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Articles by Bill Meyer
Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten revives two projects from his Chicago days
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten One measure of a musician is the caliber of the artists who play with them. Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten has played with grand masters of free jazz and improvised music, including Alexander von Schlippenbach, Joe McPhee, and David Murray, and he’s sustained lengthy relationships with peers such as Dave Rempis, Rodrigo Amado, Rob Mazurek, and Mats Gustafsson.
Multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lynn Hunsinger presents compositional, political, and intermedia work
Artists of broad interests often end up associated with just a subset of their skills. Multihyphenate artist Robbie Lynn Hunsinger is best known as a musician, and even a narrow accounting of her involvements there produces a list tall enough to give you a crick in the neck.
The Best Bang For Your Buck Events in Chicago This Weekend: October 23–25, 2026
Cheap & Easy Dead City Oddities Market, Big Marsh Women's Weekend, The Shape of Water, and More Cheap & Easy Events | Like 0 Me and who? Celebrate the season without overspending at events like Arts in the Dark 2026, Day of the Dead Market, and Dead City Oddities Market.
The Top 25 Events in Chicago This Week: October 19–25, 2026
EverOut The Stranger Portland Mercury Chicago Reader Bold Type Tickets Log In Don't miss out! Let EverOut remind you about your favorite events. Sign up or log in now. Best Things To Do Rebecca Black, Nosferatu, The Book of Mormon, and More Events | Like 0 Enter the age of the exhibitionist on Rebecca Black's new tour.
Chicago-France improvised-music exchange the Bridge taps into the city’s diverse venues for its final iteration
The Bridge has been connecting improvising musicians from France with their midwestern counterparts since 2013. Typically, the organization puts together a group of players from both places, who then tour either France or Chicago (with occasional gigs in other U.S. locales).
At 20, Hyde Park Jazz Fest Retains a Neighborhood Feel
By Bill Meyer I Oct. 6, 2026 Tomeka Reid’s In Tribute To Ellington could easily have made everyone happy by simply playing Duke’s music, but she took a more challenging route. (Photo: Marc Monaghan) If you scanned the lineup for the 20th edition of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which took place Sept. 25–26, you’d see some names worthy of top-tier festivals around the globe. But when you get up close, it proudly shows its roots as a neighborhood celebration.
Midwest free-improv trio collaborates with foundational figure Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith The breadth of Wadada Leo Smith’s activity is immense. Since his first recordings in the mid-1960s with members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser has presented his music in rigorously abstract acoustic combos, swaggering electrical ensembles, polychromatic big bands, and string quartets.
Mike Reed’s the Separatist Party creatively cross wires on the new Sing the Color Blue
Mike Reed’s Separatist Party Synesthesia occurs when stimuli picked up by one sense trigger a simultaneous response in another. The title of the new album by Mike Reed’s the Separatist Party, Sing the Color Blue, may augur a synesthetic experience, but it only hints at the crisscrossing of signals that went into its making.
Hyde Park Jazz Festival Presents its 20th Edition
By Bill Meyer I Sep. 22, 2026 A solo concert by saxophonist Joshua Redman will close the first night of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Sept. 26. (Photo: Courtesy Joshua Redman) The Hyde Park Jazz Festival will take place for the 20th time on the final weekend of September 2026. Beginning half past noon on Saturday, Sept.
The Sun Ra Arkestra brings its message of transcendence to Constellation and the Armitage County Fair
Sun Ra Arkestra Surveying the mess that the best human minds had made of the world, the bandleader, pianist, electronic musician, composer, and philosopher known as Sun Ra took a dim view of consensus reality. His outer space–themed music—which he began to present with a variably sized big band known as the Arkestra in Chicago in the mid-1950s—was a vehicle to make a case for transcending the merely possible.
The second Sound & Gravity festival offers discerning listeners a wealth of hard choices
The second iteration of Sound & Gravity will take place at eight spaces on Chicago’s north side. Its program includes nearly five dozen rock, jazz, and experimental performers from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Ethiopia. The festival is an endeavor of local club owner, event producer, composer, and drummer Mike Reed.
Jeff Kimmel & Jack Langdon’s ambient sounds contain multitudes
Music that contains surprising interactions and unusual sonorities often raises the question of whether it’s improvised or composed. But asking that question doesn’t reliably get you any closer to what’s happening. Take the music of Jeff Kimmel and Jack Langdon. The duo play a spontaneous form of minimal music with an ecosystem like a pond: It’s placid on the surface but teems with microtonal life underneath.
Drummer Lesley Mok ports their command of color and structure to a sparse electronics
Lesley Mok Lesley Mok has become an in-demand accompanist due to the compositional consciousness they bring to their drumming. Their precise deployment of pitches solidifies the unusual tunings (and consequently complex sonorities) of the Shimmer Wince combo, led by woodwind artist Anna Webber, and their command of dynamics guides the precise maneuvers of the Fire & Water Quintet as it navigates the suite-size forms of bandleader Myra Melford.
Magic Tuber Stringband enter the caution zone on their new record, Heavy Water
The titles of Magic Tuber Stringband’s records typically invoke the time or place in which they were made. The avant-folk trio wrote the 2023 album Tarantism under COVID restrictions in spring 2020, and they named it for a historic condition legendarily thought to be caused by a spider bite and cured by frenzied dancing. Their 2024 cassette, The Crozet Tunnel, is titled for the reverberant railroad tunnel where they recorded it.
Local musician Maria Elena Silva creates spaces for centuries of songs
Maria Elena Silva Maria Elena Silva plays songs in different languages, in different styles, and from different authors and eras, but the singer and guitarist’s intent is constant: to create settings for performances infused with a feeling of instant discovery. On her second LP, Dulce, released in 2023 by Astral Spirits and Big Ego, Silva alternates singing in Spanish and English, underscoring the themes of transition in her lyrics.
Longtime collaborators Stephan Crump and Eric McPherson join forces with Darius Jones in Otherlands Trio
Otherlands Trio Bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Eric McPherson are precise, creative accompanists who’ve respectively enhanced the works of avant-garde pianists Vijay Iyer and Andrew Hill. Crump is also a purposeful and individual composer; on Earth Day at Constellation, he presented Slow Water, a chamber-jazz suite that ponders the power and perseverance of the titular element. But when you put him with McPherson, they’re instant cocomposers.
The Wire Issue 508
June 2026 Subscribers: read this issue online. Subscribe to the magazine. Buy issue 508. Inside our brand new issue: On the cover: Seefeel: The pioneering post-rockers push their sound both in detail and depth on their first new full length album in 15 years. By Abi Bliss Ibrahim Alfa Jnr: The Brighton based techno pioneer takes stock after a brush with mortality. By Steph Kretowicz Asher Gamedze; The South African percussionist shuffles the vocabulary of jazz drumming.
The 12th Chicago Jazz String Summit celebrates the diversity of string-mediated improvisation
When cellist Tomeka Reid first shifted from classical to jazz as a college student in the late 90s, she didn’t know of many musicians who’d taken similar paths. In 2013 she founded the Chicago Jazz String Summit in order to honor those who’d come before her and to spotlight current and upcoming musicians who improvise on stringed instruments. The event has been held at different venues and has presented programs with varying degrees of ambition, but it’s never wavered in its mission.
Guitarist Marisa Anderson follows the global gaze of folklorist Harry Smith
Marisa Anderson In 1952, Folkways Records released the Anthology of American Folk Music, a three-volume set of double LPs that has remained profoundly influential for generations of folk enthusiasts and countercultural types. It was compiled by folklorist Harry Smith, who assembled the collection from his personal trove of 78 rpm recordings of American blues, country, and religious music.
The first Imminence Festival celebrates the diversity of the spontaneously made music presented by Elastic Arts
Spontaneous music happens in the moment, but it always has some relationship to history. For nearly 25 years, local nonprofit Elastic Arts has maintained its Improvised Music Series (IMS), which has welcomed a diverse array of talent in free improvisation, electroacoustic music, and jazz.
Drummer Tim Daisy hosts a residency of improvised and composed music that searches for shades between
Tim Daisy Tim Daisy moved here from Waukegan in 1997 and soon established himself as a go-to drummer in Chicago’s free-jazz and improvised-music scene. An energetic and interactive kit player, within five years he’d contributed to ongoing ensembles with bassist Jason Ajemian and reedists Scott Rosenberg, Aram Shelton, Dave Rempis, and Ken Vandermark. His sixth year in town, he recorded his first solo project, Relay Signals.
Acoustic guitarist Gwenifer Raymond plays sci-fi-themed fingerstyle blues at escape velocity
Gwenifer Raymond Gwenifer Raymond is an unabashed John Fahey fan. Her three studio albums affirm that she’s learned the right lessons about music and self-mythologizing from the vast and complicated discography of the pioneering American Primitive guitarist and composer.
Clarinetist James Falzone makes solo music that imagines a long-overdue better world
James Falzone Nearly a decade has passed since clarinetist James Falzone left Chicago to assume the post of professor of music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. But he keeps coming back. In recent years, most of his local performances have been by his duo Wayfaring (with bassist Katie Ernst) or his ongoing projects with drummer Tim Daisy. This month, Falzone returns to Chicago on a coast-to-coast tour supporting his solo project When Will Soon Be Then?
The Chicago Psych Fest convenes an assortment of music for the heads
Top: Glyders. Bottom (left to right): King and Gary Higgins In January 2010, the first edition of the Chicago Psych Fest invited a posse of local performers to banish the winter blues by staging a freak-out at the Hideout. Sixteen years later, the festival takes place in the same venue at the same time of year, but some things have changed.
The Frequency Festival connects a far-flung constellation of sounds
Since its inception in 2013, the Frequency Series has been hosted by north-side performance space Constellation, usually on Sunday nights. Founded and programmed by former Reader staff critic Peter Margasak, the series devotes the bulk of its programming to new classical music, but it also purports to illuminate links between new classical, free improvisation, noise, and other boundary-pushing disciplines—with the goal of bringing their audiences together.
Ascendant saxophonist Mai Sugimoto launches February residency at the Hungry Brain
Mai Sugimoto Ever since live music reemerged from COVID lockdown, alto saxophone and flutist Mai Sugimoto has become ubiquitous on Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scenes. But calling her a rising star doesn’t reflect just how long and hard she’s worked to get here. A Chicagoan since 2007, she’s worked steadily as a side person, band member, and professor at Moraine Valley Community College.
Rising musician, organizer, and engineer Ishmael Ali finally leads a band
Ishmael Ali You might have very different ideas about cellist and guitarist Ishmael Ali depending on where you’ve first heard his music. Over the past decade and change, he’s played rhythmically astute guitar with genre-fusing dance band Je’raf and used his cello to add a subtle sway to Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and flickers of gritty texture to the viscous maelstrom of stop-start beats and murky turntablism of Hearsay.
Modern Nature’s Jack Cooper gets back to basics on The Heat Warps
Modern Nature With his group Ultimate Painting, Jack Cooper made three albums of terse, tuneful jangle pop for dearly departed local label Trouble in Mind. But after that band imploded in 2018, the British singer, guitarist, and songwriter started Modern Nature. Cooper chose the name purposely to reflect the fact that his songwriting in recent years has pondered interactions between humans and the rest of the world.
Veteran Chicago cornetist Josh Berman surveys his career and his future in a monthlong residency
When Josh Berman plays the cornet, you can hear the distant beginnings of jazz and the most recent advances in radical brass technique.
Friends of the late Mars Williams resurrect his holiday songbook
Mars Williams If you ever heard him trading rippling lines and paint-stripping not-quite-notes with Peter Brötzmann or Hal Russell, you don’t need me to tell you that Mars Williams was a fire-breathing free-jazz reeds player par excellence. But he was also a showbiz kind of guy—the kind who delighted in juxtaposing woolly music with acrobats and trained dogs in his Soul Sonic Circus—and in showbiz, you milk your audience’s favorites for all they’re worth.
Chicago’s edition of the 2025 Catalytic Sound Festival converges around artist-in-residence Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori In 2012, 30 experimental and improvising musicians from America and Europe formed Catalytic Sound as a platform to sustainably sell their recordings, using a subscription model similar to membership in a food co-op. The collective has gone on to publish Web- and print-based periodicals, establish a streaming service that fairly compensates artists, operate a mail-order store, and hold festivals in cities on both sides of the Atlantic.
Natural Information Society showcase their core quartet on the new Perseverance Flow
The first thing that will catch your eye at a Natural Information Society concert most likely won’t be the seated musicians but rather the woven banners that hang behind them at every show. These works of paint and cloth, made by NIS harmonium player Lisa Alvarado, combine vividly colorful psychedelic whorls and rigid geometrical patterns in ways that vibrate sympathetically with the group’s music.
Former Chicagoan Chad Taylor returns with a new ensemble that shows new roots
It’s tempting to claim Chad Taylor as a Chicagoan. The drummer, percussionist, and educator grew up here, and his longest-running project, the Chicago Underground franchise—which can take the form of the Chicago Underground Duo, Trio, Quartet, or Orchestra, depending on how many people join Taylor and multi-instrumentalist Rob Mazurek—bears the city’s name.
Songwriter, memoirist, and resident of the world Amy Rigby returns with a new book
Amy Rigby’s latest album, last year’s Hang In There (Tapete), includes “I’m Too Old to Be So Crazy,” a song about gearing up for another go-round where she recounts the reasons a musician in her mid-60s shouldn’t tour again. She sings from plenty of experience: Rigby has been in bands since the 1970s, when she played country music in New York City punk clubs with the Last Roundup.
Sound & Gravity Presents Cutting-Edge Jazz, Experimental Music & More
By Bill Meyer I Sep. 30, 2025 Chicago is notorious for its meteorological extremes, but the gods of weather gifted the city five straight days of shirtsleeve temperatures and sunny skies during the second week of September. The setting was perfect for the inaugural edition of Sound & Gravity, which took place in a series of established and ad hoc venues situated along a walkable half-mile stretch of Belmont Avenue.
The Matthew Shipp Trio play free jazz of irreducible mystery - Chicago Reader
Matthew Shipp’s transcendental course hasn’t wavered since the New York–based pianist began recording his first album, a duet with saxophonist Rob Brown called Sonic Explorations, nearly 38 years ago. In his efforts as a leader as well as in his collaborations (with saxophonists David S. Ware and Ivo Perelman, among many others), Shipp intends his music to “intercept electro-magnetic frequencies from the mind of god and . . .
Singer-songwriter Simon Joyner assembles a multinational band to play his heaviest songs
In a songwriting career spanning three and a half decades, Simon Joyner has reliably applied unflinching verity and scrupulous craft to portrayals of characters in states of existential extremis. Both those qualities remain strong on his most recent album, last year’s Coyote Butterfly (Grapefruit), where the Omaha-based singer and guitarist deals with some very personal experiences.
Ari Brown, Joshua Abrams, and Mike Reed carry the torch of exemplary afterfest jazz - Chicago Reader
The Chicago Jazz Festival doesn’t end when Millennium Park goes quiet. Clubs around the city put on special afterfest shows, some of them more exciting than the main-stage sets. This trio—tenor saxophonist and pianist Ari Brown, bassist Joshua Abrams, and drummer Mike Reed—continues a tradition that originated at the Velvet Lounge, the club owned by tenor giant Fred Anderson.
Chicago’s Sound And Gravity Festival to Present Performers from 4 Continents
By Bill Meyer I Aug. 19, 2025 The inaugural edition of the Sound And Gravity Festival will take place between Sept. 10–14 on the North Side of Chicago, where it will take over several sites on either side of the Chicago River near Belmont Avenue.
Wheelhouse reunite after 12 years and a few life changes
The name of Wheelhouse’s second long-player, last month’s House and Home (Aerophonic), acknowledges the domestic circumstances and priorities that have shaped the band’s existence. Formed in 2005, the free-improvising trio—Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, Nate McBride on double bass, and Dave Rempis on soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones—initially rehearsed regularly in the vibraphonist’s attic, even when they had no gigs planned.
Gayageum player DoYeon Kim traverses traditions
DoYeon Kim plays gayageum, a Korean plucked zither that resembles the Chinese gǔzhēng, Japanese koto, and Vietnamese đàn tranh. It figures prominently in traditional Korean music, which Kim learned growing up in Korea. Since moving to the U.S., Kim has branched out into jazz and improvised music. She’s a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music’s contemporary improvisation department, where she encountered guitarist Joe Morris.
Rose City Band lets a little darkness into its sun-kissed sound on Sol y Sombra
The first Rose City Band LP, Summerlong, appeared at the onset of the COVID pandemic. The album’s effortlessly twangy licks and endless-highway beats were an excellent prescription for de-stressing during a very stressful time—its cosmically untroubled songs evoked an endless summer vacation of the mind.
Anthony Braxton: Hall of Fame
Interview, From the Magazine, Anthony Braxton By Bill Meyer I Jul. 17, 2025 Anthony Braxton turned 80 in June, and his productivity this year alone exceeds that of some other artists’ entire careers. So far in 2025, the bandleader, improviser, composer, educator, unwaveringly positive philosopher and player of all the saxophones from sopranino through contrabass — plus a similar range of clarinets and flutes, piano and computer — has released over 14 hours of music.
Essential New Music: Derek Monypeny / Kevin Corcoran's "Abacomancy"
Seeing, says a cliché from another century, is believing. If you saw Derek Monypeny and Kevin Corcoran perform, you’d know that one plays guitar and shahi baaja (an electric zither whose strings are depressed by typewriter keys), while the other plays drums and percussion.
Drummer Lily Finnegan infuses the new quartet Heat On with her bandmates’ generational wisdom
Heat On is a jazz quartet led by Chicago-born drummer and organizer Lily Finnegan. She returned to her hometown in 2022 after completing a master’s degree at the Berklee College of Music, and she’s been on a nonstop ascending path ever since. This is her third year cocurating the Option Series, a concert and salon that takes place in the backyard of Experimental Sound Studio on most summer Sunday afternoons.
Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith refute the logic of oppression on the new Defiant Life
Pianist and keyboardist Vijay Iyer (b. 1971) is a Harvard professor, MacArthur grant recipient, and composer whose versatile work has encompassed small jazz bands, large orchestral ensembles, and a genre-crossing collaboration with vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shahzad Ismaily. Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith (b.
Music From Mars honors the life and legacy of Mars Williams with two days of concerts
You can write thumbnail descriptions of some very talented artists with just a noun and a couple adjectives, but for the creative endeavors of Mars Williams, you’d need pages and stages. Multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, ringleader, scholar—each of those words leads to a book of stories.
Experimental cellist Lia Kohl submerges her sounds in Union Station’s Great Hall
Lia Kohl moved to town to study with Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist John Sharp, but opportunities for cross-pollination within the local arts community soon lured her into more experimental practices.
Essential New Music: Various Artists "Tsapiky! Modern Music From Southwest Madagascar"
About a month ago, producer/author Joe Boyd came to Chicago to promote his new book. And The Roots Of Rhythm is, among other things, a meditation upon the world-music market that arose in tandem with the compact disc. As has been his wont at every point in his career, Boyd got there early with his Hannibal label, whose Cuban collection paved the way for Buena Vista Social Club. During the Chicago Q&A, an audience member asked Boyd if he tried to find the “best example” of a musical style.
Arnold Dreyblatt draws maelstroms of energy from excited strings - Chicago Reader
When you visit Arnold Dreyblatt’s website, you’re confronted with a choice—artist or composer. Whichever you choose, you’ll be drawn into a world that challenges your senses. The American-born polymath, based in Berlin since 1984, has created visual works such as Memory Lost, Last Europeans?, and Inmates whose images and text manifest hidden stories or tantalize the viewer with layered texts that transcends what they could do on their own.
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