Douglas Ewart is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and past president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). For this interview, he joins Sam Segal and Mark Mahoney, hosts of Radio K’s Sound Grammar, to discuss the 50th anniversary of the Chicago-based experimentalist collective, his practice as a sculptor and musician, his childhood in Jamaica, and what we can expect from his March 2015 Sound Horizon performance at the Walker.
"Mr. Threadgill may have said it best: 'When you make things for people, for the public, you just do it. Is not like tennis where the ball comes back. You just send it out, you know. We don’t even wait for it to come back. The whole point is to send it out.'” Drummer Davu Seru reflects on his experience being part of last weekend's Henry Threadgill festival.
"Henry’s work is always a few miles ahead of and around several unanticipated corners than what you think he’s up to. The code is never fully cracked, which allows for a lifetime of interest and compelling listening. The energy of his music is continually lifting higher and higher, like a cyclone." Landon Kulhmann digs into the life and legacy of Henry Threadbill in advance of the Walker's two-night musical homage, capped off by a performance by Threadgill himself with his quintet Zooid.
Bobby Rogers: A Re-Energizing of the Black Arts Movement
In 1966, Amiri Baraka wrote that Black poems, and Black art as well, should “shoot, come at you, love what you are.” It's in this same vein of urgency and cultural importance that the work of Minneapolis-based photographer Bobby Rogers strikes you—as lightning at first, strong and electric, then as a subtle love nestled into the details. Here, Devyn Springer follows the thread between Rogers's personal artistic practice and his recent commission photographing the jazz innovators of the Walker's Sonic Universe Project.
The Sonic Universe Project: Six Musicians in Search of a Sound
"Alternately plaintive and challenging, thrillingly threatening to go akimbo... then just as swiftly taking an unforeseen detour and yet another daring departure." Writer Jon Morgan shares his perspective on the Sonic Universe Project, featuring Douglas R. Ewart, Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, Antony Cox, and Hamid Drake.
In Line with the Living: Davu Seru on the Sonic Universe Project
In advance of the Sonic Universe Project—a night of jazz by innovators from Minneapolis, New York, and and Chicago—composer/writer/percussionist Davu Seru remembers the routes and rootedness of six artists and two movements.
