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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Chicago free improv all-stars

Jim Baker, keys& synth; Brian Sandstrom, bass; Steve Hunt, drums; Ed Wilkerson, saxes, didgeridoo, oud, Mars Williams, reeds and toys — photo by Marc PoKempner

Keyboardist and synthesizer specialist Jim Baker has led the collective quartet Extraordinary Popular Delusions playing every Monday night in obscure Chicago venues for the past 13 years. My article on EPD, which features saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (they switch off), multi-instrumentalist (bass, guitar, trumpet) Brian Sandstrom and percussionist/drummer Steve Hunt — all of whom have extensive creative music experience — was published today in the Chicago Reader — which I last wrote for in the 1980s.

Brian Sandstrom, bass and distorted guitar; Jim Baker, analog synth; Steve Hunt, drums.

Photos here by Marc PoKempner, from the free-form improv ensemble’s current regular gig, in the upstairs loft of the Beat Kitchen (they start around 9 pm, usually end by 11). No cover, no minimum (they put out a tip jazz), no limits — same as their interactive performance as part of painter Lewis Achenbach’s Jazz Occurrence at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, 6 pm. on January 24. See you there?

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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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