Jazz Articles about Mike Reed

About Mike Reed

Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed: The Ritual and the Dance

Read "The Ritual and the Dance" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 24, 2021

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, ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith / Douglas Ewart / Mike Reed: Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light

Read "Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 16, 2021

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 ...

Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed: The Ritual and the Dance

Read "The Ritual and the Dance" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
January 31, 2021

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 ...

Album Review

Jeremy Cunningham: The Weather Up There

Read "The Weather Up There" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard

by Jakob Baekgaard
February 22, 2020

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 ...

Radio & Podcasts

Mike Reed's Flesh & Bone Live at BIMHUIS Amsterdam

by BIMHUIS
November 26, 2018

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 ...

Album Review

Mike Reed: Flesh & Bone

Read "Flesh & Bone" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala

by Giuseppe Segala
February 5, 2018

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 ...

Album Review

Mike Reed: Flesh & Bone

Read "Flesh & Bone" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
August 22, 2017

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 ...