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Sound & Gravity: Chicago's New Home For Poignant Creative Music
by Hrayr Attarian
The inaugural 2025 edition of the ambitious Sound & Gravity Festival took place from September 10th through September 14th at seven different venues on Chicago's Northwest Side. Over 50 musicians, from several countries, performed works spanning genres from contemporary Western classical to jazz, experimental music, and indie rock. The not-for-profit Constellation Performing Arts, which drummer Mike Reed founded in 2013, organized this five-day event. The music was very much in the eclectic style presented at Constellation Chicago over the past ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed / The Separatist Party: A Low Frequency Nightmare
by John Chacona
In 2021, the Chicago instrumental drone trio Bitchin Bajas dropped Switched on Ra (Drag City), a collection of Sun Ra covers for synthesizers. Drummer, bandleader and scenemaker Mike Reed probably heard the cassette-only release and he almost certainly heard the band's October 2021 performance of that material at his Hungry Brain venue. They must have made an impression on Reed who brought the Bajas into the studio three months later to record The Separatist Party (Astral Spirits/We Jazz, 2023). It's ...
Continue ReadingArtifacts: Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell, Mike Reed: …and then there’s this
by John Sharpe
For the follow up to the excellent debut Artifacts (482 Music, 2015), the stellar threesome of cellist Tomeka Reid, flautist Nicole Mitchell, and drummer Mike Reed waxes another outstanding album, but one which differs in two respects. Firstly this time out the emphasis is on the compositional smarts of the crew rather than a celebration of their forebears in Chicago's esteemed AACM. Secondly, as Mitchell elucidates, this collection is also more focused on the groove. But neither is a dramatic ...
Continue ReadingArtifacts: Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell, Mike Reed: …and then there’s this
by Mark Corroto
Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians or AACM, formed in 1965, adopted the maxim “ancient to the future." The future of which they spoke, in the hands of the next generation heard here, is indeed secure. The trio Artifacts comprises the gifted successors to the AACM, cellist Tomeka Reid, flutist Nicole Mitchell, and drummer Mike Reed. ...and then there's this is the trio's second release and it follows the self-titled debut from 482 Music in 2015. Where that ...
Continue ReadingRoscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed: The Ritual and the Dance
by John Sharpe
Though reedman Roscoe Mitchell has appeared as a guest with drummer Mike Reed's Loose Assembly outfit, captured on Empathetic Parts (482 Music, 2010), this compelling set unfurls firmly on Mitchell's improvisatory turf. On The Ritual And The Dance the representatives of two generations of Chicago's AACM combine in a single 36-minute outpouring recorded in Antwerp in 2015, likely during dates to promote an earlier duet In Pursuit Of Magic (482 Music, 2014). It begins with Mitchell's coiled squeaks, ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith / Douglas Ewart / Mike Reed: Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light
by John Sharpe
Three significant forces spanning two generations of the forward-thinking Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians meet in a poised recital on Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light. Although recorded in 2015 at drummer Mike Reed's Constellation arts space in Chicago, the concert's genesis lies some five years earlier and 700 miles to the east. When Reed's band People, Places & Things played the 2010 Vision Festival in NYC on the same evening as Wadada Leo Smith, the ...
Continue ReadingRoscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed: The Ritual and the Dance
by Mark Corroto
Seventeen minutes into this thirty-seven minute performance from Roscoe Mitchell and Mike Reed, the saxophonist pauses, removing the soprano from his lips. At that moment, it is clear what an enormous effort the septuagenarian was making. His breath control and lung volume might be matched only by two of his contemporaries, Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann. But then, you might not be surprised by the saxophonist's attack as he has been at this for half a century. This ...
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