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Jeremy Cunningham: The Weather Up There
by Jakob Baekgaard
The complex landscape of human emotions is still vastly uncharted, but every true work of art adds a little piece to the puzzle. This can be done in many ways, but it is rare that an album connects emotion with complex layers of memory, interpersonal relations, politics and societal structures. Nevertheless, this is what drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham's album does. In a statement, Cunningham explains the background: “I wrote The Weather Up There to confront the ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed's Flesh & Bone Live at BIMHUIS Amsterdam
by BIMHUIS
Mike Reed's compositions for Flesh & Bone are both deeply personal and brimming with hope. They represent his expressions of feeling about social unrest, racism and resurgent nationalism. On his eponymous album, the Chicago-based musician recollects harrowing memories of a confrontation with far-right protesters on a train journey with his band through Eastern Europe. For this project, his four-piece band has been expanded to include a cornet player and a bass clarinetist. Poet and performer Marvin Tate plays an important ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed: Flesh & Bone
by Giuseppe Segala
Pur essendo basata su un'esperienza drammatica del 2009, che vide il quartetto di Mike Reed a problematico e pericoloso contatto con una manifestazione neonazista nella Repubblica Ceca, la musica contenuta in questo Flesh & Bone mantiene le caratteristiche di esuberanza ottimista ed estroversione che distinguono la produzione del batterista, in primo luogo quella pluriennale di People, Places and Things e di Loose Assembly. L'organico all'opera in questo accattivante lavoro non è altro che un ampliamento del rodato ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed: Flesh & Bone
by Troy Collins
Years in the making, Flesh & Bone was inspired by a racist incident Chicago-based drummer Mike Reed experienced in 2009. While on a European tour, Reed and his band, People, Places & Things, were caught in a neo-Nazi rally in the Czech Republic. Reed's ensemble--half black, half white--had been deliberately deceived into boarding a train bound for the small town of Prerov, where an anti-Gypsy protest was in the process of erupting into a full-blown skinhead riot. Fortunately, for Reed ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed's People, Places and Things: A New Kind of Dance
by Vic Albani
Il signor Mike Reed di Chicago continua a piacerci un sacco. Quello che ha in testa è “buono e bello." Forse la giusta componente genetica, forse l'aria chicagoana e il suo creativo carico di storia, forse la vera necessità di cercare e trovare innovazione, forse l'immaginifica predisposizione all'esplorazione. Mettetela come volete, fatto sta che l'intelligenza di questo batterista ha davvero pochi pari nel jazz moderno. La ricerca del signor Reed non sbaglia nemmeno stavolta, un altro capitolo ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed's People, Places and Things: A New Kind of Dance
by Glenn Astarita
You can always count on drummer, bandleader Mike Reed to jar your neural network on a per-album basis. Indeed, he's a propulsive force; an acute progressive jazz visionary, and a luminary in Chicago's forward-moving improvisational dynamic, while also hosting and promoting jazz/improvisation festivals in the Windy City. Otherwise, his People Places & Things unit strikes again on a A New Kind of Dance, featuring guest artists, pianist Matthew Shipp and trumpeter Marquis Hill lending their respective goods on several tracks. ...
Continue ReadingMike Reed's People, Places and Things: A New Kind of Dance
by Hrayr Attarian
As a drummer, promoter and composer Mike Reed is a standard bearer for Chicago's creative music scene. His club Constellation is a hot bed for improvisation and innovation that often defy narrow genre-isms. His unique musicianship, meanwhile, is on display on his many recordings particularly ones with his groups; People, Places and Things and Loose Assembly. The intriguing A New Kind of Dance is his tenth album as a leader and the sixth with People Places and Things. ...
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