Chicago | music clip of the day

Category: Chicago

Wednesday, February 19th

sounds of Chicago

Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things (MR, drums; Jason Roebke, bass; Greg Ward, alto saxophone; Tim Haldeman, tenor saxophone), “Wilbur’s Tune,” live, Paris, 2010

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Mike Reed’s Myth/Science Assembly (MR, drums; Tomas Fujiwara, drums; Josh Abrams, bass; Greg Ward, alto saxophone; Ingrid Laubrock, tenor saxophone; Taylor Ho Bynum, trumpet; Mary Halvorson, guitar; Tomeka Reid, cello; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone; Nick Butcher, electronics), live (rearranging a found Sun Ra fragment [excerpt]), Chicago (Chicago Jazz Festival), 2011

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Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly (MR, drums; Josh Abrams, bass; Greg Ward, alto saxophone; Tomeka Reid, cello; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone), live (studio performance), Chicago, c. 2009

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If other Chicago musicians are “busy,” what’s Mike Reed? In addition to leading various groups, he owns and operates Constellation, a performing arts center. Then there’s the Pitchfork Music Festival, which this summer will feature, over the course of three days, Beck, Giorgio Moroder, Kendrick Lamar, Grimes, et al. He books and produces it.

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2014

Monday, February 17th

sounds of Chicago

Baby Huey (AKA James Ramey, 1944-1970), “Listen To Me,” 1971 (Curtom)

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lagniappe

art beat: more from Thursday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago

Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), City Landscape, 1955

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2014

Sunday, February 16th

No stage. No microphone. Just heart.

Evangelist Mary Brown and the Spiritual Singers, “I’ll Fly Away,” live, North Carolina (Plymouth, pop. ~4,000), 2011

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lagniappe

art beat: Thursday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after meeting with a client at the nearby federal jail)

Paul Cezanne, The Bay of Marseilles, Seen From L’Estaque, c. 1885

If a stranger, standing next to me in front of this painting, leaned over and whispered, “There’s no better place to be on the planet,” I wouldn’t disagree.

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2014

Saturday, February 1st

sounds of Chicago

Michael Zerang and the Blue Lights (MZ, drums; Mars Williams, alto saxophone; Dave Rempis, baritone saxophone; Josh Berman, cornet; Kent Kessler, bass), live, Chicago (Hideout), 2013

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lagniappe

reading table

Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better.

—Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick

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2014

Wednesday, January 22nd

Thirty-seven years ago, at a church outside Chicago, my wife Suzanne and I were married. Saxophonist Von Freeman and pianist John Young played at the ceremony.* Afterward, at the nearby reception hall, this guy tickled the ivories. All three are now gone.

Blind John Davis (1913-1985), live, Canada, early ’80s

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*Here’s how they sounded that night. (Give it a few seconds.)

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2014

Thursday, January 16th

sounds of Chicago

Hieroglyphic Being (AKA Jamal Moss), “Space Is The Place (But We Stuck Here On Earth)”

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2014

Tuesday, January 7th

Henry Theadgill’s Zooid,* live, New York (Roulette), 2012

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lagniappe

radio

Today WKCR-FM (Columbia University) is featuring Threadgill and a host of other musicians who came out of Chicago in the ’60s and ’70s.

In May of 1977, members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) collaborated with students at WKCR to present “Chicago Comes to New York,” a four-day music festival at Columbia University’s Wollman Auditorium. Join us starting midnight on January 7, 2014 as we revisit this momentous event with a 24-hour marathon broadcast featuring music and interviews by the AACM.

Thirty members of the AACM came to New York with their families and friends for the festival, many for the first time. The festival also included an on-air component in the form of a ninety-hour broadcast of music and interviews with AACM artists. Over the last year, two recent WKCR alums restored and digitized the entire collection of reel-to-reel tapes from the festival, hearing the music for the first time since it was recorded.

Celebrate the incredibly important work that members of the AACM have been doing to promote artistic freedom and self-determination for nearly half a century. Help us revitalize and share these unique pieces of recorded history that WKCR is so privileged to have regained access to.

—WKCR-FM

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*Henry Threadgill (alto saxophone, flute), Liberty Ellman (acoustic guitar), Jose Davila (tuba), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums), Zachary Lober (bass), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Ben Gerstein (trombone), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Stephanie Richards (trumpet), Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet).