Rob Mazurek
Rob Mazurek in the early 1990s he played hard bop with his first quartet. In 1996, Mazurek founded a workshop at Chicago jazz club The Green Mill called Chicago Underground for the performance of avant-garde, improvisatory jazz. By 1998 he a new ensemble had formed around this idea. Mazurek continued to form groups under the Chicago Underground umbrella, performing as the Chicago Underground Duo and Chicago Underground Quartet. Mazurek would continue experimenting with his laptop-based project Orton Socket. In 2005, he put together an ensemble called the Exploding Star Orchestra for concerts in Millennium Park. In 2006, he moved to Brazil, and founded a new ensemble, the São Paulo Underground.
Rob Mazurek in the early 1990s he played hard bop with his first quartet. In 1996, Mazurek founded a workshop at Chicago jazz club The Green Mill called Chicago Underground for the performance of avant-garde, improvisatory jazz. By 1998 he a new ensemble had formed around this idea. Mazurek continued to form groups under the Chicago Underground umbrella, performing as the Chicago Underground Duo and Chicago Underground Quartet. Mazurek would continue experimenting with his laptop-based project Orton Socket. In 2005, he put together an ensemble called the Exploding Star Orchestra for concerts in Millennium Park. In 2006, he moved to Brazil, and founded a new ensemble, the São Paulo Underground.
C6Fe2RN6
*300 copies limited edition* Excited to unveil the self-titled debut record from a new duo of Rob Mazurek & Nick Terry - C6Fe2RN6! The Marfa-based duo's music sprouted from a mutual admiration for each other's visual art (Nick Terry primarily being known for his visual art, but get ready to hear more of his musical work) and eventually turned into regular get togethers to chat and play music. What you hear in C6Fe2RN6 is what happened in Mazurek's Marfa Experimental Studio, haunting and ephemera…
Medea
Duo in the mirror that, in a continuous game of doubling and multiplication, ventures into another world, dense with unexpectedness and vital thrills. Sun Ra and post-rock, as well as Chicago experimentation and echoes of the world of Suzanne Ciani and minimal music, are the hints one can sense while listening to Medea, a journey to the edge and beyond. Star Splitter's new album comes five years after the debut album, a period in which the two artists experimented with the infinite possibilities…
Spectral Fiction
For the first time, a compact version of Rob Mazurek's magisterial Exploding Star Orchestra – Exploding Star Orchestra/Small Unit – commits its music to CD.
Recorded live at Corbett vs. Dempsey's Chicago gallery space in March, 2023, the six-piece band featured Mazurek on trumpet, Tomeka Reid on cello, Damon Locks on voice and electronics, Angélica Sánchez on Wurlitzer, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums. Spectral Fiction consists of two tracks, the deeply exploratory "Equ…
Music for Piano and Modular Synthesizer
Music for Piano and Modular Synthesizer is a suite of compositions utilizing piano, modular synthesizer, piccolo trumpet, launeddas and various other sound devices in order to express certain emotions clear and bright. Resonant Stacks of Energy in shattered Time sent through a specific modular synth patch, emitting sound… corresponding to my own innate qualities of hearing, seeing and feeling. A kind of time Travel Device towards a more Utopian future. I approach the piano and composition in …
New Future City Radio
New Future City Radio is the first duo collaboration of longtime creative partners Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek. In a hyperactive 40-minute, 18-track suite that runs like a boombox mixtape, the two prolific multi-media artists contemplate community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people. These two artists have worked together from the peak days of the late 90s / early 00s Chicago music scene up through the present day, which has seen…
Lightning Dreamers
Lightning Dreamers is new work by composer, trumpeter, interdisciplinary abstractivist and modern music mogul Rob Mazurek, who wrote the music for a compacted version of his long-running Exploding Star Orchestra. A follow-up to the acclaimed 2020 Mazurek/ESO release Dimensional Stardust, the album features guitarist Jeff Parker, vocalist Damon Locks, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn, among others. It was recorded mostly at the remote Sonic Ranch studios in W…
Instant Opaque Evening (2LP)
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.
Some Jellyfish Live Forever
** 2021 Repress ** A great reunion of the Jeff Parker/Rob Mazurek duo – a pair who've only continued to grow strongly in the years since their Chicago Underground classics – and who bring all that sense of energy to play in their music! The sounds here represent the deeper, more mature styles that both musicians have hit – a way of almost being more powerful by being less aggressive – especially from Mazurek, who's got this wonderfully gentle touch on his horn at times – wrapped up in these wave…
Dimensional Stardust
Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on more than 70 recordings (including International Anthem’s very first, IARC0001, "Alternate Moon Cycles"). He’s led or co-led many ensembles – including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortois…
Good Days
On May 13, 2000 the Chicago Underground Quartet played one of the most searing and transcendent sets of music I’ve ever witnessed, as part of the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music. Cornetist Rob Mazurek, guitarist Jeff Parker, drummer Chad Taylor, and bassist Noel Kupersmith performed with a fiery singularity of purpose, ripping through its set like a bulldozer, albeit a machine marked by nuance and soulfulness. The following year the same line-up—which had previously made two alb…
The Underflow
An übertrio drawn from distinct parts of the creative music spectrum, The Underflow was recorded during a sizzling two-night stand in May 2019. In a series of duets and trios, guitarist David Grubbs, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and trumpeter Rob Mazurek met headlong for the first time, converging not only their acoustic and electric instruments, but at times submerging themselves in a tangle of electronics, then emerging into shamanic bell-shaking chant or chest-rattling howl. Ranging from extr…
Desert Encrypts Vol. 1
Desert Encrypts Vol. 1, is a two-part suite based on observations from the desert in and around Marfa, TX. It also explores Rob Mazurek's ongoing fascination with social, psychological, and physiological structures, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The composition includes written music and graphic scores for improvisation.For Desert Encrypts Vol. 1 Mazurek has put together an awe-inspiring new ensemble featuring Kris Davis on piano, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass and Chad Taylor on drums…
Psychotropic Electric Eel Dreams IV
In Spring of 2017, Experimental Sound Studio (ess.org) presented Psychotropic Electric Eel Dream IV, a four-channel sound composition for the ESS Florasonic sound installation series at Lincoln Park Conservatory, Chicago. The installation was in conjunction with Rob Mazurek's solo exhibition The Shaping Light at ESS's Audible Gallery.What you hear in the Fern Room is Psychotropic Electric Eel Dream IV by composer, musician, and visual artist, Rob Mazurek. The sounds in this composition were gene…
Love Waves Ecstatic Charge
Love Waves Ecstatic Charge uses visual material to construct sonic architecture. The visuals are one hundred and six still images taken from an experimental video which was initially shot when Rob Mazurek was in residency at Abbaye Royal de Fontevraud, France, 2005. Upon his return from the residency he discovered the camera broken and barely operational other than the fact of being able to extract frame by frame 106 distorted still images and fragmented skipping sound that would on occasion bur…
Rome
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 …
Mother Ode
2014 release. In July 2013, a few months after the passing of his mother, cornetist Rob Mazurekperformed solo at the Corbett Vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago. Mazurek is one of the highest profile figures in contemporary creative music, leading bands like the Exploding Star Orchestra, Skull Sessions Octet, and Starlicker. On this occasion, he brought a box filled with various implements -- his cornet, naturally, but flutes, bells, books, maracas, apples, and little electronics. This box became an …
Chants and Corners
Electro-Acoustic Composer, Cornetist Rob Mazurek continues to focus on the Brazilian side of his musical production, and that’s good news. Even better when we notice that “Chants and Corners” is something else than a new São Paulo Underground enterprise – some of the contributors are the same, but the project has another confection and this signifies that it’s multiplying in different perspectives, like the flowers of a plant. Playing a modular synth, a sampler and a piano besides his cornet, Ma…
Skull Sessions
Mazurek finds a challenge irresistible, and this is one of his most exciting projects" – The Wire
Skull Sessions combines two of Rob's groups: Sao Paulo Underground and Starlicker with additional personnel. The band is an international cast of masters, including drummer John Herndon (of Tortoise), vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and flutist Nicole Mitchell, (both DownBeat poll winners on their respective instruments), Guilherme Granado on keyboards and electronics, Carlos Issa on guitar and …
Galactic Parables: Volume 1
Composer, cornetist, electronic & acoustic sound specialist and musical director Rob Mazurek leads his largest regular ensemble, the Exploding Star Orchestra through one of his most ambitious recordings. While Galactic Parables: Volume 1 is a self-contained cosmos, marked by colliding melodic lines and startlingly beautiful passages, as the title indicates, it’s part of a larger work. Ever since Exploding Star Orchestra’s debut recording, Mazurek has been gradually building an epic science ficti…
Return The Tides: Ascension Suite And Holy Ghost
"I have always thought of the idea of passing as a beautiful thing, in which the soul or life force of the individual is somehow transferred to the immensity and brilliance of the entirety. The idea of Heaven and Hell (and everything inbetween) has always been a hallmark within the limited spectrum of what we humans can come up with and the idea of God or Gods has, for some, been an interesting way of putting a life and circumstances into some kind of mysterious belief system that can at times b…