For more than two decades, saxophonist Dave Rempis has been a key community builder in the improvised-music scene, both locally and internationally, working behind the scenes as well as onstage. He’s made incalculable contributions during his long association with Chicago nonprofit Elastic Arts: since 2002 he’s booked its Thursday-night Improvised Music Series, and he’s served as the organization’s board president since 2015. He dislikes the term “curator” because it has “so much art-world nonsense associated with it,” and describes his role as using his organizational skills to create “a platform for various types of artists to use in the way that works for them.” Rempis is stepping away from Elastic, though, so that he can focus more on his own work and artistic practice. “It’s important for these types of generational changes to happen,” he says. “There are a lot of young people in the scene with ideas about how things should happen, so this is a moment for them to step up and do the work.”
Elastic assistant director Ben Billington says the Thursday Improvised Music Series will continue “into 2024 and beyond,” with help for the time being from the organization’s “internal programming committee and some others in the community.” The final Rempis-booked show is coming right up on Thursday, August 31, and he’ll be playing two sets in a relatively new quartet with bassist Joshua Abrams, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, and drummer Tyler Damon. (It’ll be livestreamed on YouTube as well.) Thankfully, Rempis is staying busy—he’ll continue booking occasional events under the auspices of his label, Aerophonic Records, and he’ll maintain his position as operations director for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Right now he’s working on setting up a concert at May Chapel in Rosehill Cemetery on Sunday, October 22, that will feature fellow saxophonist Mars Williams, who’s just returned to performing after taking most of a year off for cancer treatment.
A 2022 release by the trio Ballister, with Dave Rempis, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Paal Nilssen-Love
Gossip Wolf has been covering the work of artist and musician Mac Blackout, aka Mark McKenzie, for more than a decade—and for good reason. Not only has Blackout been an important force in the garage-rock scene (in bands such as the Daily Void, the Functional Blackouts, and Mickey), but he’s also a far-out visual artist, whose work has included colorful drawings and murals (inspired by street art and his years creating graffiti in Indiana in the 90s) and a 2015 project where he painted garish cartoon faces on tree stumps. Blackout is still making music, and over the past few years (beginning with the standout 2020 Trouble in Mind release Love Profess) he’s cut a series of solo recordings that accompany his saxophone with synthesizers, effects pedals, drum machines, electric piano, flute, and more. The songs tend to vacillate between echo-heavy ambience and abrupt eruptions of lung-shredding power that recall the late-1960s titans of revolutionary free jazz. In early August, Blackout dropped his latest album in this vein, Revolutionary Tangents, and it’s the darkest and sparsest so far. Its four tracks combine wild improvised honking and shrieking with menacing, intricately plotted programmed rhythms. These days he’s mostly busking, not playing conventional shows, but he’ll play a solo set similar to the material on Revolutionary Tangents at Co-Prosperity on Friday, October 20, as part of the Chicago Printers Guild Paper Jam series.
Revolutionary Tangents was recorded live with no edits or overdubs.
World-beating house and techno DJ the Blessed Madonna, aka former Smart Bar talent buyer Marea Stamper, left Chicago for London in 2017, but Gossip Wolf still gets a jolt of local pride from seeing her name in print (which happens a lot!) or spinning one of her floor-destroying jams. (That happens a lot too, and lately the jam in question has often been “We Still Believe,” her 2023 single with fellow local legend Jamie Principle.) The Blessed Madonna performs on Saturday, September 2, at the ARC Music Festival, and later that night she’ll return to her old stomping grounds to spin a B2B Smart Bar set with Jaq Attaque as part of the ARC After Dark all-building afterparty, which also includes Ariel Zetina B2B Madeline and performances at Metro by Carl Craig x Moodymann, Czboogie, and more.
The 34th annual African Festival of the Arts runs Friday, September 1, through Monday, September 4, in Washington Park. Gossip Wolf is particularly interested in a program called the Experience that honors hip-hop’s 50th anniversary. The event runs from 3 PM to 10 PM on Saturday, and it includes a panel about hip-hop’s five elements and an exhibit highlighting hip-hop’s connection to Africa. Among the special guests scheduled to be on hand are Dead Prez and A Tribe Called Quest’s Jarobi White. The Experience will also feature live performances by Ang13, Freddie Old Soul, Recoechi, Mani Jurdan, Urbanized Music (the duo of Amina and Coolout Chris), and more. Advance single-person tickets to the African Festival of the Arts are $20 for one day and $40 for a three-day pass.
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