Local pianist and composer Jeff Kowalkowski has consistently demonstrated an easy fluidity between experimental music, contemporary classical, and improvisation, and that mutability might be one of the main reasons he isn’t recognized more widely—people don’t know where to put him or his music. That’s a shame, because he’s one of the most beguiling and interesting performers in Chicago, whether he’s making wonderfully strange sounds with Carrie Biolo in Jack the Dog, playing as sideman in Rob Mazurek’s Electro Acoustic Exploding Star Orchestra, or heading the Chicago Scratch Orchestra, an experimental music ensemble he founded in 2010.
Ian Matthews, If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes (Water)
Jerusalem Quartet, Janácek/Smetana: String Quartets (Harmonia Mundi)
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam)
Imarhan Timbuktu, Akal Warled (Clermont Music)
Jesper Zeuthen, Plus (Barefoot)
