made in chicago

Album: Made in Chicago
Artist:   Jack DeJohnette
Release Date: March 2015
Label:    ECM

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Is there a more gifted, all round musician, composer and long-established player with such a comprehensive list of jazz greats than drummer, pianist and composer Jack DeJohnette? He’s played everything from R&B to free jazz with many great names, notably Charles Lloyd and Keith Jarrett. Moving from Chicago to New York in 1964 he gigged with Coltrane, Monk, Bill Evans and many others. He played drums on Miles Davis’s seminal album Bitches Brew.

This new release was recorded in August 2013 at the Chicago Jazz Festival, as DeJohnette turned 71. He’s used Chicagoans he has known for long periods: the two reeds players Henry Threadgill, and Roscoe Mitchell were his college classmates. Pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, aged 82 was the senior of the Chicago quintet, and bassist Larry Gray in his late fifties, the youngest.

The concert of six lengthy, experimental compositions opens with Mitchell’s 17 minute piece Chant, a wildly improvised work growing out of a reiterative four note theme of increasing dissonance. It builds into free jazz ensemble and solos – notably Threadgill’s raw-toned alto, Abrams wide-ranging abstract piano, and DeJohnette’s powerhouse drum work accompanied by fast, raw excursions from Mitchell’s soprano sax.
DeJohnette’s drumming is extraordinary throughout with his explosive solo of varied tonalities on Jack 5 especially impressive. Museum of Time is the most lyrical number where Abrams’s piano initially leads before the two horns work towards abstraction. Threadgill plays bass flute paired with Mitchell’s wooden bass recorder on This as Gray’s cello introduces a mystical atmosphere.

This is complex, often abstract music, played by accomplished pioneers of the genre.

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For just over 24 years I have been a freelance writer, publishing in that time a wide variety of genres: news items, live concert reviews, travel articles, features, personality profiles, and CD and book reviews. I have written for various in-flight magazines, The Adelaide Review, The Republican, The Bulletin, The Australian, The Advertiser, The Melbourne Herald Sun and several regional newspapers. In 1994 I won a national travel-writing prize sponsored by The Australian newspaper, which led to my writing regularly for that paper. Since 2003 I have been jazz critic for The Advertiser and The Australian newspapers, on average contributing weekly to each paper. In 2005 I won a national Jazz Writing Competition sponsored by the Wangaratta Jazz Festival.

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