by Kurt Gottschalk Douglas Ewart was likely not the name most known to the thousands of people at the Chicago Jazz Festival over Labor Day, but he made one of the strongest showings of the weekend. Besides delivering a set at once ebullient and thought-provoking, he wore a vivid red marching band coat with the […]

by Nate Chinen SEM and Ostravska Banda perform Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, & Roscoe Mitchell // The Trio (Abrams/Lewis/Mitchell) “Reductio ad absurdum!” Thomas Buckner pronounced, in stentorian voice, at one point in “AACM50,” a momentous new-music concert on Wednesday night at the Bohemian National Hall. It was just one of many lines of text, […]

by Glen Roven Leonard Bernstein said, “The nineteenth century dies hard.” By that he meant his American concert-going audience would rather hear the lush, romantic music of over a hundred years ago –Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Verdi — than the angular, anguished music of the twentieth –Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Shostakovich.Personally I love 20th century music, especially Britten, […]