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Astral Spirits Records
Astral Spirits Records is an independent record label specializing in free jazz, improvisation, and experimental music. Based in Austin, Texas, the label was founded in 2014 by musician Nathan Cross, who started Astral Spirits as a platform for "the new wave of heavy free jazz"; as the breadth of the label's offerings expanded, imprint Astral Editions became the home for its more experimental releases. Astral Spirits has been featured in ''Bandcamp Daily'', ''All About Jazz'', the '' Chicago Reader'', '' DownBeat'', and the ''Free Jazz Collective''; ''Rolling Stone'' has called the label "crucial" and "enormously prolific"; and in 2019, ''Tiny Mix Tapes'' included Astral Spirits among their favorite labels of the decade. History In the early 2010s, Cross began to consider starting a record label or a live-recorded series as a way to stay involved in music without touring extensively. He spoke with Morgan Coy of Monofonus Press while in the early planning stages, and Coy enc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during this period believed that the bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz that had been played before them was too limiting. They became preoccupied with creating something new and exploring new directions. The term "free jazz" has often been combined with or substituted for the term "avant-garde jazz". Europeans tend to favor the term "free improvisation". Others have used "modern jazz", "creative music", and "art music". The ambiguity of free jazz presents problems of definition. Although it is usually played by small groups or individuals, free jazz big bands have existed. Although musicians and critics claim it is innovative and forward-looking, it draws on early styles of jazz and has been described as an attempt to return to primitive, often re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
In The Spirit (Joe McPhee Album)
''In the Spirit'' is an album of spirituals performed by multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's Bluette, recorded in 1999 and released on the CIMP label.Joe McPhee discography accessed April 22, 2015 Reception reviewer Steve Loewy states: "An important contribution to the discography of the spiritual, McPhee gives it a new perspective, but one that is entirely respectful of the tradition. Performed gracefully and tastefully, the group tastes free form without losing sight of the melodies". On '''', Derek Taylor wro ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Looker
Charlie Looker (born May 23, 1980) is an American composer, improviser, vocalist, and guitarist known for his work in experimental metal, contemporary classical, avant-jazz, and Renaissance and Medieval musical forms. Education and career Looker is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where he studied with Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier. Alongside his work as a solo artist, Looker also leads an Early/Renaissance-music inspired project, Seaven Teares; performs improvised "death-jazz" with Period, whose rotating cast includes Darius Jones, Chuck Bettis, and Mike Pride; and leads the industrial-metal duo Psalm Zero, formerly alongside Castevet's Andrew Hock. He is the songwriter, guitarist, and lead vocalist for avant-rock band Extra Life and a former member and co-founder of avant-garde band Zs. He worked with Dirty Projectors and appears on their record '' Rise Above''. Other collaborators include M Lamar, Mariel Roberts, Ty Braxton, Mary Halvorson, Mick Barr, Tim Bern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Carter (musician)
Daniel Carter is an American free jazz musician who plays saxophone, trumpet, and flute. Career Carter has recorded and performed with many distinguished musicians, including William Parker, Federico Ughi, DJ Logic, The Negatones, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, Soul-Junk, Anne Waldman, Cooper-Moore, Matthew Shipp and scientist/musician Matthew Putman among others. He is a member of the cooperative free jazz groups Test, Other Dimensions In Music, odon, Ghost Moth and Dissipated Face. In 2007 the Pendu Sound compilation album ''Getting rid of the glue'' with Excepter and Daniel Carter was listed as number 70 in Thurston Moore's "Top 80 of 2006". In 2015 thNew York Forward Festivalwas created to celebrate Carter's 70th birthday. Discography As co-leader * ''Switched-On Irresponsibility'' with Post Prandials (Artichoke & Tristero, 1995) * ''High Wire'' with Post Prandials (Artichoke & Tristero, 1996) * ''Tenor Rising Drums Expanding'' with Tenor Rising Drums Expanding (Sound@O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Brötzmann
Peter Brötzmann (born 6 March 1941) is a German saxophonist and clarinetist. Biography Early life Brötzmann was born in Remscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He studied painting in Wuppertal and was involved with the Fluxus movement but grew dissatisfied with art galleries and exhibitions. He experienced his first jazz concert when he saw American jazz musician Sidney Bechet while still in school at Wuppertal, and it made a lasting impression. He has not abandoned his art training. Brötzmann has designed most of his album covers. He taught himself to play clarinets, then saxophones; he is also known for playing the tárogató. Among his first musical partnerships was with double bassist Peter Kowald. '' For Adolphe Sax'', Brötzmann's first recording, was released in 1967 and featured Kowald and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson. In 1968 ''Machine Gun'', an octet recording, was released. The album was self-produced under his BRO record label imprint and sold at concerts, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeb Bishop
Jeb Bishop (born 1962) is an American jazz trombone player. He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Jesse O. Sanderson High School. He has studied music (classical trombone performance) at Northwestern University, engineering and philosophy at North Carolina State University, and philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Arizona, Loyola University, and the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. In the 1980s, he played electric bass and electric guitar in rock bands including Stillborn Christians, Egg, and/or, and the Angels of Epistemology (a band based in Raleigh and Chapel Hill that released a CD on Merge Records). In the 1990s, he moved to Chicago and began transitioning from rock to jazz music. He played bass guitar in The Flying Luttenbachers (a jazz/rock band) and a jazz group led by Ken Vandermark called the Unheard Music Quartet. By the mid 1990s he was performing in public on the trombone while also playing electr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Reed (musician)
Mike Reed (born May 26, 1974) is an American jazz drummer, bandleader, composer and music presenter. Career Reed was born in Bielefeld, Germany, in 1974, but raised in Evanston, Illinois north of Chicago. He returned to Chicago in the 1990s after majoring in English and psychology at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He played with David Boykin Expanse, Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra, and the Josh Berman Quartet. He leads the quintet Loose Assembly and the quartet People, Places & Things, with whom he recorded several albums on the 482 Music label. In 2000 he and cornetist Josh Berman started the Sunday Transmission music series at the Hungry Brain bar in Chicago in 2000. He helped start Downtown Sound music series, a free weekly concert program in Chicago's Millennium Park that has included indie rock, world music, and contemporary soul. He is a founding director of the Pitchfork Music Festival and joined the committee that programs the annual Chicago Jazz Festival. Sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tomeka Reid
Tomeka Reid (born 1977) is an American composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher. Reid has performed and recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, Mike Reed's Loose Assembly, and Roscoe Mitchell. She leads the Tomeka Reid Quartet, with , , and Mary Halvorson, and is co-leader of Hear In Now, a trio with and . Reid founded and, as of 2022, still runs the now-annual Chicago Jazz String Summit and was named a 2017 "Chicago Jazz Hero" by the Jazz Journalists Association. In 2019, Reid was appointed Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor at Mills College. She is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow and 2022 MacArthur Fellow. Early life and classical education Reid grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and in the 4th grade began playing cello at her elementary school in Silver Spring, Maryland. Reid attended a French immersion school, but spoke very little French; she attributes much of her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicole Mitchell (musician)
Nicole Mitchell (born 1967) is an American jazz flautist and composer who teaches jazz at the University of Virginia. She is a former chairwoman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians ( AACM). Early life and education Mitchell was born in Syracuse, New York, and moved to Anaheim, California at the age of eight. Her first instruments were piano and viola, which she started playing in fourth grade. She was classically trained in flute and played in youth orchestras as a teenager. Though she intended to major in computer science in college, she took a class in improvisation from Jimmy Cheatham at University of California, San Diego, and started busking in the streets playing jazz flute. After two years at UCSD, she transferred to Oberlin College in 1987, then moved to Chicago in 1990. Mitchell returned to school in 1993 and 1996, completing her degree at Chicago State University in 1998; she earned a master's degree from Northern Illinois University in 2000. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dirk Serries
Vidna Obmana (stylized vidnaObmana on many album covers) is a pseudonym used by Belgian composer and ambient musician Dirk Serries. The name ''Vidna Obmana'', a phrase in Serbian, literally translates to "optical illusion" and was chosen by Serries because he felt it accurately described the music. Serries created music under the Vidna Obmana pseudonym from 1984 until 2007, when he officially retired the name. Most of his current work is released under the Fear Falls Burning pseudonym. Vidna Obmana's music has often been described as anamorphic and organic. He uses the techniques of looping and shaping harmonies, minimizing the configurations to a few notes. Vidna Obmana has collaborated on several occasions with artists such as Asmus Tietchens, Brannan Lane, Capriolo Trifoglio, Diego Borotti, and Steve Roach. Some of these collaborations have become entire projects of their own, such as Continuum (collaboration with Bass Communion) and Principle of Silence (collaboration wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Lonberg-Holm
Fred Lonberg-Holm (born 1 October 1962) is an American cellist based in Chicago. He moved from New York City to Chicago in 1995. Lonberg-Holm is most identified with playing free improvisation and free jazz. He is also a composer of concert works. As a session musician and arranger, he is credited on rock, pop, and country records. As leader Lonberg-Holm has led Valentine Trio, with Jason Roebke ( bass) and Frank Rosaly (drums). This jazz trio performs original compositions as well as tunes by both jazz composers (e.g. Sun Ra) and pop songwriters (e.g. Jeff Tweedy, Syd Barrett). The group released its first album, ''Terminal Valentine'', in 2007, which was reviewed by AllAboutJazz critic Nils Jacobson. He has directed performances of his Lightbox Orchestra, an improvising ensemble with a flexible, ever-changing membership. Lonberg-Holm does not play an instrument in this group but rather conducts its non-idiomatic improvisations via the "lightbox" and by holding up handwr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lotte Anker
Lotte Anker (born 1958 Copenhagen) is a Danish jazz saxophonist, and composer. With pianist Marilyn Crispell, she serves as one of the co-leaders of the Copenhagen Art Ensemble. Musical career Anker studied music at the Copenhagen University from 1980 to 1984. In 1988, she formed a quartet with piano player Mette Petersen, (the Lotte Anker / Mette Petersen Quartet). In 1992, they added trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær. In 1995, she became a member of the free improvising trio Anker, Friis, Poulsen with Hasse Poulsen on guitar and Peter Friis Nielsen on bass. Since 1996, Anker and Ture Larsen have been co-leaders of the 12-piece orchestra Copenhagen Art Ensemble. She recorded the albums ''Triptych'', ''Live at the Loft'' and ''Floating Islands'' with pianist Craig Taborn, and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Discography * '' Beyond the Mist'' ( Stunt, 1989) * ''Being'' (Stunt, 1993) * ''Infinite Blueness'' (Av-Art, 1996) * ''Poetic Justice'' ( Dacapo, 2001) * ''Six Row Barley'' ( Ute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
