Home » Jazz Articles » Exploding Star Orchestra
Jazz Articles about Exploding Star Orchestra
About Exploding Star Orchestra
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
Related Articles | Concerts | Albums | Photos | Similar ToExploding Star Orchestra: Stars Have Shapes
by Nic Jones
This release by the Exploding Star Orchestra is one of those rare examples of a present day unit able to travel to other places. Under the direction of cornet player and composer Rob Mazurek they've come up with a program of music which incorporates advances outside of the jazz tradition even while it strikes an extraordinary balance between established precedents and developments still in the process of fruition. Thus the collective voices on Ascension Ghost Impression #2" ...
read moreExploding Star Orchestra: Stars Have Shapes
by Troy Collins
Stars Have Shapes is dedicated to the memory of recently deceased seminal free jazz innovators Fred Anderson and Bill Dixon, both of whom played with cornetist Rob Mazurek's all-star ensemble on separate occasions, including the magnificent summit meeting Bill Dixon With Exploding Star Orchestra (Thrill Jockey, 2008). Featuring a rotating cast of renowned Chicago improvisers, the Exploding Star Orchestra has become a mainstay in the Windy City's jazz scene and a significant part of Mazurek's growing discography.Sequenced like ...
read moreExploding Star Orchestra: We Are All From Somewhere Else
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
This record bristles with the hubris of an artist who ignores conventional notions of prevailing styles, blithely imposes his own aesthetic vision, and achieves a rousing artistic success in the end. That artist is Chicago-turned-São Paulo cornetist Rob Mazurek, who composed and conducted this performance.This record also bristles with the sound of electric eels. That's not a clumsy metaphor: I mean, literally, that Mazurek recorded eels in a special tank at a research laboratory in Brazil (two species, ...
read moreExploding Star Orchestra: We Are All From Somewhere Else
by Troy Collins
Working from a commission by the Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute to assemble a group representing Chicago's contemporary avant-garde, cornetist/composer Rob Mazurek's newest venture, the Exploding Star Orchestra, has long since eclipsed its provisional origins. Conceptualized and composed between Brazil, France and the States, We Are All From Somewhere Else is as ambitious in scope as it is in execution.
Mazurek's recent music sounds partially inspired by his new home in São Paulo, where he lives ...
read more