Nicole Mitchell’s Sonic Projections | The Secret Escapades of Velvet Anderson | RougeArt Jazz

Nicole Mitchell “the Velvet Lounge was a stellar environment for the development of creative music in Chicago and Fred Anderson provided support, encouragement, and inspiration to countless musicians for generations, while garnering an international audience for the music… He was a quiet man who rarely shared his ongoing struggles with the city and with local gangsters to keep things running. ‘The Secret Escapades of Velvet Anderson’ likens Fred Anderson to a superhero, whose humble exterior masked his real-life heroic trials and tribulations beyond the public’s awareness……The album is an animated illustration to further deepen the public’s impression of a real-life hero of Chicago, who walked with us and fought for us. I wanted to make Fred smile, to think that in this animation he can be a secret agent working against forces of musical demise.” Continue reading

Joshua Abrams Quartet | Unknown Known | RogueArt Jazz

RogueArt continues its Chicago jazz love affair with Unknown Known a quartet featuring Josh Abrams on bass, David Boykin on tenor sax, Jason Adasiewicz on vibes, and Frank Rosaly on drums. In many ways, Unknown Known sticks to those Chicago roots: even it its wilder flights, it always has a foot planted in composition and structure. It’s jazz that comes up under the tutelage of the AACM, which constantly pushed boundaries without ever entirely dispensing with them. Continue reading

Roscoe Mitchell | Nicole Mitchell | Black Earth Ensemble| Three Compositions | Live at Sant’Anna Arresi | RogueArt Jazz

Despite the compositions’ respective demands Nicole Mitchell and Black Earth Ensemble fully and vividly represented Roscoe Mitchell’s varied means of creating chemistry between written and improvised materials. At every turn in the program, they played with a palpable sense of familiarity and ease with the composer’s vernacular and methods. They sounded like they’ve been playing this music every night for a long time. — Bill Shoemaker, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading

Nicole Mitchell’s Sonic Projections | Emerald Hills | RogueArt Jazz

…The writing, or rather the musical cards drawn up by Nicole Mitchell for Sonic Projections carefully and continuously handle many openings and many transitions. …It is fascinating to hear each musician circulating freely in the space of each piece, following the internal logic of the proposed forms and spacing them out, bringing in other forms inside and round about – stretching and projecting the meaning, as if to respect the opulence of things with their doubles. Each musician is himself a space and a passing place. Such is David Boykin on Wishes, leaning against the other three and giving out one of his enigmatic rewound solos; such is the transformational duo between Craig Taborn and Chad Taylor on the second half of Emerald Hills, passing completely as the interventions or non-interventions of the saxophonist and the flutist go by. …And if a volcano can project, on demand, lava, sulfur, cinders or scoria, this music projects vision and nourishment. « That’s what I love about music – the unlimited possibilities – and always restless to try something else. » — Alexandre Pierrepont, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading

Nicole Mitchell & an_ARCHE NewMusic Ensemble | Arc of O | RogueArt Jazz

In the vibrant, searching solos of tenor saxophonist David Boykin, multiple-reed player Mwata Bowden, violinist Renee Baker, and Mitchell herself, we encounter a bright, buoyant sense of wonder. A breathless “oh!” set against the backdrop of her majestic, brilliantly textured themes. “We recognize the symbol of the ‘arc’ in the branches of trees, the shape of the sky, the passageways of thoughts moving through our brain, and the rivers and streams carved through sand and rock by water.” Mitchell’s is a deeply organic music, playful and joyous and wondrous, but also full of sophisticated layers of emotional complexity, a spectrum of human feeling, the same range succinctly captured in the simple exclamation: “Oh.” Board the arc, feel the curve, enjoy the ride. — John Corbett, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading