene.

HiM – Many In High Places Are Not Well (Bubble Core, 2003)
For anyone who grew up on the melancholy, rarefied, disjointed sound of certain Nineties American alt-rock, Doug Scharin is something of a guardian spirit. First a drummer with Codeine on "White Birch" (Sub Pop, 1994) — and it's no coincidence that the only slowcore band never to have drifted toward folk hails from Chicago — and later with the equally pivotal June Of 44, Scharin founded the HiM project toward the end of the decade, bringing it to full maturity in 2003 with "Many In High Places Are Not Well".
Recorded across three sessions, this splendid work flies free between Afrobeat polyrhythms, springy dub basslines and Stereolab-style kraut-for-cocktail-hour that surely wouldn't have displeased Sandro Perri of "Impossible Spaces" (Constellation, 2011) either — all of it held together and made possible, for the most part, by a double drum setup, the second kit belonging to Dave Pavkovic. A host of other musicians lend a hand: among them old bandmate Fred Erskine (bass), Josh Berman and Carlo Cennamo on horns, Christian Dautresme on vocals (a breath of wind, if you can believe it), and even Rob Mazurek on "The Way The Trees Are". The standout track on an album of remarkable consistency and high overall quality, this last piece reveals itself to the world as a kind of sleepwalking, cyclically unfolding spell that makes its considerable length utterly imperceptible. In the tracklist it arrives right after the title track and "Slow Slow Slow", and these are perhaps the other two episodes that best represent the project's great communicative ease despite its formal complexity: from the naturalness with which Abdou M'boup's kora weaves into the rhythmic fabric of the former, to the bass-heavy sensuality of the latter, "Many In High Places Are Not Well" is a kind of small magic trick, so perfectly conceived that you can no longer tell where one instrument ends and another begins.

Chicago Underground Trio – Slon (Thrill Jockey, 2004)
Since 1999 Mazurek (cornet and electronics) and Taylor (drums and vibraphone) had expanded the duo with Noel Kupersmith (bass and electronics), with whom they made three albums. "Slon" is the final chapter of this trio configuration, an avant-garde jazz experiment that fits within the post-bop field while presenting a split personality, particularly divided in terms of how the tracks are distributed: electronics on one side, jazz on the other. It's not that electronics weren't already prominent in Mazurek's other work, but on "Slon" their presence is evident even compositionally, and it contaminates the traditional idea of jazz-track form and live sessions, with the influence of minimal techno, glitch and the indietronica of Morr Music bands like Tarwater and Notwist ("Slon") sometimes taking center stage over the sound of Mazurek's cornet, reversing the usual mix placement of background groove and soloing horns up front ("Zagreb"). The glue holding it all together is Taylor, with his melodic, phrase-driven and vigorous way of playing and composing on drums ("Campbell Town" is the true showcase of passion).
"Slon" is a heterogeneous album more in the construction of its tracklist than in the sound of each individual piece: here we find the Afrobeat of "Protest", the erudite minimalism of "Kite", the field recordings of "Palermo", the bop of "Shoe Lace", all the way to the cool jazz of "Pear", which closes the record on a mournful note in a timeless jazz atmosphere.

Jeff Parker – The Relatives (Thrill Jockey, 2005)
Parker's second work as bandleader, two years on from the more substantial "Like-Coping" (Delmark, 2003), "The Relatives" finds the guitarist flanked by Chris Lopes on bass, Chad Taylor on drums and Sam Barsheshet on electric piano. The focal points of these eight refined compositions are melodic clarity, ease and fluency of execution, and an absolute balance among the talents involved — it's easy to focus on any one of the instruments and find yourself thinking that it's the one actually steering the ensemble.
Parker's six-string is as clear and sunny as ever, almost speaking in the way it builds phrases, and it rests on lively, at times even driving rhythms, as on "Mannerisms" or in the irresistible swing of the Marvin Gaye cover "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You"; yet it has no qualms about pulling back when the track calls for it — the opening three minutes of a Latin-tinged "The Relative". "Rang", a collective hypnosis built around a two-note Wurlitzer theme and drums and cymbals that grow progressively less thunderous, is the excellent close to a thoroughly enjoyable, high-quality work.

Tigersmilk – Tales From The Bottle (Family Vineyard, 2005)
Avant-garde free jazz cross-pollinated with art music, both electronic and classical. At its center is the trio's relationship with noise and silence, and their ability to build a collective narrative without following theme- or section-based structures alternating between jazz and post-rock, as in most of the previous Chicago Underground records.
This time Mazurek teams up with musicians from a more experimental sphere — Jason Roebke on bass (Scott Fields, Eric Roth, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Dave Rempis) and Dylan van der Schyff on drums (Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz) — and in 2003 releases the first, self-titled album as Tigersmilk. The trio finds its most inspired outing, however, in the second record, "Tales From The Bottle", six tracks of avant-jazz identified only by their sequential number. The sense is that here Mazurek is chasing a visual, timbral expressive quality, building worlds and stories outside the rules and stylistic conventions of the subgenres closest to him — bop, cool, free jazz. A process more than a work, an experience more than a listen.

São Paulo Underground – Sauna: Um, Dois, Três (Aesthetics, 2006)
Rob Mazurek's ability to shed his skin and dream up ever-new musical projects with sharply defined identities is inexhaustible. South American rhythmic trajectories, together with electronics that are less liquid and more compressed, carry his phrasing into the uncharted territories of São Paulo Underground — road-tested in Brazil, where he was living at the time — finding crucial support in the accompaniment, arpeggios and marimba parts of percussionist and electronic musician Mauricio Takara.
This time the fabric of the tracks isn't as bare and vaporous as on "Synesthesia", but dense and layered, made to be "a single multitude": the new duo — before it becomes a trio with Guilherme Granado — draws on collaborations with Wayne Montana and Damon Locks of Eternals, the ubiquitous Chad Taylor, Joshua Abrams and local avant-garde musicians like Marcos Axe and Tiago Mesquita to build layers of sonic tracks, saturating both individual sounds and the overall mix in a logic driven mainly by electronics. The approach is no longer one of subtraction or addition, but of distinction within the sonic-musical magma of the new millennium's metropolis, where São Paulo sits alongside Chicago. The tracks are indeed flows in which, at different times, certain elements emerge and sink beneath others — voices, horns, rhythmic figures — as happens on "The Realm Of The Ripper" and "Balão De Gas". If the drones and trip-hop beats of the opening "Sauna: Um, Dois, Três" nearly overwhelm the senses, the salsa of "Pombaral" is threaded through with Mazurek's characteristic cornet phrasing.
The record is astonishing, a personal formula of electro/psych-tropicalismo that surprises with the solutions it adopts even within a single track, echoing the Afrofuturist jazz of Sun Ra or the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti ("Afrihouse"), the electro-jazz of Tied & Tickled Trio or the avant-garde electronics of Autechre combined even with post-rock ("Olhossss…"). A dense, exhilarating debut; a further, original path of hybridization between popular and experimental musical traditions from different corners of the Americas.

The Thing & Ken Vandermark – Immediate Sound (Smalltown Superjazz, 2007)
A snapshot of the live encounter between two giants of improvisation, Mats Gustafsson (alto and baritone sax) and Ken Vandermark (tenor sax), and the powerful rhythm section of Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums). Not actually Gustafsson's first time in Chicago, to be fair: he had previously worked in the city with Hamid Drake on a tribute to Don Cherry and with ex-Gastr Del Sol members David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke.
"Immediate Sound" is a single roughly 38-minute session in four parts, recorded on April 21, 2007 at the Hide Out, a former 1930s ballroom and today a gay club — a kind of timeline of the local music scene running through cool and free jazz, punk and post-punk, indie and post-rock. A muscular performance with jazz-core traits, blending The Thing's punk attitude with Vandermark's free-form sensibility, weaving oblique, raw and at times disjointed dialogues, rhythmic horn phrasing and high-intensity drum grooves. Fullness and emptiness alternate, while drum and bass solos sustain more melodic, contemplative phrases ("Immediate Sound II"), with quotes from John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", in a funky-nerved elaboration ("Immediate Sound III") leading to the vehement free-core epilogue.

Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble – Black Unstoppable (Delmark, 2007)
"An Improvised Life" was the title of a short 2007 profile in the Chicago Reader devoted to Nicole Mitchell — an apt description for the path of an artist who, from a very young age, has understood improvisation as a bridge toward others: it's Mitchell herself who describes jazz as a consequence of this approach, rather than a starting point or a simple musical passion. Former president of the AACM, of which she's been a member since the mid-Nineties, Mitchell is the very embodiment of an organization that has made connecting generations its banner; it's therefore only natural that art rooted so deeply in a community should carry profound pedagogical value and a strong sense of social responsibility, finding an exceptional match between intent and outcome on the fourth work by her Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble.
On "Black Unstoppable" the flautist — backed by some of the scene's hottest names: Jeff Parker's ever-present guitar, Tomeka Reid's cello, David Boykin's sax, David Young's trumpet, Joshua Abrams' bass — offers up a pure distillation of Great Black Music across nine tracks ranging from four to thirteen minutes. But don't picture this as a thesis-driven, cold, academic album: Mitchell's compositions and her orchestra's excursions are, on the contrary, always imaginative, exciting and physical, drawing to varying degrees on blues, soul, funk, post-bop, Afrobeat and calypso.
While it's hard to single out highlights from such a consistently excellent tracklist, Ugochi Nwaogwugwu's vocal contributions stand out immediately: vibrant, emotional and layered, whether handling a raspy call-and-response (with Young on "Love Has No Boundaries") or harmonizing over a warm Latin breeze ("Life Wants You To Love") or over the R&B crescendo of the closing jam ("Thanking The Universe", featuring an incredible showcase from Parker); elsewhere it's the improvisational attitude that takes over, as in the title track's unpredictable horn interplay and an interminable "The Creator Has Other Plans For Me" (at least one solo apiece, and tasteful ones at that).
Holding the big picture steady throughout is Nicole Mitchell herself, a magic flute capable of gathering the sound of an entire city around her.

Matana Roberts – The Chicago Project (Central Control International, 2008)
Saxophonist Matana Roberts made her debut in 2002 with the brilliant, canonical trio Sticks and Stones, alongside drummer Chad Taylor and bassist Joshua Abrams. The project was born out of shared bills at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge and became a fixed Sunday appointment. With time in the AACM and an apprenticeship alongside Steve Lacy, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Grimes, Anthony Braxton, Ravi Coltrane, Don Byron, Nicole Mitchell, Angelica Sanchez, Peter Brötzmann, Jeff Parker and Rob Mazurek, Roberts worked within the trio before setting off on a solo path.
Marking the close of the first phase of her career is "The Chicago Project", moving between post-bop, free jazz and the avant-garde, a gateway to the chapters of her subsequent project "Coin Coin", the ambitious concept work on the African American diaspora released starting in 2001 by Constellation, which runs through the genre's stylistic conventions across various ensembles in a narrative, metaphorical and metadiscursive form. In this deeply jazz-rooted tribute to her hometown — a snapshot of a moment of live research and mutation on the scene, captured by John McEntire — the musician sharpens her compositional gifts for synthesizing narrative and expression, while also standing out for her intense sax and clarinet performances. Accompanying her is a quartet of friends: Abrams, Parker, Frank Rosaly (Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis, Jeb Bishop) and veteran Anderson. Nine tracks that come together and come apart between tradition and experimentation, tracks that sweat and are best understood in the dim light of a late-night club, within whose walls echo Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy and Bill Frisell. Another link in the chain connecting jazz and post-rock, bound together by a pronounced improvisational streak and a DIY, community-driven ethos.

Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra – Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra (Thrill Jockey, 2008)
Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra ensemble debuted in 2007 with "We're All Here From Somewhere Else" (Thrill Jockey), a title hinting at a narrative streak and a tie to literature also made explicit by the concurrent "Android Love City" (Family Vineyard) released as Tigersmilk, an abstract tale about the humanization of androids. The Orchestra convenes around Bill Dixon, one of the greatest influences on the Chicago cornetist: an agitator of New York free jazz's golden age, Dixon organized the memorable four-day October Revolution in Jazz in 1964, which featured the Sun Ra Sextet and led to the formation of Carla Bley and Michael Mantler's Jazz Composer's Guild Orchestra (with Paul Bley, Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacy and Don Cherry among others); he also played with Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor and coordinated live improvisations bridging jazz and dance.
It's this shared research across cross-disciplinary languages that sparks the collaboration: Dixon and Mazurek find common ground in the practice of the visual arts (the cover art, this time, is Dixon's own work), through which they weave a learned synthesis of free jazz and the avant-garde. The album consists of three symphonic tracks: the first and last written and led by Dixon, the central one by Mazurek — shared via video score — through which one enters and exits along an unexpected but cohesive path. The Orchestra has the unique ability to play loud and pianissimo alike and to create counterpoints that reinforce and multiply the narrative beyond what cornet and trumpet alone could achieve, thanks above all to the horn section of Mitchell/Bauder/Bishop/Berman, along with Parker and Herndon. Dixon's tracks are more rarefied and open, Mazurek's more crowded and explosive, introduced by a spoken-word passage from Damon Locks (Eternals), echoing Sun Ra Arkestra, John Coltrane, Charlie Haden and Moondog.
An immense work, with multiple layers of complexity, and also an evolutionary step in the compositional conception of the Exploding Star Orchestra project, whose fruits would be fully realized in 2020 with "Dimensional Stardust" (International Anthem/Astral Spirits).

Rob Mazurek Pulsar Quartet – Stellar Pulsations (Delmark, 2012)
A meteor breaks away from the Exploding Star Orchestra system to blaze on its own across the universe with a detonating formula of post-bop set within an exquisitely jazz-oriented imagination, free from interference by other sonic galaxies. This umpteenth quartet features Mazurek (cornet), Angelica Sanchez (piano), Matthew Lux (bass) and John Herndon (drums): no guitars, no electronics. We remain one step before the flowing electricity of the mothership's works, much as Miles Davis's second quintet on “Nefertiti” (Columbia, 1968) — largely written by Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock — stood one step before “In A Silent Way” (Columbia, 1969) and “Bitches Brew” (Columbia, 1970). We're also at a safe distance from the formal and timbral free deflagration of Ornette Coleman, in pieces structured not necessarily around the theme/solo mechanism but also around broad, unhurried phrasing within formally controlled sections, close to classics like Charles Mingus's “Mingus Ah Um” (Columbia, 1959).
The feeling is precisely that with “Stellar Pulsations” Mazurek wanted to craft a modern classic of bop territory, without too many digressions. Sanchez's piano opens gaps onto the percussive harmonies of Thelonious Monk and the mysticism of Alice Coltrane, Mazurek flies free and more Davis-like than ever, Herndon and Lux vary things with South American accents and Tortoise-like touches (the post-rock digression on “Spiritual Mars” is superb). Along the profile of a classicism made present, flashes of ingenuity emerge to modernize an otherwise standard formula, like the bassline of “Spanish Venus,” while Mazurek shapes the sound of his cornet using only breath and mutes.

Dave Rempis Percussion Quartet – Phalanx (Aerophonic, 2013)
Total, avant-garde free jazz. Dave Rempis, a saxophonist in Ken Vandermark's circle and active in Chicago across multiple projects, put together a lineup in 2004 to explore, through improvisation, a free expressiveness drawn from funk and from South American and West African rhythms. He brought together two local drummers, Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, a Norwegian based in Austin already active not only in Mats Gustafsson's The Thing but also in collaborations with Evan Parker, John McPhee, Jeb Bishop and Vandermark himself. Two drummers, as in Ornette Coleman's seminal “Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation” (Atlantic, 1961).
“Phalanx” overflows with possible avenues and trattorias of live writing, brought to life by a powerful (poly)rhythmic section, Håker Flaten's chameleonic bass, and Rempis's eclectic saxophones (alto, tenor, and even baritone). The double album gathers the summa of the quartet's performative free jazz, across four tracks ranging from 26 to 48 minutes that represent two live sets, one recorded in Milwaukee and one in Antwerp. Over two hours of music captured live, where things slow down without ever stopping or losing their bearings, amid nods to Sonny Rollins (“Algonquins”), John Lurie (“Cream City Stomp”) and Peter Brötzmann (“Anti-Goons”). The album came out on the newborn Aerophonic Records, founded by Rempis to give voice to numerous parallel projects, among which we're glad to mention at least the trio Rempis/Abrams/Ra and Ballister.

Pharoah & The Underground – Spiral Mercury (Clean Feed, 2014)
The title picks up a track from the Pulsar Quartet's “Stellar Pulsation,” but pushes further. This time Mazurek brings together the São Paulo Underground with Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground) and Matthew Lux (Exploding Star Orchestra/Pulsar Quartet) to collaborate with Pharoah Sanders. The historic Californian tenor sax player, raised under Sun Ra and standing alongside John Coltrane on the free-turn albums “Ascension” and “Meditations” (Impulse!, 1966), assists Mazurek's ensemble in the attempt to dissolve post-bop into electronic psychedelia.
“Spiral Mercury” is the third installment in this history of jazz at the free frontier, after the two chapters with Bill Dixon and Roscoe Mitchell, and it immortalizes a performance at the Jazz em Agosto festival in Lisbon built on percussion, mbira, vibraphone and marimba (Taylor and Granado), cavaquinho (Takara), electronics and keyboards (Mazurek and Granado). The setlist includes three reworkings of previous productions — “Blue Sparks On Her” from Chicago Underground Duo's “Synesthesia” (Thrill Jockey, 2000); “Pigeon” and “Jagoda's Dream” from São Paulo Underground's “Três Cabeças Loucuras” (Cuneiform, 2011) — perfectly woven into the connective tissue of a cosmic jazz that aims to strike new formal balances between composition and improvisation. The trajectories of sax, cornet and flute move across constantly shifting textures, between crowding and rarefaction, tropicalismo (“Spiral Mercury”) and mysticism (“Ghost Zoo”). A sensory and intellectual experience that carries a key figure of contemporary jazz into flourishing, still unexplored territories.

Rob Mazurek – Alternate Moon Cycles (International Anthem, 2014)
This splendid solo album really has very little to do with jazz. It has, however, a great deal to do with the way Scott McNiece and his International Anthem have worked since their earliest days, so much so that McNiece himself calls “Alternate Moon Cycles” a perfect tone-setter for the label; it's also the label's very first proper release, preceding by little more than a month Makaya McCraven's “In The Moment,” and to this day it remains out of print and unavailable in physical format (a real shame, given that the original vinyl edition included prints of paintings by Mazurek himself).
Just two tracks, each about a quarter of an hour long, both titled “Waxing Crescent,” featuring Mazurek on his usual cornet, Matthew Lux on electric bass and Mikel Patrick Avery on organ; two tracks of pure ambient drone music, relaxed and ethereal, built from load-bearing themes of just a handful of notes and an ecstatic gaze at the surroundings. A listen that, despite the impalpable quality of the material, proves immediate and powerful — the enchantment of a winter dawn rising to melt the frost.

Makaya McCraven – In The Moment (International Anthem, 2015)
The enfant prodige/beatmaker/jazz drummer applies the technique of cut-up, manipulation and collage to assemble 19 tracks drawn from the recordings of 28 concerts, for a total of 48 hours of improvised performance within the same venue over an entire year — The Bedford, a former bank vault that recalls the electronic bowels of Berlin's Tresor. A surgical operation grandly titled “In The Moment” to define both the centrality of the live document and the malleability of material that, in the studio, is reconfigured as a total, embodied metaphor of the performative dimension. For McCraven, the substance of jazz is live, just as sampling has been part of the whole history of African-American music ever since disco, house and hip-hop brought funk, R'n'B and doo-wop into the present by sampling riffs or grooves into new stories. The goal remains collectivity, keeping alive a circular bond between the audience of venues, the street and the clubs, so that the music can then return home in the form of a record. Orality, performance, creation and shared culture: this is how this community built its own history.
And with “In The Moment,” McCraven begins writing his own version of it, immortalizing himself front and center on a cover that already carries all the flavor of a jazz classic, captured in radiant youth. Starting out as a trio alongside Matt Ulery (bass) and Marquis Hill (trumpet), the lineup expands to include several musicians, among them Jeff Parker (guitars), Junius Paul (upright and electric bass), Joshua Abrams (upright bass) and Justefan (vibraphone).
The record is a 360-degree immersion into a vision of jazz spanning bop, cool and free that also touches on hip-hop and electronics — in tune with the Californian sound of Madlib — moving from one sonic landscape to another and letting them flow into each other in crossfade, with remarkable naturalness. Still today, one of McCraven's most intuitive and convincing achievements.

Chicago Reed Quartet – Western Automatic (Aerophonic, 2015)
The first thing that jumps out when approaching Chicago Reed Quartet's “Western Automatic” is the timeline: moving from the oldest to the youngest member of this saxophone quartet covers almost thirty years of the instrument's history — starting with Mars Williams (born 1955), moving through Ken Vandermark (1964) and Dave Rempis (1975), and ending with Nick Mazzarella (1984).
Based almost entirely on single takes recorded in a single summer afternoon at Chicago's Hungry Brain, the album flows by as a pleasure despite its rough edges, across eight tracks evenly split — two apiece, arranged in an ABCD-BADC scheme — in terms of composing credits. The evident relaxedness of the sessions certainly helps achieve this: even the noisiest moments of improvisation sound consequential, fluid and never in open conflict with the more overtly “written” sections of the tracks on the setlist — the powerful, groove-laden riffs of Williams's “Broken Record Fugue,” or certain Henry Mancini-esque tones in the opener “Burn Unit” by Vandermark, not to mention the many faces of the mammoth “P.O.P” (Williams again). Sensuous in its own way as it alternates persuasion and obsession on “The Rush” (Rempis) or in the closing-time calm of “Camera Obscura” (Mazzarella), the Quartet delivers a three-dimensional sound, packed with details best caught on headphones — the liner notes even explain the musicians' arrangement in the room: from left to right, it's always Rempis, Mazzarella, Williams and Vandermark. Across a variety of reeds (alto, baritone, tenor and sopranino sax, plus clarinet and bass clarinet), “Western Automatic” stages a wonderfully vital instrumental dialogue between generations.

Jeff Parker – The New Breed (International Anthem, 2016)
Jeff Parker has popped up on almost every album featured here, and yet there are very few works released under this brilliant musician's own name, as if each time he carefully chose the right moment to explicitly reveal a new self. Twelve years and countless collaborations pass between “The Relatives” and “The New Breed”: what's clearly influencing him here is his work with globetrotting Makaya McCraven, particularly in the loop- and sample-oriented attitude that these eight tracks so splendidly display.
Backed by Joshua Johnson (sax, flute, clarinet, piano, mellotron), Paul Bryan (electric bass) and Jamire Williams (drums), across thirty-eight minutes Parker distills an approach to jazz material that's fragmented and repetitive to the point of hypnosis, easily comparable to J Dilla's donuts, though the tracks capable of standing as hip-hop beats aren't actually that numerous — the crawling opener “Executive Life,” eight minutes with a heavy, off-kilter gait; the insistent, sensual pulse of “Get Dressed,” Parker's lively guitar cutting through the chatter of a warm club crowd. In other episodes, instead, the rhythm slows almost to a standstill, as in the unison guitar-and-keyboard riff of “Visions” or in the quiet improvisational stretches of “Jrifted” — the psychedelic side of things here lies in distant, distorted vocal samples, perceptible clearly only with your ear pressed to the speakers, yet capable of radically altering the track's effect on the listener.
Dedicated by Parker to his father Ernie, who passed away during the recording sessions, “The New Breed” is a personal, even autobiographical work: closing the circle is “Cliche,” where the delicate, attentive voice doubling the guitar line belongs to his daughter Ruby; four years later, grown up, we'll hear her again opening the formidable “Suite For Max Brown.” Record after record, in short, being part of a community — this community — seems to be the true engine of Jeff Parker's artistic vision.

Eternals – Espiritu Zombi (New Atlantis, 2016)
A spirit always electric, restless and ambitious, on “Espiritu Zombi” Damon Locks expands the Eternals trio — active by then for a good fifteen years — into a ten-piece lineup. Joining bandmates Wayne Montana (guitar) and Areif Sless-Kitain (drums) this time round are Jeanine O'Toole and Tomeka Reid (vocals), Matthew Lux (bass), Josh Berman (cornet), Nick Mazzarella (alto sax), Nate Lepine (flute) and Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), for a cycle of nine pieces that take on the shape of a suite and an ominous premonition of the zombification of an entire society — American society — which was shortly to elect Donald Trump as its president.
Going by the horror-movie title alone, one might imagine some modern take on the Goblin playbook; in practice, horror turns out to be an influence only at the level of lyrical imagery, the shadow of an imminent Apocalypse projected onto an equally nervous and sunlit sonic carpet, which places Brazil and afrobeat on one axis and razor-sharp post-punk guitars — no distortion, only dry, ringing highs, with the Ex smiling knowingly from the sidelines — on the other.
Political, radical and pessimistic music that would sound like a call to arms, were it not that time seems to have run out. The song titles say as much (“Destroy The Body,” “Blackout!,” “Misshapen Darkness Of The Night”), and it's summed up in ten words by a killer line from Locks that could have come from an alternate poster for Ruben Fleischer's “Zombieland” (2009): “Get your survival packs together folks — the end has begun.”

Irreversible Entanglements – Irreversible Entanglements (International Anthem, 2017)
The extraordinary collective Irreversible Entanglements is born entirely outside Chicago — between Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC. The occasion is a “Musicians Against Police Brutality” event organized in 2015 after the killing of Akai Gurley: that day, poet/performer/activist Camae Ayewa (who, as Moor Mother, has released two of the most significant avant records of the 2010s), bassist Luke Stewart and saxophonist Keir Neuringer take the stage for an improvisation, followed on the bill by the duo Aquiles Navarro (trumpet)/Tcheser Holmes (drums). A few months later, on August 26th, all five musicians reconvene for a studio session in Brooklyn, with Amiri Baraka and the New York Art Quartet in mind: that session would become an album only two years later, released through a partnership between International Anthem and Don Giovanni Records and adorned with artwork by Damon Locks.
When we met Camae Ayewa at the Bronson in Ravenna in February 2020, shortly before the first lockdown, she spoke enthusiastically about “Who Sent You?” — due out shortly after — as an infinitely more refined and complex work than the self-titled debut. She was right, of course: but the liberation-oriented free jazz of “Irreversible Entanglements” remains unmatched for the dynamite charge that detonates every second of its forty-five minutes, restoring to this music the political dimension it was born from. From the hellish night of “Chicago To Texas” to the unmediated scream that opens the collapse of “Enough,” from the hypnotic groove of the first section of “Fireworks” that flows into the familiar big-band improvisation, to the Apocalypse revisited through the lens of black trauma in “Projects” (“Oh God, Moses has been lynched! And the choir refuses to sing!”), this unforgettable recording takes no prisoners. Visceral, raw and politicized like a “Liberation Music Orchestra” for the dark age of Donald Trump.

Jaimie Branch – Fly Or Die I (International Anthem, 2017)
“I think that free jazz is a real reflection of the times and everything that's going on and that it is a form of protest because it is a fire you have to put out”. A life and career shuttling between New York and Chicago, trumpeter Jaimie Branch made a name for herself over the past decade with an incendiary, instantly recognizable sound and a sacred artistic fire that leads her to knock down every genre barrier, be it jazz, improvisation or punk-rock.
“Fly Or Die” is her solo debut, flanked here by Tomeka Reid, Jason Ajemian and Chad Taylor; and it's a scorching, impetuous, irresistible debut, teeming with ideas that crowd into a dense, thrilling half hour. The three “Theme” tracks on the setlist — sequenced as “001,” “002” and “Nothing” — are pure joy for the listener: off-beat rhythms and a festive, street-parade sound, almost a Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Unbridled dancing, in short, whereas “Leaves Of Glass” is an experiment in overdubbing Davis-like solos, the horns of “The Storm” wander through the speakers like restless spirits (with guest Ben LaMar Gay), and “Waltzer,” for once, settles into a quiet, low-lit slow number. Closing things out is “Back To The Ranch,” ninety seconds in the company of friend Matt Schneider's acoustic guitar — who would have predicted that, before getting there.
“What to do when the world is on fire?” asked, not rhetorically, a Roberto Minervini film some time ago. Well, putting on a record like “Fly Or Die” — or its even more bomb-throwing 2019 sequel — might help find an answer: Jaimie Branch is a force of nature.

Makaya McCraven – Universal Beings (International Anthem, 2018)
Without much argument, the double album that put the International Anthem name on everyone's lips and on record store shelves here too; the reason it's now widely discussed even in the culture sections of mainstream publications; the work that, more than any other, embodies the label's ambition to redefine a genre.
“Universal Beings” takes shape as concept music from the very way it was made: four sides, each devoted to a session held in a different city (New York, Chicago, London, Los Angeles), with McCraven once again acting as drummer and social glue, producer and director of operations. Surrounding him, across this hour and a half, are all-star ensembles that make your pulse race — Tomeka Reid and Brandee Younger on the first section, then Shabaka Hutchings and kindred spirit Junius Paul, Nubya Garcia and Ashley Henry, Anna Butterss and, inevitably, Jeff Parker.
Music that suggests somnambulant mental states — the New York side, curiously placed at the opening and also the least direct, hinting rather than declaring, amid harp droplets and cello-string friction — or, more rarely, sweeps you up in grooves of striking physicality — the nine minutes of the astonishing “Atlantic Black,” on the B-side, centerpiece of the whole work, where Hutchings's mere presence seems capable of bringing along twenty years of Sons Of Kemet- and Ancestors-school afrobeat. The common denominator is an elegance that occasionally lacks a bit of blood: while Irreversible Entanglements set the streets ablaze, McCraven's whole output treats the recording studio like a laboratory where everything is reworked and recalibrated down to the smallest detail.
It would, however, be unfair to ask this double album for an approach it simply can't have, precisely because of its premises and the milieu of the musicians involved. Instead, there's only room to applaud the talent of a thirty-five-year-old bandleader capable of connecting, with extraordinary maturity and ease, distant worlds into a single, thoroughly contemporary Black language. It may not be the most beautiful album in this collection, but “Universal Beings” is perhaps the most historically significant. Already a classic.

Resavoir – Resavoir (International Anthem, 2019)
It arrives and departs in under half an hour like a light, comforting summer breeze — the self-titled debut from the collective Resavoir, one of the most hidden, shimmering gems of our special. Preceded by the single “Escalator,” featuring rapper and saxophonist Sen Morimoto, the nine tracks grew as layered offshoots from sketches by multi-instrumentalist Will Miller — already of Whitney and a collaborator of Lil' Wayne, A$AP Rocky, Chance The Rapper and countless other acts — then embellished by the instrumental ad-libs of a host of illustrious fellow Chicagoans, among them Brandee Younger (harp), Macie Stewart (violin), Mira Magrill (flute) and Akenya Seymour (Wurlitzer, piano, sampler, rare vocals).
A virtuous chain that gains color and refraction with every hand it passes through, a feelgood jazz capable of carrying summer along with it — the wonderful sonic florilegium of the title track, seagulls and all — blending variable doses of sun-drenched funk (“Taking Flight”), soul (“Plantasy”) and pop (“Illusion”). Fittingly closing things out is the vocal mantra of “LML” — “I love my friends/ I love my family/ I love my girl/ I love my city” — a kind of impossible utopia in which every small detail sits gracefully beside the next and everyone playing sounds smooth, confident, and completely at ease.

Damon Locks/Black Monument Ensemble – Where Future Unfolds (International Anthem, 2019)
The performer collective led by Damon Locks — sound and visual artist, member of Eternals and collaborator of Rob Mazurek — brings us back between the history of the Civil Rights Movement and the present-day urgency of Black Lives Matter. The album is a collective ritual in live form, recorded in 2018 at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory in Chicago, with a 15-member ensemble featuring clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid, drummer Dana Hall, percussionist Arif Smith and a group of dancers. Between jazz, gospel, hip-hop, performance and sound art, Locks's BME debut is an elegant, visceral act of political and cultural awareness that shapes itself in the present by reactivating the primary elements of African-American music, ranging from Nigeria to the Caribbean to the Bronx, as on “Sound Like Now.”
“Knowing What We Know Now/ The Mind Searches for Reconciliation,” recites Locks, setting off a spiral for voice and percussion that carries us from “Statement Of Intent” to the gospel of “Black Movement Theme,” where the collective re-enactment of the past begins in order to speak of the future: “I can rebuild the nation/ I can rebuild the nation/ I can rebuild the nation no longer working out,” repeats young Rayana Golding of the Chicago Children's Choir on “Rebuild The Nation.”
Among the most fascinating tracks are “The Colors That You Bring,” a trip-hip-hop hymn with oblique clarinet phrases and gospel choir, “The Future?” — an ideal meeting of Locks, Matana Roberts and Moor Mother under the star of Sun Ra — and “The Power,” a breathless group sprint toward “From A Spark To A Fire,” a synthesis of the intentions and form of the two preceding tracks in a cathartic, open-ended epilogue.

Junius Paul – Ism (International Anthem, 2019)
“Junius is so many different things — African music, jazz, funk, soul, and avantgarde — he brings flavor from a lot of places. He's a presence that ties different things together in the city.” These are Makaya McCraven's words, describing the contribution of this great instrumentalist within the section he plays on “Universal Beings,” a work that, in the end, can be likened to “Ism” for its scope and gyroscopic approach to creativity: but while that work displays a laboratory-like approach to jazz material, this one sounds full-blooded and spontaneous.
Preceded by an extremely stylish cover shot — a palette of warm, spring-like colors, sun on the face — “Ism” is a consequence of the years Paul spent as bassist in residence for the Velvet Lounge's Sunday jam, years during which many of the relationships found on these grooves were born and cemented. The recording sessions stretch from 2016 to 2019 and involve quite a few different musicians — McCraven himself appears on three tracks, but the roster also includes Isaiah Spencer, Tomeka Reid, Vincent Davis, Corey Wilkins and Justin Dillard — and for this reason the result is extremely varied. Yet there are no visible seams or frictions between the collective pursuit of fine-tuning on “You Are Free To Choose,” the concrete experimentation of “Bowl Hit” or “Twelve Eighteen West,” the steamrolling funk of “Baker's Dozen” (something that sounds tailor-made for A Tribe Called Quest) or the supersonic ups and downs of “The One Who Endures,” not to mention the sprawling “Spocky Chainsey Has Re-Emerged” or “Paris.” A gem, “Ism” — the pure essence of a great artist.

Tomeka Reid Quartet – Old New (Cuneiform, 2019)
Tomeka Reid is one of the talents of the latest generation of jazz musicians to flourish in Chicago. Classically trained, with her cello she was part of Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble, Anthony Braxton's Zim Sextet, the Roscoe Mitchell Quartet and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, has collaborated with Mike Reed, Dave Rempis, Joshua Abrams, Makaya McCraven and Jaimie Branch, and even contributed to some works by Owen, the singer-songwriter project of Mike Kinsella (Cap'n Jazz, American Football, Owls).
“Old New” arrives four years after her quartet's solid debut, a group made up of musicians of equal standing such as Mary Halvorson (sensational guitar), Jason Roebke (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). The album has an extra gear compared to the previous one, expressive dynamite of erudite music and intellectual jazz where the Apollonian triumphs over the Dionysian, much as with McCraven. But where the drummer, a true deus ex machina, works surgically through editing, the cellist hones tightrope-walking compositions down to the smallest detail, pieces that flow “until the last breath.” “Old New” is a full-bodied, restless album of avant-jazz, brimming with vitality and ideas moving in several directions at once, with a robust sense of groove, oblique phrasing that sometimes slips into cacophony, and blue roots deep in the African-American tradition. From the programmatic post-bop of “Old New” to the unison phantasmagoria of “Niki's Bop,” from the post-rock flavor of “Aug. 6” to the grotesque, Tom Waits-like march of “Ballad,” from the string/hard-bop of “Sadie” to the contemplative free playing of “Edelin,” Reid darts between pizzicato and bowed passages, proving herself not only a remarkable composer but an excellent instrumentalist who firmly inscribes the cello among the instruments of contemporary jazz. Halvorson is Reid's alter ego and, in her Frisell-like style, moves dizzyingly between assonances and bent/pitched notes. The closing “RN” is superb, on an album that rewards repeated listens to fully appreciate its precious, careful complexity.

Art Ensemble Of Chicago – We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (Pi, 2019)
A circle closing, the last recommendation before the flood of releases from the year just ended. But it's not for mere historiographical reasons that "We Are On The Edge", celebrating the Art Ensemble Of Chicago's fiftieth anniversary, has earned a place in this selection; what counts is the ever-open, ultra-receptive gaze onto the world of the two surviving historic members, Roscoe Mitchell (saxophones) and Famadou Don Moye (percussion of every kind), who host under those immortal banners an orchestra of some fifteen guests, paying rightful tribute to the late greats Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors and Joseph Jarman.
"We Are On The Edge" is made of two parts: a studio session, the first since "Sirius Calling" (Pi, 2004), in which compositions written for the occasion by Mitchell and Moye sit alongside revisitations of the historic repertoire; and a live one, blazing, recorded at Edge Fest 2018 in Ann Arbor, seventy overwhelming minutes among classics — the endless "Tutankhamun" (from "Tutankhamun", Freedom, 1969), the closing "Odwalla" (from "Bap-tizum", Atlantic, 1972) — that dispenses with vocal inserts and focuses on impro expansion. In both incarnations, though, what you hear is radical, forward-thinking musical thought, perfectly in line with an unmatched legacy.
It's worth focusing here on the studio sessions, which see the Ensemble opening up to old acquaintances (Enoch Williamson and Titos Sompa), talented fellow Chicagoans (Tomeka Reid, Junius Paul, Nicole Mitchell) and other new, important, virtuosic names (Christina Wheeler, Jean Cook, Pisa-born bassist Silvia Bolognesi).
The result is two-faced, yet there's no jarring gap between the chamber-music, avant-garde artistry of Mitchell's pieces and the unbridled pan-African percussiveness of Moye's; an album that opens with the caricature-like vibrato of obscure vocalist Rodolfo Cordova-Lebron on the splendid and unexpected "Variations And Sketches From The Bamboo Terrace", but which finds its absolute peaks in a blazing triptych — "We Are On The Edge"/ "I Greet You With Open Arms"/ "Mama Koko" — with Camae Ayewa on the mic. "Just be yourself", Mitchell asks the poet/performer when inviting her to join the session, and Ayewa arrives having listened to just a handful of AEOC records, bringing with her only an inimitable voice and lyrics that, as always, set the air on fire. It's electrifying to hear her roar "We are on the edge of victory" over a syncopated, insistent title track (they insist, literally, in a triumph of variously plucked, struck and caressed strings), a gradual process of collective improvement that makes victory feel within reach. And for a project that has always been political, such a sense of hope cast into the tunnel-vision of these years is an intoxicating experience: fifty years on, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago is still "Great Black Music: Ancient To Future".

This important year. Chicago jazz in 2020

Chicago jazz in 2020 resembles a Fellini-esque finale for this feature, with all the characters returning to the stage for a bow and a farewell; or, if you prefer, like a track that triumphantly returns to its main theme after minutes of preparatory solos: musicians in unison for an overwhelming close. Of the year that will be remembered as a watershed for how we experience music — with every possible form of live concert-going brought to a halt — we'll also carry with us the memory of formidable albums in which so many of the names encountered so far crossed paths to create some of the most electric works of uncertain times.
It was, first and foremost, the year of International Anthem, and it seems reasonable to start telling the story from two key figures of the city's scene. Jeff Parker followed up "The New Breed" with an even freer, more jagged work in "Suite For Max Brown", this time dedicated to his mother and still teeming with inventiveness, both in hyper-contaminated original tracks (honorable mention for "Build A Nest", "Fusion Swirl" and the title track) and in the tender reinterpretation of Coltrane's "After The Rain". Rob Mazurek reached a new peak with the Exploding Star Orchestra on "Dimensional Stardust", a phantasmagoric suite in which jazz and psychedelia merge into one with the orchestration, somewhere between Miles Davis and Gil Evans' "Porgy And Bess" (Columbia, 1959), the visions of Sun Ra's "The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra" (Savoy Jazz, 1962) and the "visual" avant-garde music of Satie, Liszt and Bartók.

And staying within the roster of a label that couldn't be imagined coming from anywhere else, it's impossible not to be swept up by the second Irreversible Entanglements album: if it can't boast the blind fury of the self-titled debut, it's still true that "Who Sent You?" — to which Shabaka And The Ancestors' "We Are Sent Here By History" (Impulse!, 2020) seems to indirectly respond — seems to be able to aspire to the status of a contemporary classic, in a hoarse, arcane free flow in which, as in premodern cultures, there's no concept of entertainment, only a sequence of stories told for the purpose of sharing, bearing witness, remembering. A collective that shows plenty of drive even in its members' parallel outings: where the duo of Aquiles Navarro and Tcheser Holmes tear down genre walls on "Heritage Of The Invisible II", combining rhythmic spasms and pure improvisation with electronics and spoken-word inserts, "Luke Stewart Exposure Quintet" (actually released by Astral Spirits) offers a deconstructed free jazz with horns and piano resting on a solid backbone of double bass and drums.

Looking elsewhere, meanwhile, are label-mates Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, already protagonists of the "Los Angeles Side" of Makaya McCraven's "Universal Beings": their "Chicago Waves" — recorded live in Chicago — is an album dense with a spirituality that can soothe the listener's anxieties as if it knew the secret to connecting with their breath, thanks to the sound and tonal suspension of music that stops just one step short of new age.

Paths that also intertwine on the Astral Spirits roster with the Chicago Underground Quartet of Taylor, Johnson, Parker and Mazurek: "Good Days" is a soft, precious and intelligent comeback, a joy to hear from four musicians in a state of grace, cornerstones of a cosmopolitan scene linking Chicago to Montréal, New York, London and Stockholm. Jeb Bishop — now based in Boston — plumbs abyssal depths with two Berlin-based musicians, Antonio Borghini (bass) and Michael Griener (drums): the impro avant-garde of his "Jeb Bishop Centrifugal Trio" mutters more than it explodes, and doesn't shy away from unusual sounds — what you hear on "Plumb" isn't electronics, but the squeak of a dog toy played through the trombone — for a playful approach best represented in the interlocking eleven minutes of the opener "Jounce".

And another meeting of the minds — this time at the Chicago Jazz Festival 2019 — is that between Dave Rempis, Jeremy Cunningham, Jeff Parker and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, on three tracks released under the title "Stringers & Struts" (Aerophonic). Fifty minutes of music made "on the spot" yet solid and surprisingly accessible; credit goes to Parker's crystal-clear flourishes up and down the fretboard, Rempis's deeply inspired saxophone solos and a rhythm section that paints vivid pictures while following the most radical mood shifts: a fine example is the never-ending "Cutwater", enriched by a bristly, random central section.

A different story for legendary percussionist Kahil El'Zabar, one of the few big names left unmentioned so far and chairman of the AACM from 1975 to 1983. His "America The Beautiful" (Spiritmuse) — released in the final days of the Trump era and recorded with accomplished musicians such as Corey Wilkes (trumpet), Hamiet Bluiett (baritone sax), Tomeka Reid (cello), Dennis Winslett (alto sax) and Samuel Williams (violin) — is a kind of manifesto for new hope, despite the pandemic, despotism, discrimination and the violence of today. A record with the colors of a warm summer sunset, gathering Caribbean influences and African beats, rearrangements of classics and original compositions. Standing out for their passion and romanticism are the reinterpretation of "Express Yourself" by Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, with a smile as irrepressible as a revolution, and the darker "Freedom March": small anthems for a year in which, more than at almost any other time, the need for an alternative was keenly felt.

And here, yes, is the present: almost nothing has managed to tell its story with the lucidity and constructive rage of Chicago jazz, and it seems fitting to close this quarter-century-long journey with two of the most moving and life-affirming releases from the recent International Anthem catalogue, which we haven't yet had the chance to discuss on OndaRock. Let's start from the beginning.

On April 7, 2020, the label released a new single by Damon Locks and his Black Monument Ensemble: it's called "Stay Beautiful", and it's essentially an instant song written and made public at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, one that the US government would criminally underestimate for the rest of the year, with catastrophic consequences. The track opens with a spoken introduction by Locks that places us in a hospital room where a patient, admitted to care, faces the pain of loneliness; yet even in such precarious conditions, the man manages to find comfort in the attention paid to him by the medical staff, with fresh flowers placed beside the bed and a small handwritten note. At this point the electronic loop that underpins the whole composition kicks in, joined by Angel Bat Dawid (clarinet), Dana Hall (drums) and Arif Smith (percussion) in a hypnotic trance over which the five voices of Phillip Armstrong, Monique Golding, Eric McCarter, Tramaine Parker and Lauren Robinson harmonize the track's title.
There isn't much, in "Stay Beautiful" — truthfully, there's almost nothing. But what there is, is gold, a faithful portrait of an underground railroad of kindred spirits who feel it's their duty to offer support, affection and closeness to a social fabric in pain: "We see you. We love you. Stay beautiful".

Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood's "LIVE", meanwhile, captures a blistering performance at Berlin's JazzFest on November 1, 2019, released exactly one year later. Forty-eight hours before the show, the clarinetist and the rest of the band learned that vocalist Viktor Le Givens, after fainting in the street, had woken up in a Chicago hospital to discover he'd been robbed of everything. When the news was passed on to the festival staff, the collective received a chilling reply: "If you don't find a replacement, we'll have to cut your fee". In the end Le Givens managed to reach his bandmates, who nonetheless found themselves living through days of racially charged microaggressions that only heightened the tension and bitterness. A trace of one of those outbursts remains at the opening of the record: "Ever since I've been here y'all have treated me like shit!", the artist shouts; from there on, it's nothing but floodgates breaking, in a live set of unheard-of expressive force.
Dawid lets out feral screams; stammers syllables in scat until they lose all meaning; moans before an audience one can easily imagine stunned; threatens it, then embraces it again. It would be limiting to say the ensemble merely accompanies her well: Deacon Otis Cooke (vocals, synth), Cristian Espinoza (tenor sax, percussion), Norman W. Long (electronics, synth), Adam Zanolini (bass, flute, sax, percussion), Isaiah Collier (drums) and Asher Gamedze (drums) converse with the lead voice, moving in unison with an angry, grieving sermon rarely heard since Nina Simone. In a setlist that includes some beautiful tracks from the debut "The Oracle" (International Anthem, 2018) and overwhelming gospel/blues chorales, it reaches emotional peaks that knock you off balance.
"We Are Starzz", here, is the fulcrum of it all: the piece is stretched to nearly fifteen minutes, in a stripped-down groove over which the few words are reprised by the three voices in endless variations. Dawid seeks a real connection with the audience; when the music slows to a faint soul murmur, the singer confronts them head-on, shamelessly, in an extraordinary demonstration of art's healing power. In these spine-chilling moments lies, no doubt, the weight of black trauma in the year of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, but hidden within it too is the motto of one of the voices from Bernardine Evaristo's choral novel "Girl, Woman, Other" (Sur, 2019): "I am not a victim, never treat me as a victim, my mother did not raise me to become a victim".

And there are no better words than those whispered by Dawid to close this story of a city, Chicago, where jazz music is an ongoing conversation, the only instrument that makes it possible to imagine collective progress: "Hold onto this memory right now, seal it in your heart, we have an agreement now, this is called unity. It feels damn good don't it?".

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06/03/2026