Chicago Reed Quartet S Posthumous Debut Reminds Us Of What We Re Missing

• Dave Zuchowski
• Chicago Reed Quartet

Last year the Chicago Reed Quartet, one of the city’s most potent and promising new improvised-music ensembles, disbanded suddenly after Ken Vandermark quit in the fall; he also shut down his spectacular Audio One at the same time, essentially withdrawing from his two main Chicago-based projects. Before the group fell apart it had been rehearsing and developing its repertoire, and last August it spent an afternoon recording at the Hungry Brain for a debut album. Thankfully, on Western Automatic the unit’s rich, contrapuntal power (released by ensemble member Dave Rempis on his Aerophonic label) is memorialized.

Vadim Neselovskyi, Music for September (Sunnyside)Hobart Smith, In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (Smithsonian Folkways)Luke Bedford, Wonderful Two-Headed Nightingale (Col Legno)Al Bilali Soudan, Al Bilali Soudan (Clermont Music)Paco de Lucia, El Duende Flamenco de Paco de Lucia (Philips, Spain)