"Fred Lonberg-Holm (born 1962) is an American cellist based in Chicago. He relocated from New York City to Chicago in 1995. Lonberg-Holm is most identified with playing free improvisation and free jazz. He is also a composer of concert works. As a session musician and arranger, he is credited on many rock, pop, and country records. Lonberg-Holm currently leads the Valentine Trio, with Jason Roebke (bass) and Frank Rosaly (drums). This jazz trio performs original compositions as well as tunes by both jazz composers (e.g. Sun Ra) and pop songwriters (e.g. Jeff Tweedy, Syd Barrett). The group released its first album Terminal Valentine, in 2007, which was reviewed by AllAboutJazz critic Nils Jacobson.

He coordinates and directs performances of his Lightbox Orchestra, an improvising ensemble with a flexible, ever-changing membership. Lonberg-Holm does not play an instrument in this group, but rather conducts its non-idiomatic improvisations via the "lightbox" and by holding up handwritten signs. The lightbox contains a light bulb for each musician which Lonberg-Holm switches on or off to suggest when they should play. Collective groups of which Lonberg-Holm is a member include Terminal 4 who released an album, in 2003, called When I'm Falling that received four and a half stars, and AMG Album Pick by Allmusic, and it was reviewed by Allmusic's Joslyn Layne, The Boxhead Ensemble, Pillow, the Lonberg-Holm/Kessler/Zerang trio (with Kent Kessler and Michael Zerang), and the Dörner/Lonberg-Holm duo (with Axel Dörner).

Among groups led by other people, he is a member of the Vandermark 5, the Joe McPhee Trio, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Keefe Jackson's Fast Citizens, and Ken Vandermark's Territory Band. When he lived in New York, Lonberg-Holm frequently collaborated with the rock group God Is My Co-Pilot pianist and composer Anthony Coleman as well as multi-instrumentalist Paul Duncan of Warm Ghost. In Chicago, he has worked with Jim O'Rourke, Bobby Conn (on "Llovessonngs" [1999] and "The Golden Age" [2001]), The Flying Luttenbachers, Lake Of Dracula, Wilco, Rivulets, Mats Gustafsson, Sten Sandell, Jaap Blonk, John Butcher, and a great many others.

Lonberg-Holm's concert works have been premiered by William Winant, Carrie Biolo, the Austin New Music Co-Op, Subtropics Ensemble, Duo Atypica, the Schanzer/Speach Duo, New Winds, Paul Hoskin, Kevin Norton, the E.S.P. Ensemble, and others. His scores for dance have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance Theater Workshop as well as many other venues. He is a former composition student of Anthony Braxton and Morton Feldman. He performed improvised music in the role of a troubled composer who finds inspiration in the love of a couple he spots on the street in a short film for the Playboy channel."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Lonberg-Holm)
9/27/2023

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"Ab Baars (Magrette, 1955): Dutch musician-composer and bandleader Ab Baars performs on tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. He focuses mainly on Ab Baars Solo, Baars-Buis, Fish Scale Sunrise, Perch Hen Brock & Rain, Ab Baars Trio, Duo Baars-Henneman and the ICP Orchestra.

In reviews Baars' music has been characterized as joyfully obstinate, but surely appealing and as colourful as it is astonishing. It embodies the best typically Dutch improvised music has to offer. Although he seldomly uses recognizable song forms or ongoing swing rhythms, the music stays catchy, because it is stripped to the essence and clearly presented.

Ab Baars has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music performed in hundreds of concerts throughout Europe, North America, Brasil, Japan and Australia in the past 30 years.

Some highlights:
▪ Ab Baars Trio tour Netherlands (2013 - 2014) recorded on Slate Blue (Wig 24, 2014)
▪ Duo Baars-Henneman Autumn Songs USA Tour (2012) recorded on Autumn Songs (Wig 22, 2013)
▪ Ab Baars Trio & New York Guests Fay Victor, Vincent Chancey and Dutch poet Anneke Brassinga in Invisible Blow (2011) recorded on Invisible Blow (Wig 23, 2014)
▪ Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark (2007 and 2009), recorded on Goofy June Bug (Wig 15, 2008)
▪ Kinda Dukish. The music of Duke Ellington (2004), recorded on Kinda Dukish (Wig 12, 2005)
▪ Ab Baars Trio plays music of Native Americans (1999), recorded on Songs (Geestgronden, 2001)
▪ Ab Baars Trio with trombonist Roswell Rudd (1996 & 98), recorded on Four (DATA Records, 2001)
▪ Ab Baars Trio plays the music of John Carter, recorded on A Free Step (Geestgronden, 1999)
▪ Ab Baars Trio in collaboration with the Nieuw Ensemble, shakuhachi player Yoshikazu Iwamoto and conductor Butch Morris at the Festival Improvisations/Improvisations (1996)
▪ Ab Baars Trio with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (1995)

Influenced by the American saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, whom he worked with in 1986, and by his participation in the Monk Project (performed by the Instant Composers Pool, directed by Misha Mengelberg), Baars adopted a very personal style, or 'ab music' as Misha Mengelberg calls it.

At the age of 15, Ab Baars began playing the saxophone in the Philips Marching Band and other local bands in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. From 1976 to 1981, he studied saxophone with Leo van Oostrom at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. He was granted a scholarship by the Dutch Ministry of Culture in 1989 to study with clarinettist-composer John Carter in Los Angeles. That same year Baars was presented with the prestigious Boy Edgar Award. In 2005, Baars set out playing the shakuhachi (a Japanese end-blown bamboo flute) and took lessons with Kees Kort, Christopher Blasdel and Takeo Yamashiro.

So far, Ab Baars has worked with improvisers such as Han Bennink, Jaap Blonk, Alberto Braida, Anthony Braxton, John Carter, The Ex, Cor Fuhler, Ben Goldberg, Tristan Honsinger, François Houle, George Lewis, Michael Moore, Sunny Murray, Sonic Youth, Fabrizio Spera, Cecil Taylor, Roger Turner, Ken Vandermark, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, Michiyo Yagi, poets H.C. ten Berge and Diane Régimbald, dancers Beppie Blankert, Hisako Horikawa, Masako Noguchi and Katie Duck's Magpie Company."

-Wig (http://stichtingwig.com/abBaars/AbBaars.html)
9/27/2023

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"Kent Kessler (born January 28, 1957 in Crawfordsville, Indiana) is an American jazz double-bassist, best known for his work in the Chicago avant-garde jazz scene.

Kessler, born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, grew up on Cape Cod and began playing trombone at age ten. He and his family moved to Chicago when he was 13, and a few years later Kessler became intensely interested in jazz. While attending St. Mary Center for Learning High School, he began taking lessons from Kestutis Stanciauskas (Streetdancer) in electric bass and jazz theory in the middle of the 1970s. In 1977 he formed the ensemble Neutrino Orchestra with percussionist Michael Zerang and guitarists Dan Scanlan and Norbert Funk. He spent three months in Brazil during 1980-81 and spent time studying intermittently at Roosevelt University in Chicago; he and Zerang also formed a group called Musica Menta, which played regularly at Link's Hall.

Kessler began playing double bass in the 1980s and it became his primary instrument when he was asked in 1985 to join the NRG Ensemble, who toured Europe and recorded for ECM Records under the leadership of Hal Russell until his death in 1992. In 1991, he gigged with Zerang and guitarist Chris DeChiara; in need of a hornist, they called Ken Vandermark, who had been considering leaving the Chicago scene. Kessler and Vandermark would go on to collaborate extensively on free jazz and improvisational projects such as the Vandermark 5, the DKV Trio and the Steelwool Trio. In the 1990s and afterwards he worked with Chicago musicians such as Hamid Drake, Fred Anderson, and Joe McPhee, and also with European musicians such as Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, Misha Mengelberg, and Luc Houtkamp.

In 2003, Kessler released a solo album, Bull Fiddle, on Okka Disk. Kessler performs alone on nine of the twelve tracks, and with Michael Zerang on three."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Kessler)
9/27/2023

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"Wilbert de Joode (1955) is a veritable research scientist of bass pizzicato and bowing techniques. A self-taught musician, he has been playing the double-bass since 1982. He began working in groups that improvised within a jazz framework. Other musicians were soon drawn to his idiosyncratic style, and in the mid 80s he played in groups led by Vera Vingerhoeds, Armando Cairo and Ig Henneman where he further developed his improvisation skills. He came into contact with such musicians as J.C.Tans, Rinus Groeneveld, Michiel Braam, Han Bennink, Han Buhrs (Schismatics) and Ab Baars.

De Joode is currently one of the most active bass players on the European improvised music circuit. His individual style and musicality transforms the double bass into an equal partner in the most varied ensembles. A personal tone colour, exploration of the outer registers, quirky improvisations and the use of gut strings contribute to an instantly recognizable and intriguing sound.

The seventeen improvised pieces on his first solo cd Olo (distributed by ToonDist) show how rich and complex his sound on the double bass is."

-DOEK Festival Website (http://www.doek.org/project/wilbert-de-joode/)
9/27/2023

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"Hamid Drake (born August 3, 1955) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. He lives in Chicago, IL but spends a great deal of time touring worldwide. By the close of the 1990s, Hamid Drake was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and avant improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influence, in addition to using the standard trap set, Drake has collaborated extensively with top free-jazz improvisers. Drake also has performed world music; by the late 70s, he was a member of Foday Musa Suso's Mandingo Griot Society and has played reggae throughout his career.

Drake has worked with trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Fred Anderson, Archie Shepp and David Murray and bassists Reggie Workman and William Parker (in a large number of lineups)

He studied drums extensively, including eastern and Caribbean styles. He frequently plays without sticks; using his hands to develop subtle commanding undertones. His tabla playing is notable for his subtlety and flair. Drake's questing nature and his interest in Caribbean percussion led to a deep involvement with reggae."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Drake)
9/27/2023

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"Martin Van Duynhoven is a Dutch jazz drummer and percussionist, born 13 June 1942 in Boxmeer, The Netherlands. He was classically educated in the early 60's. He has been a member of Ab Baars Quartet, Ab Baars Trio, Ab Baars Trio & Guests, Ab Baars Trio & NY Guests, Boy Edgar Big Band, Chris Abelen Quartet, Contraband (13), Dick van der Capellen Trio, Frank Van Bommel Quartet, Frank Van Bommel Quintet, Group 1850, Hans Dulfer And Ritmo Natural, Harry Verbeke 4 Tet, Martin Van Duynhoven Percussion Ensemble, Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, Nedley Elstak Trio, Nico Bunink Kwintet, Oost-West Percussie Groep, Paradise Regained Orchestra, Soesja Citroen Band, Soesja Citroen Sextet, The Theo Loevendie Consort, Theo Loevendie Quartet, Theo Loevendie Quintet."

-Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/546259-Martin-Van-Duynhoven)
9/27/2023

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"Misha Mengelberg (5 June 1935 - 3 March 2017) was a Dutch jazz pianist and composer. A prominent figure in post-WWII European Jazz, Megelberg is known for his forays into free improvisation, for bringing humor into his music, and as a leading interpreter of songs by fellow pianists Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols.

Mengelberg was born in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, the son of the Dutch conductor Karel Mengelberg (born Karel Willem Joseph Mengelberg; 18 July 1902, Utrecht - 11 July 1984, Amsterdam) and grand-nephew of conductor Willem Mengelberg. Karel Mengelberg was a Dutch composer and conductor, who worked in Berlin, Barcelona, Kiev and Amsterdam. A notable work of his was 'Catalunya Renaixent', written for the Banda Municipal of Barcelona in 1934.

Misha's family moved back to the Netherlands in the late 1930s and he began learning the piano at age five. Mengelberg briefly studied architecture before entering the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he studied music from 1958-64. While there he won the first prize at a jazz festival in Loosdrecht and became associated with Fluxus. His early influences included Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and John Cage, whom he heard lecture at Darmstadt.

Mengelberg won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1961. Among his first recordings was among Eric Dolphy's last, Last Date (1964). Also on that record was the drummer Han Bennink, and the two of them, together with saxophonist Piet Noordijk, formed a quartet which had a number of different bassists, and which played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. In 1967 he co-founded the Instant Composers Pool, an organisation which promoted avant garde Dutch jazz performances and recordings, with Bennink and Willem Breuker. He was co-founder of STEIM in Amsterdam in 1969.

Mengelberg played with a large variety of musicians. He often performed in a duo with fellow Dutchman Bennink, with other collaborators including Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, and (on the flip side of a live recording with Dolphy) his pet parrot. He was also one of the earliest exponents of the work of the once-neglected pianist Herbie Nichols.

He also wrote music for others to perform (generally leaving some room for improvisation) and oversaw a number of music theatre productions, which usually included a large element of absurdist humour. A 2006 DVD release, Afijn (ICP/Data), is a primer on Mengelberg's life and work, containing an 80-minute documentary and additional concert footage.[citation needed]

Mengelberg died in Amsterdam on 3 March 2017, aged 81, from undisclosed causes."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misha_Mengelberg)
9/27/2023

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"Fred Anderson (March 22, 1929 - June 24, 2010) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who was based in Chicago, Illinois. Anderson's playing was rooted in the swing music and hard bop idioms, but he also incorporated innovations from free jazz. Anderson was also noted for having mentored numerous young musicians. Critic Ben Ratliff called him "a father figure of experimental jazz in Chicago". Writer John Corbett referred to him as "scene caretaker, underground booster, indefatigable cultural worker, quiet force for good." In 2001, author John Litweiler called Anderson "the finest tenor saxophonist in free jazz/underground jazz/outside jazz today."

Anderson was born in Monroe, Louisiana. When he was ten, his parents separated, and he moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he initially lived with his mother and aunt in a one-room apartment. When Anderson was a teenager, a friend introduced him to the music of Charlie Parker, and he soon decided he wanted to play saxophone, purchasing his first instrument for $45. He listened to Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, and Illinois Jacquet, all of whom would influence his playing. He also heard Young and Parker in concert on multiple occasions. Unlike many musicians at the time, Anderson did not play with dance bands or school ensembles, and instead focused on practicing, taking private lessons, and studying music theory at the Roy Knapp Conservatory in Chicago, all the while supporting his family by working as a waiter. He also began making an effort to develop a personal sound on his instrument, with the goal of combining Ammons' "big sound" with Parker's speed. Regarding Parker's influence, Anderson stated: "I tried to figure out how he was doing certain things - not so much the notes that he was playing. He had a unique way about placing things." He also recalled: "Charlie Parker was one of the freest musicians I had ever heard... [his] technique was superb. Each one of the notes would just come out and hit you... His music was so involved. It was hard. It's still hard." At around this time, he began to develop a series of exercises which he incorporated into his daily practice routine, and which eventually became a book titled "Exercises for the Creative Musician".

In the early 1960s, Anderson began listening to and studying the music of Ornette Coleman, and immediately related Coleman's playing to that of Charlie Parker. He recalled: "When I heard Ornette Coleman back in those days... I knew exactly what he was doing. It wasn't strange to me. I knew exactly where he was coming from." At around this time, influenced by Coleman, he formed a piano-less band with trumpeter Bill Brimfield, with whom he had been practicing since 1957, bassist Bill Fletcher, and drummer Vernon Thomas, playing a mixture of bebop standards and Anderson originals. In 1963, Anderson began participating in weekly jam sessions in Chicago, where he met Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, and Richard Abrams, with whom he began discussing the idea of forming a new organization to promote their music. In 1965, the AACM was born, with Anderson as one of its earliest members. (As per George E. Lewis, Anderson was not a charter member, but attended the early meetings and got in on the ground floor.) On August 16, 1965, Anderson played on the first AACM event as part of the Joseph Jarman Quintet, which also featured Brimfield as well as bassist Charles Clark and drummer Arthur Reed. In late 1966, Anderson participated in the recording of Jarman's debut album, Song For, and in 1968, he played on Jarman's As If It Were the Seasons. Both albums were released on the Delmark label.

In the late 1960s, when many of his AACM colleagues moved to Europe, Anderson chose to remain behind, supporting his wife and three young children by working at a rug company, practicing his instrument, and heading the AACM's Evanston chapter with Brimfield. Around 1972 he formed the Fred Anderson Sextet, with trombonist George E. Lewis, reedist Douglas Ewart, bassist Felix Blackmon, drummer Hamid Drake (then known as Hank), and vocalist Iqua Colson, all of whom were much younger than Anderson. Paul Steinbeck of the University of Chicago wrote: "These performers were a full generation younger than Anderson and comparatively inexperienced, yet he granted them considerable creative agency as members of his band... The expressive multiplicity and non-hierarchic social structure promoted by Anderson made his 1970s band resemble a 'mutuality' - a special kind of collective enterprise that requires its members to achieve a 'high degree of autonomy' while maintaining a sense of 'full partner[ship]'... Anderson's inclusiveness and ardent support of his collaborators' creative development performed a crucial leveling function, partially erasing generational boundaries and also re-focusing the group on their autonomous, continually unfolding expressive aims." George E. Lewis recalled: "Fred let you play as long as you wanted, and you could try out anything."

In February 1977, Anderson and Brimfield visited Europe, where they recorded Accents with the Austrian trio Neighbours (pianist Dieter Glawischnig, bassist Ewald Oberleitner, and drummer Joe Preininger). In May of that year, Anderson opened a venue in Chicago that he named the Birdhouse, named after Charlie Parker. Unfortunately, Anderson encountered resistance and harassment from officials and people in the neighborhood, who were suspicious of his motives, and he ended up closing the club a year later. In 1978, Anderson visited Europe again with a quintet, playing at the Moers festival, where he recorded Another Place, his first album as a leader. In 1979, he recorded Dark Day with Brimfield, bassist Steven Palmore, and drummer Hamid Drake, and The Missing Link with bassist Larry Hayrod, Drake, and percussionist Adam Rudolph. (The second album was not released until 1984.)

In 1982, Anderson took over ownership of a bar in Chicago called the Velvet Lounge, and transformed it into a center for the city's jazz and experimental music scenes, hosting Sunday jam sessions and numerous concerts. The club expanded and relocated in the summer of 2006. According to John Fordham, "The venue became a spiritual home to many musicians who shared the uncommercial player's perennial need for an intimate space run by, and for, the people who cared." Regarding the environment at the Velvet Lounge, Paul Steinbeck wrote, "Under Anderson's supervision, participating musicians were encouraged to develop performance methodologies that were 'contributive, not competitive'... the musical and social practices that had characterized Anderson's bands since the 1960s were transmitted, in whole or in part, to a broader network of performers and listeners."

Though he remained an active performer, Anderson rarely recorded for about a decade beginning in the early 1980s. (Recordings from this sparse period include Vintage Duets with drummer Steve McCall, recorded in 1980 but not released until 1994, and The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 1, with Brimfield, Drake, and bassist Larry Hayrod, also recorded in 1980 but not released until 2000.) In 1990, however, he received the first Jazz Masters Fellowship from Arts Midwest, and by the mid-1990s, he resumed a more active recording schedule, both as a solo artist, and in collaboration with younger performers, such as pianist Marilyn Crispell (Destiny), with whom he toured in 1994, and often with familiar colleagues such as Hamid Drake and Bill Brimfield. In 1999, Anderson and Von Freeman appeared as soloists with a 30-piece orchestra in a performance of a work composed and conducted by Edward Wilkerson at the Chicago Jazz Festival. In 2002, the festival honored Anderson, and he appeared as a soloist with the NOW Orchestra, conducted by George E. Lewis, and featuring Bill Brimfield and Roscoe Mitchell. Meanwhile, the Velvet Lounge became internationally known, attracting artists from around the world. In 2005, the Vision Festival presented Fred Anderson Day in his honor, and in 2009, the Velvet Lounge hosted an 80th-birthday celebration featuring four sets of music from some of Chicago's top jazz artists. He continued to record and tour throughout the 2000s, and continued mentoring countless younger musicians, including Harrison Bankhead, Nicole Mitchell, and Dee Alexander, stating "My role in the city is to keep young musicians playing. I will always have a place for them to play." He died on June 24, 2010, at the age of 81, and was survived by two sons, Michael and Eugene (a third son, Kevin, predeceased him), as well as five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was scheduled to perform the day he died."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Anderson_(musician))
9/27/2023

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"Born in Warwick, Rhode Island on September 22nd, 1964, Ken Vandermark began studying the tenor saxophone at the age of 16. Since graduating with a degree in Film and Communications from McGill University during the spring of 1986, his primary creative emphasis has been the exploration of contemporary music that deals directly with advanced methods of improvisation. In 1989, he moved to Chicago from Boston, and has worked continuously from the early 1990's onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America and Europe, recording in a large array of contexts, with many internationally renowned musicians (such as Fred Anderson, Ab Baars, Peter Brötzmann, Tim Daisy, Hamid Drake, Terrie Ex, Mats Gustafsson, Devin Hoff, Christof Kurzmann, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joe McPhee, Paal Nilssen-Love, Paul Lytton, Andy Moor, Joe Morris, and Nate Wooley). His current activity includes work with Made To Break, The Resonance Ensemble, Side A, Lean Left, Fire Room, the DKV Trio, and duos with Paal Nilssen-Love and Tim Daisy; in addition, he is the music director of the experimental Pop band, The Margots. More than half of each year is spent touring in Europe, North America, and Japan, and his concerts and numerous recordings have been critically acclaimed both at home and abroad. In addition to the tenor sax, he also plays the bass and Bb clarinet, and baritone saxophone. In 1999 he was awarded the MacArthur prize for music."

-Ken Vandermark Website (http://kenvandermark.com/2013/10/made-to-break-biography/)
9/27/2023

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