- Peter Gannushkin/Downtownmusic.net
- Peter Evans
This Sunday afternoon International Contemporary Ensemble presents the latest event in its OpenICE concert series at the Chicago Cultural Center. ICE, of course, is one the most adventurous and accomplished exponents of contemporary composition, but this weekend’s concert veers toward raucous improvised music with a duet performance by trumpeter Peter Evans and pianist Cory Smythe. Both musicians are equally at home in many disparate contexts—from harrowing modern composition to modern jazz—and this event, billed as Early Jazz to White Noise, promises to draw on those expansive abilities.
- Peter Gannushkin / Downtownmusic.net
- Cory Smythe
Whereas Evans is mostly associated with jazz and improvised music, I normally think of Smythe as a highly skilled, sensitive denizen of the contemporary classical world. He gives a breathtaking star turn on ICE’s recent Xenakis: Ensemble Works 3 (Mode), nailing the thorny featured part on “Palimpsest,” playing lines that alternate between thunderous, martial, jagged, and stately, slaloming deftly through a landscape of rigorous drumming and zigzagging brass and reeds (Evans plays trumpet throughout). He also lends empathic, spot-on support to the great violinist Hilary Hahn on her winning 2013 collection of short commissions called In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores (Deutsch Grammophon).
William Brittelle, Loving the Chambered Nautilus (New Amsterdam)Jutta Hipp, The Legendary Jutta Hipp Quintet (Fresh Sound)Ghetto Brothers, Power Fuerza (Truth & Soul)Lewis Nash Quintet, The Highest Mountain (Cellar Live)Broken Bells, After the Disco (Columbia)
