Constellation is a performing arts nightclub in Chicago, Illinois, "with an emphasis on forward-thinking practices particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music."
Constellation was founded in 2013 by Mike Reed, a Chicago-based drummer and composer. Reed was originally Constellation's for-profit (nominally) owner and then, from 2018 through at least 2021, its nonprofit organization president. [1] [2] [3]
Constellation has replaced, and expanded upon, the now-closed Velvet Lounge as a hub of avant garde jazz and improvised music in Chicago. Musicians who have played at Constellation include Fred Hersch, Bobby Broom, Ari Brown, Josh Berman, [4] and many others.
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His pioneering works often abandoned the harmony-based composition, tonality, chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms. Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach to improvisation, rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing. AllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud."
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, Grammy nominated Violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.
Henry Threadgill is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. He came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles rooted in jazz but with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating other genres of music. He has performed and recorded with several ensembles: Air, Aggregation Orb, Make a Move, the seven-piece Henry Threadgill Sextett, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, and Zooid.
The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran. The AACM is devoted "to nurturing, performing, and recording serious, original music," according to its charter. It supports and encourages jazz performers, composers and educators. Although founded in the jazz tradition, the group's outreach and influence has, according to Larry Blumenfeld, "touched nearly all corners of modern music."
Leroy Jenkins was an American composer and violinist/violist.
Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."
The Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) is a private music conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio. The school was founded in 1920 by a group of supporters led by Martha Bell (Mrs. Franklyn B.) Sanders and Mary Hutchens (Mrs. Joseph T.) Smith, with Ernest Bloch serving as its first director. CIM enrolls 325 students in the conservatory and approximately 1,500 students in the preparatory and continuing education programs. There are typically about 100 openings per year for which 1,000-1,200 prospective students apply.
Matana Roberts is an American sound experimentalist, visual artist, jazz saxophonist and clarinetist, composer and improviser based in New York City. They have previously been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and a member of the B.R.C. Black Rock Coalition.
The Velvet Lounge was a nightclub in the South Loop of Chicago. It started as a jazz club and was called the "dusty epicenter of the Midwest's free form jazz scene." It was located at 2128 1/2 S. Indiana Avenue before moving to 67 E. Cermak when the original building was scheduled for demolition. It closed permanently in 2019.
Vijay Iyer is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014, he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he was jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.
Friar's Inn was a nightclub and speakeasy in Chicago, Illinois, a famed jazz music venue in the 1920s.
Craig Marvin Taborn is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.
Nicole Mitchell is an American jazz flautist and composer who teaches jazz at the University of Virginia. She is a former chairwoman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
In the 1970s in jazz, jazz became increasingly influenced by Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments. Artists such as Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola increasingly influenced the genre with jazz fusion, a hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion which was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments, and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix. All Music Guide states that "..until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate." However, "...as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces." On June 16, 1972 the New York Jazz Museum opened in New York City at 125 West 55th Street in a one and one-half story building. It became the most important institution for jazz in the world with a 25,000 item archive, free concerts, exhibits, film programs, etc.
Tomeka Reid is an American composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher.
Jason Adasiewicz is an American jazz vibraphonist and composer.
Mike Reed is an American jazz drummer, bandleader, composer and music presenter.
In Pursuit of Magic is a live album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell with drummer Mike Reed which was recorded in 2013 and released on 482 Music.
Jon Irabagon is a Filipino-American saxophonist, composer, and founder of Irabbagast Records.
This is a timeline documenting events of jazz in the year 2021.
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