Dimensional Stardust

Description

Multidisciplinary artist Rob Mazurek has had an enormous impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Coming out of the Chicago scene of the 1990s, he has written over 400 compositions and appears on over 70 different recordings. He has led numerous ensembles — including the Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet & Orchestra), Isotope 217 (alongside members of Tortoise), Pharoah and the Underground, and a duo with Jeff Parker. He has been on the cover of WIRE magazine twice and is well known as one of the main architects of the 21st-century "Chicago Sound." Commissioned by the Chicago Cultural Center in 2005 to assemble a group representing the diversity of the city's avant-garde, Mazurek began composing for what became his Exploding Star Orchestra (ESO). In 2018, JazzFest Berlin invited Mazurek to present a new iteration of the ESO. With the characteristic unlimited ambition of his approach, he envisioned a jubilee of musicians — true to the essence of the ESO in their highly diverse origins and voices, but more tightly organized than ever.