An epic second installment from the trio of Mats Gustafsson, David Grubbs, Rob Mazurek, nearly 90 minutes of intense live performances from January 2020. They converge here on a wide swath of sounds: expansive free improvs, full-tilt electronics, alt-universe chamber music and spontaneous arrangements of three previously released Grubbs’ songs.
After the collaborations with Giancarlo Schiaffini, Satoko Fuji and Natsuki Tamura, Turin-based Porta Palace Collective, led by Johnny Lapio, welcomes Rob Mazurek, one of the central figures on the actual Avant-Jazz scene. Italian saxophone player Pasquale Innarella is also featured as special guests on this Porta Palace Collective third album. Mazurek seems to have completely assimilated the band's spirit. His personality perfectly fits into their rich sound mesh, and his cornet finds the right place among the collective's broad frameworks, including both large improvisation areas and beautifully composed structures. Recorded live at the end of a tour, the album sets the first step for a future partnership. Read More
Thollem McDonas and Rob Mazurek met for the rst time in January 2016 in Marfa, Texas to record and perform a concert for the closing of “Marfa Loops Shouts and Hollers,” an exhibition of visual works by Mazurek. The recording, scheduled for release in April 2017 on New York record label Relative Pitch Records, offers listeners a front row seat at this electric rst encounter. This duo reaches out into the desert for endless possibilities. The results are coherent and deliver a constant driving force that urges the collaboration to continue into uncharted territories.
To date, celebrated Chicago musician Rob Mazurek’s solo endeavors have focused on his modular synthesizer and keyboard musings. On “Rome,” Mazurek’s sensitivity on cornet is at the fore, but we also find him using various electronics, and seated at a piano. Here the presence of the piano is expanded. He plays it conventionally, with preparation, with direct manipulation of the piano’s interior, and as a resonator for his cornet to create ethereal, otherworldly overtones. “Rome” was recorded and broadcast live for Italy’s Rai Radiotre Suite Jazz. The resulting recording captures the unique sensibilities of this master. Three decades of experimentation in creative improvisation, post-rock, noise and electronic music, and subverted world music lead Mazurek here. This refined solo recording offers listeners access to a new, distilled approach to his sound expression, which at times on this recording resembles contemporary classical music as much as any of these other disciplines. The sound, rich with raw emotion and spiritual contemplation, speaks for itself. Do not miss it. Rob Mazurek is a composer, cornetist, and improviser, whose broad electro-acoustic palette defies simple categorization. His work has earned him a reputation as a respected figure in the international creative music and avant-jazz scenes. He is known for his expansive vision and vast catalog of over 350 compositions and 65 recordings. He leads and composes for projects ranging in size from solo to orchestra. His work has been featured in The Wire, DownBeat, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
1. Twombly at New Church 9:23
2. Gazing Through Walls (Two Paintings by Caravaggio) 6:35
3. King of Rome (For Pino Saulo) 15:23
4. Sweet Life in Disrepair (For Fellini) 17:30
Rob Mazurek: cornet, piano, prepared piano, electronics
Celebrating 20 Years as Sonic and Spiritual Brothers,
Chicago Underground Duo-mates
Rob Mazurek & Chad Taylor
Team with London Improvisers
Alexander Hawkins & John Edwards
for the Exploratory, Boundlessly Inventive and Genre-Shattering
A Night Walking Through Mirrors
At a time when the world is mired in divisiveness, a time of wall-building and fear-mongering, of Brexit and Trump, it takes visionaries to build bridges rather than tear them down. “This is protest music,” insists Rob Mazurek. “It always has been. That’s why it’s called ‘Underground’ it’s not just called that for fun. We really believe in it. The world has become so homogenized and leans so far towards the right, and this music expresses complete freedom and lack of borders. Our music is all about the obliteration of any kind of oppression, the tearing down of any kind of wall - freedom and equality, both sonically and spiritually.” For the last two decades the Chicago Underground DuoRob Mazurek on cornet and electronics and Chad Taylor on percussion, electronics and mbira have created music meant to open minds and explore alien territory. Now, on A Night Walking Through Mirrors, they’ve created a new Transatlantic partnership in the form of Chicago / London Underground, inviting a pair of renowned British improvisers – pianist Alexander Hawkins and bassist John Edwards into the creative fold. The result is an expansive sonic adventure where every unexpected note and alchemical reaction runs counter to the limited imaginations ruling social media name-calling and clannish provincialism. A Night Walking Through Mirrors, released on Cuneiform Records, documents the first meeting of these four artists, recorded live at London’s Café Oto in April 2016, during a two-night run that marked the Chicago Underground Duo’s first performances in the city in a decade. To celebrate the occasion, Mazurek and Taylor invited two London-based artists with whom they’d never collaborated but they deeply admired to perform with the duo. “We love their playing and thought they’d be a nice complement to what we do,” Mazurek explains. When it comes to the rare occasions when he and Taylor do bring other musicians into the fold, he continues, “The only criteria is people who are completely open to anything, no matter how outlandish or crazy the idea is. They just have to be 100 percent into the moment and what we’re doing.”
The London contingent of the Chicago / London Underground certainly fits those requirements. Alexander Hawkins is a pianist, organist, composer and bandleader whose highly distinctive soundworld is forged through the search to reconcile his love of free improvisation with his profound fascination with composition and structure. He’s recorded or performed with a vast array of contemporary leaders of all generations, including the likes of Evan Parker, John Surman, Mulatu Astatke, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Han Bennink, Taylor Ho Bynum and Matana Roberts, and frequently performs in the bands of legendary South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo. John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others. “Alexander Hawkins is a very dynamic player,” Mazurek says. “His harmonic and melodic sense as well as his phrasing and his approach to playing, whether songs or free playing, are very interesting and wide-ranging. John Edwards plays the most amount of bass I’ve ever heard anybody play. He plays a lot but nothing is wasted; it all means so much. They could go anywhere, so it was just a matter of being in the moment and letting the instincts roll. It was powerful, elegant, noisy, melodic, rhythmic, free - it had all the elements that usually come up when you think about making a complete and interesting set.” Hawkins and Edwards are newcomers to one of Mazurek’s longest-running musical partnerships. The duo of Mazurek and Taylor stretches back more than 20 years to their work together in various iterations of the Chicago Underground Collective, founded by Mazurek and guitarist Jeff Parker at the famed Chicago nightclub, the Green Mill. Since spinning off from the collective in 1996, the Chicago Underground Duo has released seven remarkably creative recordings and expanded to form Trio and Quartet incarnations with the likes of Parker and bassists Noel Kupersmith and Jason Ajemian.
“We’re sonic and spiritual brothers,” Mazurek says of his profound partnership with Taylor. “It’s a special relationship, one of those cosmic things where it just works. It’s amazing that we’ve kept it going this long and hopefully we’ll continue for another 20 years.” The critically acclaimed drummer and percussionist for the Chicago Underground ensembles, Chad Taylor has been featured in Modern Drummer magazine, performed at major rock and jazz festivals worldwide, and played with a wide range of artists on both the Chicago and New York rock and jazz scenes. He has a BA from the New School of Jazz, where he studied with Joe Chambers, Yoron Israel, Pheeroan Aklaff and Lewis Nash, and a MA from Rutgers. Chad has performed on over 50 recordings and has worked with such artists as Roscoe Mitchell, Tortoise, Jim O'Rourke, Charles Gayle, Derek Bailey, Jeff Parker, Marc Ribot, Mary Halvorson, Malachi Favors, Henry Grimes, and Cooper-Moore. Composer, improviser and multi-media artist Rob Mazurek has drawn inspiration from a multitude of audio and visual styles and sources over the past three decades. Augmenting his cornet playing with computer programming, electronics and an assortment of keyboards, Mazurek's broad electro-acoustic palette defies simple categorization. His visionary work is garnering ever-increasing critical acclaim and public attention; in recent years, he appeared on the cover of The Wire magazine and was voted MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR by Italy's top jazz magazine, Musica Jazz. When not touring the world with various groups, Mazurek now lives in Marfa, TX, after having relocated back to Chicago following an extended stay in São Paulo, Brazil. In addition to Chicago Underground Duo and new Chicago / London Underground, he leads, collaborates with and composes for a wide variety of ongoing ensembles, among them Pharoah & The Underground (featuring Pharoah Sanders) and Black Cube SP. His three-piece São Paulo Underground transplants the collaborative and boundary-bursting Underground model onto a Chicago/Brazil axis, combining Brazilian influences from samba to maracatu with the interstellar jazz consciousness of the Sun Ra Arkestra and Mazurek’s own large ensemble, Exploding Star Orchestra. It’s hard enough to categorize all that transpires within the confines of a single Underground piece, let alone trying to delineate a single unifying thread that binds the various iterations together. What does distinguish all of the ensembles’ work, including this latest Chicago / London variation, is their fearlessness, a willingness, even eagerness, to venture into the unknown and find the spark of the new. “Anything is possible,” Mazurek states simply. “Whatever direction in which things go, no matter how outlandish - or the opposite of that, no matter how much it makes sense we trust each other, and that trust is integral to why this group works in all its different formats.”
That trust, despite the novelty of never having played together before, is evident from the opening moments of this recording. “A Night Spent Walking Through Mirrors” begins with abrupt smears of sound from Mazurek’s cornet, which conjure sparse replies from Taylor’s mbira and Hawkins’ piano. Over the course of the next 20 minutes, the interplay builds in chaotic intensity until the ground seems to fall away and leave the listener adrift in a gauzy haze. Jittery explosions burst in, from which emerges Mazurek’s voice intoning a sort of primal chant. Voice has become increasingly important to Mazurek’s work in recent years, and recurs throughout A Night Walking Through Mirrors, as when he urgently pleads the mantra-like title phrase of “Something Must Happen,” making literal the desperate crises underlying the album’s political urgency. “Voice is about breaking down barriers, breaking down walls, breaking down inhibition,”Mazurek says.“I want to use it more and more for my own possibilities.” “Something Must Happen” is notable for its perpetual, agitated tumult, with aggressive electronic bursts engulfing Hawkins’ frenetic piano, which finally relents in the closing minutes to dissipate in a shimmering curtain of sound. “Boss Redux” is a reimagining of a piece from the 2014 Chicago Underground Duo release Locus, beginning with the original’s infectious electronic groove and breakbeat rhythms before smashing those elements apart and refracting them into an abstracted landscape. Edwards’ creaking strings and resonant, percussive tones seem to guide the listener through a dense, mysterious jungle of startling voices, only to come out – in what may be the album’s most unexpected moment in an intimate interpolation of the jazz standard “It Might As Well Be Spring.” Finally, “Mysteries of Emanating Light” grows from a bold Taylor improvisation, first spawning a knotty turn from Edwards in which he almost seems to be wrestling his strings into gnarled, craggy shapes, until Mazurek and Taylor engage in a captivating mbira/cornet duo. Mazurek’s voice returns, this time echoing and distorting as Edwards and Hawkins parry the ricocheting sounds. It all ends in dissolving calm, an ambiguous but thoughtful moment of leave-taking. The album’s title, A Night Walking Through Mirrors, is an evocative fit for this exploratory set, capturing the sense of alluring disorientation, of sympathetic worlds upon worlds echoing into infinity. “It really felt like we would be playing and somebody would take a left turn and we’d be in another dimension,”Mazurek recalls.“Another person would take a right turn and we’d be in yet another dimension, but everybody was right there. It really did feel like a night spent walking through mirrors in that respect.”
“Atmospheric, exploratory music that creates worlds as it progresses.”BBC
“Mazurek is a player of great poise and elegance, while Taylor’s deftness, imagination and formidable technical skill make his playing a joy to listen to...from the densest meshes to the sparsest near silent passage, each sonic cypher, beat and note seem to be leading somewhere, to have been made with a purpose.”The Wire
“Following the work of Mazurek and Taylor remains a near-requirement for those invested in modern creative music.”Tiny Mix Tapes
“A modern approach to Brazil's Tropicália, that takes into account advances in sound manipulation and engineering. It is street music from the Brazilian subterranean avant-garde and it is confusingly wonderful.”
- All About Jazz
“The Post-Don Cherry melodic splendor of Chicago cornetist Rob Mazurek has never been clearer, and it finds a simpatico home amid the polyrhythmic chaos forged by his Brazilian cohorts. This high-energy romp takes the sting out of the term fusion in the best possible way.”
- DownBeat
Cantos Invisíveis is a wondrous album, a startling slab of 21st century trans-global music that mesmerizes, exhilarates and transports the listener to surreal dreamlands astride the equator. Never before has the fearless post-jazz, trans-continental trio São Paulo Underground sounded more confident than here on their fifth album and third release for Cuneiform. Weaving together a borderless electro-acoustic tapestry of North and South American, African and Asian, traditional folk and modern jazz, rock and electronica, the trio create music at once intimate and universal. On Cantos Invisíveis, nine tracks celebrate humanity by evoking lost haunts, enduring love, and the sheer delirious joy of making music together. São Paulo Underground fully manifests its expansive vision of a universal global music, one that blurs edges, transcends genres, defies national and temporal borders, and embraces humankind in its myriad physical and spiritual dimensions. Featuring three multi-instrumentalists, São Paulo Underground is the creation of Chicago-reared polymath Rob Mazurek (cornet, Mellotron, modular synthesizer, Moog Paraphonic, OP-1, percussion and voice) and two Brazilian masters of modern psycho- Tropicalia -- Mauricio Takara (drums, cavaquinho, electronics, Moog Werkstatt, percussion and voice) and Guilherme Granado (keyboards, synthesizers, sampler, percussion and voice). They’re joined on several tracks by Swiss-born, São Paulo resident Thomas Rohrer (rabeca, flutes, soprano saxophone, electronics, percussion and voice), who made a memorable contribution to Mazurek’s Black Cube SP on the transcendent 2014 Cuneiform release Return the Tides: Ascension Suite and Holy Ghost. Together, these singular and wildly imaginative sonic explorers create music unlike any other ensemble.
In many ways the music on Cantos Invisíveis is a celebration of camaraderie and the spaces that allow love and friendship to unfurl. Alchemical aural conspirators for over a decade, the group has developed its own approach to structure, with slippery forms, unabashedly beautiful melodies and lapidary textures laced with disquieting electronica beats and stutter-stepping improvisation. Rather than evoke a particular time and place, the music inhabits multiple planes simultaneously as “a projection of sound that celebrates as well as mourns past, present and future times,” Mazurek says. “The vocal quality of this particular music shouts and hollers for love and compassion, the joy and sorrows of life. It’s a street parade for everybody.” In the transcendent spirit of the Second Line, São Paulo Underground summons a joyful noise for all mankind. The experience of listening to Cantos Invisíveis often feels like stepping through the fourth wall, as if you’re in the room with the musicians, watching the instrumental conversations unfold in real time. The production enhances the intimacy, creating a space to enter the music rather than building a protective shell around it. It’s a communion that can only develop “as a result of a lot of time spent together working on music and ideas and then travelling together playing throughout the world,” Takara says. “I think there’s a certain atmosphere that only living and spending time together brings, and the record captures that beautifully.” The title Cantos Invisíveis translates from Portuguese as “invisible corners” or “invisible songs” or “disappearing corners or songs,” and the music evokes the elusive nature of these phantom songs, “always masking it in some kind of way, a disappearing through layering and sound manipulation,” Mazurek says. “The songs kind of disappear in a way like a cloud of pink in the sky. We create atmospheres that cause form and melody to disappear,” and to reappear, enticing savvy sound explorers to join São Paulo Underground on a journey, like following a mountain trail obscured by drifting clouds.
The album opens with the elegiac “Estrada Para o Oeste,” a buzzy, fuzzy processional that flows and ripples into a band incantation, an invitation for revelry. The party kicks off with the brief percussion-driven “Violent Orchid Parade,” which quickly gives way to a very different celebration on “Cambodian Street Carnival,” an unhurried piece based on a wordless chant.
While it opens with electronic blips and beeps, Takara’s wheezy “Lost Corners Boogie” gradually dials into an eight-legged Rube Goldbergian contraption, with each player providing locomotion. The tune paints a vivid interactive portrait of funky street life, simultaneously taking in, documenting and participating in the passing parade.
Mazurek unleashes on Takara’s quicksilver “Fire and Chime,” while the whole band summons spirits with “Olhaluai,” a mesmerizing, revelatory looping chant that feels like the album’s emotional centerpiece.
The celebration comes to a conclusion with the shimmering Beach-Boys-meets-Pharoah-Sanders good vibrations “Of Golden Summer,” a piece featuring Mazurek’s exquisite melodic horn. For the after party, where the piper is paid and the dawn brings new insight, São Paulo Underground offers what amounts to a mini-suite.
Part invocation and part country lament, the 16-minute “Falling Down From the Sky Like Some Damned Ghost” offers a final and utterly unexpected trip around the universe.
With Cantos Invisíveis, São Paulo Underground expands into realms seen and unseen, deconstructing the material (defying borders and genres) and manifesting the spiritual (universal human spirit and emotion) to create a new organism.
Each of the album’s resulting songs is a breathtaking musical world, a living planet within São Paulo Underground’s visionary universe.
Based on the extraordinary music on Cantos Invisíveis, as well as the dynamic albums the trio released in the past, the universe that São PauloUnderground is boldly charting will continue to flourish, evolve and expand.
SÃO PAULO UNDERGROUND: BAND BIO
São Paulo Underground was born at the end of Mazurek’s eight-year Brazilian sojourn, when he began collaborating with the group’s co-founders Takara and Granado in São Paulo. In 2006, São Paulo Underground released its mind-bending debut Sauna: Um, Dois, Três (Aesthetics/Submarine).
This record established the ensemble as a singular São Paulo/Chicago axis, with contributions by Hurtmold, Marcos Axe, Tiago Mesquita, Wayne Montana, Damon Locks, Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor. Following up with The Principle of Intrusive Relationships (Aesthetics/Submarine) in 2008, the band expanded to a quartet with the inclusion of drummer Richard Ribeiro.
By the time the group recorded its 2011 Cuneiform debut Três Cabaças Loucuras, Ribeiro was on the way out and São Paulo Underground took its present form as an expansive trio. In 2013, Cuneiform released the trio’s critically acclaimed fourth recording, Beija Flors Velho E Sujo.
ROB MAZUREK
It’s difficult to overstate Mazurek’s immersion in the experimental ethos of Brazil’s avant garde.
From 2000-2008, he moved between the denseAmazon jungle of Manaus, the Oscar Niemeyer-designed architectural wonderland in the capital Brasilia and the megalopolis São Paulo.
This brought him recognition throughout Brazil and allowed him to make lasting ties with leading artists and musicians that he continues to collaborate with today.
Simultaneously, Mazurek continued his ascent stateside, in Europe and in Asia, by maintaining an intense touring schedule and constant flow of critically acclaimed, genre-defying recordings.
A polymorphously creative bandleader, Mazurek directs, composes and performs in a wide array of ensembles, from his highly interactive Chicago Underground Duo with drummer Chad Taylor, which released Locus (Northern Spy) in March 2014, to his talent-laden octet, which was captured on 2013’s Skull Sessions (Cuneiform), and of course São Paulo Underground.
Always looking for synergistic cross-fertilization, he brought together his two subterranean ensembles, Chicago Underground and São Paulo Underground), and paired them with tenor saxophone legend Pharoah Sanders in Pharoah and the Underground, which released the CD Spiral Mercury and the LP Primative Jupiter (Clean Feed) in August 2014.
His latest releases include a duo with Jeff Parker, Some Jelly Fish Live Forever (Rogue Art), and Alien Flower Sutra (International Anthem Recording Company), a science fiction song cycle with singer/songwriter Emmett Kelly of The Cairo Gang. Exploding Star Orchestra remains one of the most important vehicles for Mazurek’s increasingly ambitious orchestral compositions.
This constantly shifting and capaciously inventive large ensemble has featured the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, as well as the late Bill Dixon and Fred Anderson, with Nicole Mitchell, Angelica Sanchez, Matana Roberts, Jeff Parker, John Herndon, Chad Taylor, Matt Bauder, Damon Locks, Mauricio Takara and Guilherme Granado, among others.
The volatile ensemble released Galactic Parables: Volume 1, the most recent of nine Mazurek suites written for Exploding Star Orchestra, on Cuneiform in 2015.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Mazurek moved to the Chicago suburbs as a child. In 1983, wanting to follow the example of his hero Sun Ra, he moved to the city and immediately immersed himself in the eclectic Chicago scene, playing alongside and studying with jazz masters like Ken Prince, Jodie Christian, Earma Thompson, Billy Brimfield, Fred Hopkins and Lin Halliday.
In 1994, he and guitarist Jeff Parker launched the Chicago Underground workshop at Chicago’s storied jazz club The Green Mill. The workshop featured many of the scene’s rising stars including drummer Chad Taylor. Eventually the workshop gave birth to the Chicago Underground Collective, an ensemble that recorded several albums for Delmark, Thrill Jockey and most recently Northern Spy. Mazurek’s collaborations include a wide cross section of leading figures and ensembles in jazz, electronic, rock and improvised music, including the late Bill Dixon, Yusef Lateef, Naná Vasconcelos and Fred Anderson, Pharoah Sanders, Roscoe Mitchell, Mike Ladd, Emmett Kelly, Jim O’Rourke, Sam Prekop and Isotope 217.
More than a prolific composer, Mazurek is increasingly recognized by major arts institutions as an accomplished visual artist and has received a number of grants and commissions for multi-media projects and collaborations.
In 2016, he was awarded a grant from Chicago’s Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for a film shot in collaboration with Lee Anne Schmitt at Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Farnsworth House. In 2015, Marfa Book Company presented “Marfa Loops Shouts and Hollers,” a solo exhibition of paintings, sculpture and sound by Mazurek.
In 2013, he received a Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Arts Achievement Award and was given a residency at the famed URDLA Centre International Estampe & Livre in Villeurbanne, France where he realized four 3D lithographs to be used as graphic scores for improvisation.
In 2010, Mazurek received a Commissioning Music USA grant from New Music USA for a multi-media work developed in collaboration with video artist and choreographer Marianne Kim. In 2005, the year before he founded São Paulo Underground, he was awarded a prestigious artist residency at the French Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, which gave him the opportunity to hone his interest in multi-media works.
Mazurek received a commission from the French Ministry of Culture in 2015 for a new work for a 17-piece ensemble comprised of French and American musicians. In 2013, the Sant'Anna Aressi Jazz Festival commissioned Mazurek’s Galactic Parables: Volume 1, which was performed live on Italian Rai Radio3.
He topped off a highly productive 2012 by being voted International Musician of the Year alongside Wadada Leo Smith by Musica Jazz, Italy's top jazz magazine. In 2011, the Jazz & Wine Festival in Cormons, Italy commissioned him to compose his Violent Orchid Suite and the Sant'Anna Aressi Jazz Festival in Sardinia, Italy commissioned the Transgressions Suite.
MAURICIO TAKARA
Mauricio Takara is considered one of the leading voices in the new post-Tropicalia wave of Brazilian music.
A São Paulo native, Takara has performed and recorded with a dazzling array of artists. From Brazil, key connections include Paulo Santos, Toninho Horta, Nacao Zumbi, Vanessa Da Mata, Sabotage, Naná Vasconcelos and Marcelo Camelo.
On the international scene he’s allied with heavyweights such as Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Yusef Lateef, Tony Bevan and Prefuse 73. Besides São Paulo Underground, Takara has also worked with other Chicagoconnected projects and artists such as Exploding Star Orchestra, Joshua Abrams and John Herndon. Born in 1982, Takara started playing the acoustic guitar at the age of seven. Two years later, he took up drums.
He played with local hardcore punk bands throughout the ‘90s and started Hurtmold in 1998, releasing six records on the Submarine label. Most recently, Selo Sesc released a collaborative recording, Curado, featuring Hurtmold with Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Paulo Santos. Since 2003, Takara also released five solo albums on Desmonta Discos including Puro Osso in 2014 and Sobre Todas e Qualquer Coisa in 2010.
Takara has toured extensively in Europe (Sonar Festival/Barcelona, Roskilde/Denmark, WOMEX/Seville & Club Transmediale/Berlin), the US, India (World Socials Forum) and Brazil (Nublu Jazz Festival, SESC Pinheiros, and opening for Lo Borges and Milton Nascimento at Coquetel Molotov Festival).
GUILHERME GRANADO
Also hailing from São Paulo, Guilherme Granado is in the vanguard of Brazil’s electronic spiritualism sound makers, devoted to promoting music, beats and ideas in Brazil. He’s been avidly sought after by a disparate array of artists, including Prefuse 73, Naná Vasconcelos, Tulipa, Pharoah Sanders and Exploding Star Orchestra. Granado is an integral member of the Brazilian rock group Hurtmold and has released five records under Bodes and Elefantes, his solo project. His 2014 release, Glaciers of Nice Vol. 1 (Propósito Records), is a glorious electronic-infused spiritual.
In 2016, Granado released Bode Holofonico (Prop Recs) with Leandro Archela, Prestige Duo with Ricardo Pereira, Transition Hustle and Homeless Loops Vol. 2 (guilhermegranado.bandcamp.com).
THOMAS ROHRER
Born and raised in Switzerland, Thomas Rohrer has lived in Brazil since 1995. Rohrer began his musical studies as a violinist and studied saxophone in the Jazz Department at the University of Lucerne. Rohrer, now a master of the keening rabeca (Brazilian viola), earned his stripes through two decades of intense studies with leading practitioners in Brazil’s northeast. Using his classical training, extensive knowledge of Brazilian folk music and love of improvisation, Roher integrates his rabeca and soprano saxophone into collective improvisations and traditional Brazilian music.
He is a member of Trio TEC, the free-improv Abaetetuba Collective, a trio with reed expert Hans Koch and percussionist Panda Gianfratti, and a duo with Kazakhstani singer Saadet Türköz. He also performs in a long-running duo with Gianfratti and has worked extensively with double bass player Célio Barros since 1996. A cultural catalyst, he’s curated a number of international free improv festivals in São Paulo and collaborated with legendary multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef on a series of performances in Brazil. He has also collaborated with the London Improvisers Orchestra, Terry Day, Marcio Mattos, Mauricio Takara, John Russell, Javier Carmona, Phil Somervell, Bella, Ute Wassermann, Audrey Chen, Sabu Toyozumi, John Edwards, Phil Minton and Roger Turner.
1. Estrada Para o Oeste (Takara, Mazurek) 13:44
2. Violent Orchid Parade (Mazurek) 1:51
3. Cambodian Street Carnival (Mazurek) 6:45
4. Lost Corners Boogie (Takara) 6:02
5. Desisto II (Mazurek, Granado) 3:36
6. Fire and Chime (Takara) 2:38
7. Olhaluai (Takara) 5:51
8. Of Golden Summer (Mazurek) 4:14
9. Falling Down From the Sky Like Some Damned Ghost (Takara, Mazurek) 16:20
São Paulo Underground
Rob Mazurek:
cornet, Mellotron, modular synthesizer, Moog Paraphonic, OP-1, percussion and voice
Mauricio Takara:
drums, cavaquinho, electronics, Moog Werkstatt, percussion and voice
Guilherme Granado:
keyboards, synthesizers, sampler, percussion and voice
Thomas Rohrer:
rabeca, flutes, soprano saxophone, electronics, percussion and voice
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Dedicated to the Spirit of Armando Julio.
Recorded by Manuel Calderon (Comanche Sound) at Sonic Ranch, El Paso, TX.
Additional recording by Mark Mazurek.
Mixed by Rob Mazurek and Manuel Calderon (Comanche Sound) at Sonic Ranch.
Mastered by Marco Ramirez at Sonic Ranch.
Produced by Rob Mazurek.
Cover Design by Damon Locks.
Compositions by Rob Mazurek (OLHO, ASCAP) and by Mauricio Takara (Basement Brazil).
Special thanks to Mark, Jennie and Alex Mazurek for their support during the creation of this record.
