Jazz Articles about Mauricio Takara

About Mauricio Takara

Album Review

Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra: Lightning Dreamers

Read "Lightning Dreamers" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 4, 2023

The similarities between Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra and Sun Ra's Arkestra are numerous. Both leaders travel the spaceways via the technologies available in their time, applied through dynamic rhythm and pulse. For Ra, his sound began when he was an apprentice in Fletcher Henderson's band in the 1940s, and Mazurek's 1990s work revolved around Isotope 217 and the various Chicago Underground (and later São Paulo Underground) ensembles. Both bandleaders were composers of their time, nonetheless they always create music ...

Under the Radar

A Different Drummer, Part 1: Mark Lomax II and Mauricio Takara

by Karl Ackermann
February 25, 2021

The drum is an instrument of power and presence. It is the heartbeat of music but with uncertain origins. In Africa, China, and Turkey, archeologists have found evidence to suggest that any of those regions may have been the forebearers of the beat, of the definitive expression of freedom. Data concludes that instrumental music is at least 40 thousand years old, and drumming is possibly much older. Scientists have determined that pre-human descendants have been beating a drum at repeated ...