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Cipher (Joshua Abrams Album)
''Cipher'' is an album by double bassist and composer Joshua Abrams. It was recorded at two Chicago locations, Riverside Studios and the Empty Bottle, and was released in 2003 by Delmark Records. On the album, Abrams is joined by saxophonist and clarinetist Guillermo Gregorio, trumpeter Axel Dörner, and guitarist Jeff Parker. Reception In a review for AllMusic, Thom Jurek wrote: "the sounds here... are living and breathing encounters with what lies just beyond the solo or group interaction. Interplay enters into language, and that language into silence. Strange, mysterious, and stunningly beautiful, ''Cipher'' is a modern enigma." Derek Taylor of ''All About Jazz'' stated: "All four men are as adept at playing abstract sound patterns, as they are more conventional jazz structures... listener patience consistently pays strong dividends." '' Codas Duck Baker commented: "These diverse performers produce music that ranges from very outside group blowing... to moments of quietly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joshua Abrams (musician)
Joshua Abrams is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who plays the double bass and guimbri. Career While living in Philadelphia in the late 1980s, Abrams was a member of Square Roots, a street music group that developed into The Roots. He moved to Evanston, Illinois in 1991, and played in Chicago house bands for several years before forming Town & Country in 1998 with Ben Vida, Liz Payne, and Jim Dorling. Abrams was the house bass player at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge and for several years he played a weekly club date with Tortoise's John Herndon and Jeff Parker. He was a member of Mike Reed's Loose Assembly and Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble. In 2003, he played bass on Godspeed You! Black Emperor's album '' Yanqui U.X.O.''. He has worked as a studio musician on recordings made in Chicago, such as Jandek's ''Chicago Wednesday;'' Bonnie "Prince" Billy's '' Beware'' and albums from Chicago musicians such as Joan of Arc, David Grubbs, and Sam Prekop. In th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empty Bottle
Empty Bottle is a bar and music venue located at 1035 N. Western Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. Located on the west side of Chicago's Ukrainian Village neighborhood, the venue primarily hosts local, regional, and touring alternative music acts, but also hosts acts ranging from indie-rock, punk, metal, rock'n'roll, hip-hop, electronic, experimental, and jazz. The venue was opened by Bruce Finkelman in 1992, originally a simple neighborhood bar. In 1993 the club moved to its current location, two blocks from its original location. The venue also owns a connected restaurant next door called Bite Cafe. Empty Bottle is open 7 days a week and hosts performances every night. As of 2024, Bruce Finkelman and Craig Golden, through their firm 16” on Center, own, co-own, operate, and/or co-operate several music venues, including Empty Bottle, The Promontory, Evanston S.P.A.C.E., Sonotheque (which closed in 2009), Thalia Hall, and The Salt Shed, all in and near Chicago. Finkelman and Gol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of experimental music in its own right. Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed primarily in the U.K. as well as the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and contemporary classical music. Exponents of free improvised music include saxophonists Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, and John Zorn, composer Pauline Oliveros, trombonist George E. Lewis, guitarists Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith, bassists Damon Smith and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and the improvising groups Spontaneous Music Ensemble and AMM. Characteristics In the context of music theory, free improvisation denotes the shift from a focus on harmony and structure to other dimensions of music, su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delmark Records
Delmark Records is an independent, American jazz and blues independent record label. It was founded in 1958 as Delmar Records and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The label originated in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1953 when then owner, and founder, Bob Koester released a recording of the Windy City Six, a traditional jazz group, under the Delmar imprint. History Born in 1932 in Wichita, Kansas, Bob Koester was the son of a petroleum engineer. While in the hospital with polio when he was a child, he listened to the radio and was cheered up when he heard Eddie Condon and Benny Goodman. In his teens, he was a dedicated jazz fan who began buying old records from a Salvation Army store. At concerts in Kansas City, he heard Red Allen, Count Basie, Jimmy Rushing, Tommy Douglas, Lionel Hampton, and Jay McShann. Moving from Wichita to St. Louis to attend college, Koester began his career as a record trader in his dormitory room. Joining a local jazz club gave Koester his first taste of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillermo Gregorio
Guillermo Gregorio (born May 1, 1941, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine jazz and free improvisation clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer. Biography Gregorio was born into a musical family. He became interested in experimental music in the early 1960s, culminating in his ''Unheard Music'' project (later released on the album ''Otra Música: Tape Music, Fluxus, and the Improvisation in Buenos Aires 1963–1970''). In addition to his musical work, Gregorio also worked as a professor of architecture and as an author on classical and modern music avant-garde forms. Gregorio also participated in the then Fluxus activities of the Argentine performance groups Movimiento Música Mús and other experimental groups in Buenos Aires and La Plata. In the mid-1980s Gregorio left Buenos Aires and moved to Europe, where he worked in Vienna and worked with Franz Koglmann; later he relocated to Chicago. Around early 2016, he moved from Chicago to New York City, where he lives and works today. In 2001 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axel Dörner
Axel Dörner (born 26 April 1964 in Cologne, Germany) is a German trumpeter, pianist, and composer. Biography Dörner studied piano in the Dutch town Arnhem (1988–89) and at the Cologne University of Music, Music Academy in Cologne (1989–1996). From 1991 he studied trumpet with Malte Burba, and during his studies he collaborated with trumpeter Bruno Light as the Street Fighters Duo. The duo expanded to form the Street Fighters Quartet and the Street Fighters Double Quartet, with members including Matthias Schubert, Bruno Leicht, and Claudio Puntin. He formed the Axel Dörner Quartet with Frank Gratkowski, Hans Schneider, and Martin Blume, and played with saxophonist Matthias Petzold on the albums ''Lifelines'' and ''Psalmen Und Lobgesänge''. Dörner has lived in Berlin since 1994 and is an integral part of the Berlin scene of new improvisational and experimental music. Besides playing solo and in his trio TOOT (with Phil Minton and Thomas Lehn), he has played with artists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeff Parker (musician)
Jeff Parker (born April 4, 1967) is an American guitarist and composer based in Los Angeles. Born in Connecticut and raised in Hampton, Virginia, Parker is best known as an experimental musician, working with jazz, electronic, rock, and improvisational groups. Parker studied at Berklee College of Music and then moved to Chicago in 1991. Also a multi-instrumentalist, Parker has been a member of the post-rock group Tortoise since 1996, and was a founding member of Isotope 217 and the Chicago Underground Trio in the 1990s and early 2000s. He is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians ( AACM) and has worked with George Lewis, Ernest Dawkins, Brian Blade, Joshua Redman, Fred Anderson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Joey DeFrancesco, Smog (aka Bill Callahan), Carmen Lundy and Jason Moran. A prolific sideman, he has also released seven albums as a solo artist: ''Like-Coping'', ''The Relatives'', ''Bright Light in Winter'', ''The New Breed,'' ''Slight Freedom' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Musical ensemble, bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All-Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar, and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as compact discs (CDs) replaced LP record, LPs and cassette (format), cassettes as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Hull – On The Web
Tom Hull is an American music critic, web designer, and former software developer. Hull began writing criticism for ''The Village Voice'' in the mid 1970s under the mentorship of its music editor Robert Christgau, but left the field to pursue a career in software design and engineering during the 1980s and 1990s, which earned him the majority of his life's income. In the 2000s, he returned to music reviewing and wrote a jazz column for ''The Village Voice'' in the manner of Christgau's "Consumer Guide", alongside contributions to ''Seattle Weekly'', '' The New Rolling Stone Album Guide'', NPR Music, and the webzine ''Static Multimedia''. Hull's jazz-focused database and blog ''Tom Hull – on the Web'' hosts his reviews and information on albums he has surveyed, as well as writings on books, politics, and movies. It shares a functional, low-graphic design with Christgau's website, which Hull also created and maintains as its webmaster. Education Hull attended Wichita State ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
All About Jazz
''All About Jazz'' is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, ''Jazz Near You'', about local concerts and events. The Jazz Journalists Association voted ''All About Jazz'' Best Website Covering Jazz for thirteen consecutive years between 2003 and 2015, when the category was retired. In 2015, Ricci said the site received a peak of 1.3 million readers per month in 2007. Another source said that the site has over 500,000 readers around the world. Ricci was born in Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ..., Pennsylvania, United States. He heard classical and jazz from his father's music coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duck Baker
Richard Royall "Duck" Baker IV (born July 30, 1949) is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist who plays in a variety of styles: jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk, and Irish and Scottish music. He has written many instruction books for guitar. Musical career His reputation rests on his work as a solo fingerstyle guitarist in multiple genres: Irish and Scottish music, American folk music, ragtime, gospel, and blues. He was born Richard Royall Baker IV on July 30, 1949, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Virginia. As a teenager he played in rock bands before becoming interested in acoustic blues and jazz. He listened to the Jazz Crusaders, Jimmy Smith, and Miles Davis, but ''Misterioso'' by Thelonious Monk got his attention most at the age of 16. He learned about ragtime from his teacher, stride pianist Buck Evans. In the early 1970s, he moved to San Francisco and performed a wide range of material, which can be heard on his debut album, '' There's Something for Everyone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
