Search - Mike Reed's People Places & Things :: Proliferation

The remarkable Mr. Reed

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 02/04/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As far as I know this is the first Amazon review of any of Mike Reed's CDs. He deserves better. He has already produced an excellent body of work and presents concerts in the Chicago area of other musicians whose work he admires (his web site states that he works in or presents 150+ shows a year). He is a paragon of that spirit of communal musical endeavor and research which seems to define the current Chicago scene (or so it appears from Portland, OR).

As far as I can tell, MR lead's two main groupings Loose Assembly (I promise a review of their The Speed of Change in a few days) and People, Places & Things.

The latter is the grouping on this CD and consists of a quartet comprised of

Mike Reed- drums, piano and some of the compositions

Tim Haldeman- tenor sax and piano

Greg Ward- alto sax and piano

Jason Roebke- bass and piano.

Like many of the first great generation of the AACM, Mike Reed is an historian of the music especially the musical history of Chicago. Go to his web site and you will find pictures of the Great Clifford Jordan (most underknown tenor sax player ever- if you don't have Glass Bead Games or In The World you are missing two of the essential documents of late '60s and '70s jazz), news about the Chicago scene and the state of the AACM, and about the music scene in Europe.

It would seem that part of the reason for the People, Places & Things groupings was to revisit a particularly fertile earlier period of the Chicago scene.

"The original focus of our quartet was to investigate and reinvent some of the under-recorded, under-recognized aspects of the vibrant Chicago jazz scene circa 1954-60. On Proliferation, we brought ideas and new approaches to music of another time."

MR reworks songs by John Neely (Status Quo -the first song on Blowing In From Chicago a Clifford Jordan/John Gilmore date that is a hard bop classic), by John Jenkins, Sun Ra and Wilbur Campbell among others. MR also wrote three of the compositions, "People", "Places" and "Things".

The approach to the material is typified by the way they play Status Quo. Rather than just play it straight MR arranges it in sections some of which play the tune straight and some of which use it as material to create very different music. The result is a music that is respectful of a undervalued facet of the music's history yet also respect the music's original creative intent. We are talking about Gilmore and Jordan here.

Mike Reed's music is one of my most enjoyable musical discoveries of recent years. He is another of the great artists on the 482 label which deserves your most careful attention. It is one of those labels that features the work of a large grouping of musicians all of whom work with each other. Like I said earlier, they constitute a research community. I have a Listmania list called "Independence and the Chicago Improv Scene:482 Music" which might serve you for an introduction to the label. Better yet go to their site and look around at all the wonderful stuff. And while you are cyberspacing, go back to Mike Reed's site and find his recipe for Shrimp Etouffe. I tried it tonight and my two little girls (and future food critics) liked it very much. What can I tell you? MR is a renaissance man."