Post No Bills: Bleader, Chicago Reader

Bassist Jason Roebke in musical conversation

Peter Margasak — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:12:00 -0500

It's no secret that bass players don't get enough respect. Most jazz groups depend on the bassist as the structural anchor, tracing out the chord changes and keeping time.…

12 O'Clock Track: "Nix," hypnotic piano trio grooves from Dawn of Midi

Peter Margasak — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:00:00 -0500

In 2010 the minimalist piano trio Dawn of Midi released their all-improvised debut album First (Accretions), operating a bit like Australia's Necks. As I wrote of the music then, "[pianist Amino] Belyamani generally sticks to a tight range of notes in each piece, creating a dazzling variety of phrases from that limited vocabulary in a way that reminds me of Chris Abrahams of the Necks, except without Abrahams's clear forward movement; rather than morphing from one shape to another, his oblique melodies emerge and dissolve like waves lapping at the shore.…

Patty Griffin gets good and gritty on American Kid

Peter Margasak — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:00:31 -0500

I've never cared much for the music of Patty Griffin, and in recent years I've tried harder and harder to, thanks largely to the excellent folks she's been working with—Buddy Miller, Robert Plant, Shooter Jennings, John Doe, and Gurf Morlix, among others. But until I heard her terrific new album, American Kid (New West), I just got bored.…

The insinuating coo of Alessi's Ark at SPACE in Evanston

Peter Margasak — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:30:00 -0500

On Tuesday night London's Alessi's Ark performs at SPACE in Evanston, opening for Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers fame, and this feels like the second consecutive visit by Alessi Laurent-Marke where I've kind of been asleep at the wheel. Like her debut, her recently released second album The Still Life (Bella Union) has crept up on me—I skimmed through it when I first got it, but I failed to really give it a thorough listen until the other day, and now it's working its way into my brain.…

12 O'Clock Track: Daniel Wohl's dreamy "Corpus"

Peter Margasak — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:00:00 -0500

The dynamic LA art-pop singer and composer Julia Holter returns to Chicago this summer to perform at the Pitchfork Music Festival, and a month later she'll release her third album, Loud City Song (Domino). On last year's superb Ekstasis (RVNG) she moved away from the appealingly raw, sample-rich dreamscapes of her 2011 debut album, Tragedy, for something smoother and more accessible.…

Guitarist Mary Halvorson makes her presence felt

Peter Margasak — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:00:00 -0500

The distinctive New York guitarist Mary Halvorson makes one of her infrequent Chicago appearances tonight at the Washington Park Arts Incubator, performing in her excellent duo with violist Jessica Pavone—the set is part of the promising Chicago Jazz String Summit. As I wrote in my preview this week, that project conveys an appealingly loose rapport with a strong dose of folklike rusticity.…

German reedist Peter Brötzmann, forever looking forward

Peter Margasak — Thu, 30 May 2013 14:30:00 -0500

Last November the powerhouse German reedist Peter Brötzmann announced that he was dissolving his long-running Chicago Tentet, the raucous yet deadly accurate free-jazz orchestra he formed here 14 years earlier. The band had experienced some personnel shifts during that time, but its core—which included reedists Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, trombonist Jeb Bishop, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, bassist Kent Kessler, and drummer Michael Zerang—had largely remained intact all along.…

The music of David Lang in Chicago

Peter Margasak — Wed, 29 May 2013 16:26:00 -0500

I wasn't able to make it to either of Eighth Blackbird's recent performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where the program featured a couple of pieces from composer David Lang's recent recording Death Speaks (Cantaloupe). Singer Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), guitarist Bryce Dessner (the National), and pianist Nico Muhly all appear on the new album, a song cycle that imagines death as a character, with compositional inspiration coming from the work of Franz Schubert.…

The easy stylistic yin and yang of drummer Ches Smith

Peter Margasak — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:00:00 -0500

In this week's paper I previewed the upcoming performances by Marc Ribot's power trio Ceramic Dog at Pritzker Pavilion and Constellation; the rhythmic engine for that wonderfully flinty band is drummer Ches Smith, a guy who epitomizes the cross-fertilization of forward-looking jazz and outre rock music. He grew up with both, and he's conversant in both.…

La Sacre du Printemps turns 100, the Butchershop Quartet celebrates

Peter Margasak — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:50:06 -0500

For a long time I thought the French seal of artistic disapproval was to rip out the seats of a theater, whether it was the first viewing of the Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí film L'age D'or or Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 screened without subtitles. It seems to be a hallowed tradition.…

At the ripe age of 23 British singer Laura Marling has become a force of nature

Peter Margasak — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:35:00 -0500

With every new recording the British singer-songwriter Laura Marling has made significant leaps in quality, depth, and vision, and that growth continues on her new album Once I Was An Eagle (Ribbon Music)—due out next Tuesday. It's a gorgeously stripped-down effort featuring acoustic guitar, bass, piano, and Spartan percussion (congas, vibes), putting the vocalist's stunning voice front and center, where it belongs.…

12 O'Clock Track: November, the pioneering piano minimalism of Dennis Johnson

Peter Margasak — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:00:00 -0500

Do you have some time on your hands? I hope so, because today's 12 O'Clock Track easily ranks as the longest one the Reader has ever offered up, clocking in at one hour, ten minutes, and 21 seconds.…

Rare Sun Ra sounds and images from Corbett vs. Dempsey

Peter Margasak — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:00:00 -0500

Corbett vs. Dempsey, the record label, has just released one of the rarest and most historically murky recordings in the massive oeuvre of the great Sun Ra, issuing Continuation on CD for the first time. Last year I wrote about the formalization of the new imprint operated by the John Corbett and Jim Dempsey, the owners of their namesake art gallery, and even then, when I spoke with Corbett about this reissue, the actual date of the recording seemed in doubt.…

Robbie Fulks revisits a scorned gem by Bob Dylan

Peter Margasak — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:04:00 -0500

A few days ago I got an e-mail from Robbie Fulks letting me know about the next installment of his ever-changing, always inventive and entertaining weekly Hideout residency on Mondays, which is now into its fourth year. I had already noted the show and planned to write something about it here, but I was still surprised to read his message, which read, in part, "just wanted to let you know your comment on Street-Legal, way back when I was preparing Slow Train Coming, stuck in my head . . .…

Contemporary classical music on your radio all day today at WFMT

Peter Margasak — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:02:35 -0500

Chicago is lucky to still have a full-time classical-music radio station in WFMT, but for fans of composed music that's less than a hundred years old, there aren't so many opportunities to hear it outside of the concert hall or by purchasing recordings. There are occasions where something less musty gets on WFMT's airwaves, as on host Seth Bousted's weekly Relevant Tones program, but by and large the station doesn't offer much proof that "classical" music is a living tradition.…

Chicago reedist Dave Rempis launches Aerophonic Records

Peter Margasak — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:00:00 -0500

In this week's paper I wrote a preview for the Saturday performance by Wheelhouse at Constellation. The trio includes reedist Dave Rempis and, as I explained in my Soundboard item, the concert is in part a celebration of Boss of the Plains, the trio's excellent debut album.…

The beauty of singer Dawn McCarthy in Faun Fables and with Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Peter Margasak — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:51:00 -0500

On Sunday afternoon Bay Area group Faun Fables rolls into town to play a house concert on the northwest side (the previously announced Saturday-night show at SPACE in Evanston is no longer happening). The band is the project of the remarkable singer Dawn McCarthy and her longtime partner Nils Frykdahl (who's probably known best for his lengthy membership in the weirdo art-punk band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum).…

12 O'Clock Track: "Two to Your Right, Five to Your Left," a chunk of loud, visceral cello music from Okkyung Lee

Peter Margasak — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:00:00 -0500

Over the last decade or so the Korean cellist Okkyung Lee has nonchalantly toggled between disparate music worlds, leading her own projects, helping out others like Vijay Iyer, Laurie Anderson, and Wadada Leo Smith, and improvising in countless contexts. She's a terrific composer and arranger, as you can hear on the 2011 album Noisy Love Songs (Tzadik), which presents her in some of those disparate contexts.…

Iraqi maqam master Hamid Al-Saadi on a screen near you

Peter Margasak — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:37:00 -0500

In February I blogged about a new partnership between the Old Town School of Folk Music and the Chicago public television station WYCC (Channel 20) on a new international music program called Musicology: Live From the Old Town School of Folk Music. That week Habib Koite and Eric Bibb performed in the first concert to be taped for the series; the results were broadcast on April 19.…

Discovering the early avant-garde sounds of eclectic composer Joseph Byrd

Peter Margasak — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:11:00 -0500

Indie rock fans with a sense of historical curiosity, particularly ones who enjoyed the music of Britain's terrific Broadcast, probably know about the short-lived American group United States of America. The band released a single eponymous album for Columbia Records in 1968, at the height of the Flower Power era, which unceremoniously sank with little trace.…

12 O'Clock Track: "When a Long Blast Is Sounded," the pensive chamber jazz of Steven Lugerner

Peter Margasak — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:00:00 -0500

Last summer I previewed a concert by an excellent New York jazz trio called Chives, led by the reedist Steven Lugerner, an ambitious composer, arranger, and conceptualist who seems to be overflowing with ideas. That impression is only reinforced by his strong new album, For We Have Heard (due May 14 on No Business/Primary), his second session with pianist Myra Melford, trumpeter Darren Johnston, and drummer Matt Wilson.…

Pianist Benny Green keeps the classic hard-bop sound alive

Peter Margasak — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:44:00 -0500

It's hard to believe pianist Benny Green recently turned 50—it seems like not so long ago he was a fresh-faced young lion, instilled with the hard-bop virtues of Art Blakey, with whom he worked with in the late 80s. But on his terrific new trio album Magic Beans (Sunnyside) he's still purveying a timeless (if simultaneously time-specific) sound, delivering crisp, hard-swinging jazz in the style of his hard-bop mentors.…

Saxophonist and Morton Grove native Jon Irabagon heats up

Peter Margasak — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:05:00 -0500

Morton Grove native Jon Irabagon, who studied jazz at DePaul University, has become one of the strongest, most flexible, and daring saxophonists at work today. Since he moved to New York in 2001, his playing and reputation have been rising steadily.…

RIP George Jones, my gateway to really hearing country music

Peter Margasak — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:18:00 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I listened to a recent reissue that compiled the complete United Artists singles of George Jones, my favorite country singer. I couldn't remember the last time I had put on one of his albums, but he was the kind of artist who renders such gaps irrelevant: no matter how time had passed, hearing that voice made it seemed like it had never gone away.…

12 O'Clock Track: "Wrecking Ball," wiggy psychedelic space-funk from London's Heliocentrics

Peter Margasak — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:00:00 -0500

It's been six years since the London-based instrumental groove juggernaut Heliocentrics released their terrific debut album, Out There (Stones Throw), a vibrant collage of funk, hip-hop, Sun Ra-inspired free jazz, and cinematic soundscapes. But the band has hardly been idle, putting out ambitious full-length collaborations with the great Ethio-jazz pianist Mulatu Astatke (Inspiration Information 3) and the peculiar American ethnomusicologist Lloyd Miller (Lloyd Miller and the Heliocentrics).…