more kind words from the Reader!

Posted by jacob | Filed under:
Jan 15 2010

More happy thoughts from the Chicago Reader about Friday night's show at Elastic Arts! See article in its original context, or read a cut & paste below:

Jacob Wick, Paul Giallorenzo, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Carol Genetti; Jacob Wick 

When: Fri., Jan. 15, 9:30 p.m. 
Phone: 773-772-3616 
Price: $7

Though he's just 24, trumpeter and former Chicagoan Jacob Wick seems almost nonchalant about his stylistic range, technical skill, and conceptual curiosity—all of which would be impressive in a player twice his age. He's just as confident and musically generous playing brisk postbop with the trio White Rocket as he is exploring the outer reaches of extended technique on a jarring 2008 duo album with percussionist Andy Greenwald, 37:55 (Creative Sources). Wick graduated from New York's Purchase College a couple years ago and then settled in Brooklyn, and since October he's been on a one-man tour of the country called "Road Trip: Drawing a Perimeter of the United States" that has included a stay of more than three weeks in Chicago. (He gets back home January 28.) He'll open this concert with Swarm, a solo piece that he says "focuses on breaking down the trumpet into its constituent parts: air, spit, metal, song." He's posted several performances of the piece atjacobwick.info, and you can indeed hear all those elements in isolation: wet and dry breath sounds, the clanking of valves, streaks and tangles of notes, even some wordless vocals. Of course "song" is hardly an absolute term, and Wick has a penchant for abstraction that puts him in league with radical horn blowers like Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, and Greg Kelley. Closing the show is the set-length piece This Is It, for which Wick will be joined by keyboardist Paul Giallorenzo, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and vocalist Carol Genetti. The score consists of nothing but a few written instructions: "Improvise; when it's over (for you), say: 'This is it' over and over again, continue repeating until you are uncomfortable, then, get over it, repeat until the end." —Peter Margasak