Exploding Star Orchestra

The Exploding Star Orchestra is one of several musical ensembles founded and led by cornetist, composer, and visual artist Rob Mazurek. The group's lineup revolves from project to project with musicians from several disciplines. Their debut was the 2007 suite We Are All from Somewhere Else. In 2008, Bill Dixon with the Exploding Star Orchestra showcased a collaboration with the vanguard trumpet legend. In 2013, ESO released The Space Between, credited to the Exploding Star Electro Acoustic Ensemble, and Matter Anti-Matter live with Roscoe Mitchell in 2009. ESO returned with a new lineup on 2020's Dimensional Stardust, and another on 2023's Lightning Dreamers. Mazurek founded the Exploding Star Orchestra in 2005 after an invitation from the Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute to assemble a contemporary avant-garde jazz ensemble for a Chicago concert. Mazurek assembled an orchestra of improvising Chicago musicians (including several members of Tortoise), rehearsed it, and when the dust settled, recorded an interlocking suite called We Are All from Somewhere Else. Telling a celestial story that combined stars, stingrays, electric eels, birds, phoenixes, and rockets (and featuring actual electric eel sounds recorded by Mazurek at a research facility), We Are All from Somewhere Else was performed more than a dozen times before it was recorded by John McEntire at his Soma Studio in Chicago and appeared on Chicago indie Thrill Jockey Records in 2007. Musicians in the Exploding Star Orchestra, at least at the time of their debut album, included Mazurek (cornet), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Jim Baker (piano), Corey Wilkes (flügelhorn), Jeff Parker (guitar), Matt Bauder (bass clarinet and tenor saxophone), Jeb Bishop (trombone), Josh Berman (cornet), Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), John McEntire (marimba and tubular bells), Matt Lux (electric bass), Jason Ajemian (acoustic bass), Mike Reed (drums, percussion, and saw), and John Herndon (drums). In 2008, Thrill Jockey released Bill Dixon with the Exploding Star Orchestra, a studio collaboration resulting in one of the legendary free jazz trumpeter's final recordings. (Dixon died in June of 2010 at age 84.) The album marked the departure of Wilkes and McEntire and the addition of vocalist Damon Locks of the Eternals. The lineup evolved again for 2010'as Stars Have Shapes, released by iconic Windy City jazz and blues label Delmark in 2010. Baker, Parker, Berman, and Ajemian had all departed, and the Exploding Star Orchestra added Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Greg Ward (alto saxophone), Carrie Biolo (gongs, temple blocks, vibes, percussion), and Jeff Kowalkowski (piano) in addition to mainstays Mazurek, Mitchell, Bauder, Bishop, Adasiewicz, Lux, Herndon, and Reed. Several versions of this group toured the U.S. and Europe. ESO remained with Delmark for 2013's The Space Between, an audio/video package credited to the Exploding Star Electro Acoustic Ensemble, with percussionist Mauricio Takara (also a member of Mazurek's Sao Paulo Underground) and samplist Guilherme Granado joining Herndon, Bauder, Mazurek, Locks, Mitchell, Biolo, and Kowalkowski. Later that year, France's Rogue Art label issued Matter Anti-Matter, a double length offering capturing a live date with Roscoe Mitchell in 2009, and a disc of Mazurek's solo electronic works. Following these releases, he relocated from Chicago to Marfa, Texas. In 2015, ESO and Cuneiform teamed for Galactic Parables, Vol. 1, a double-length live archival release recorded in Italy and Chicago two years earlier. Following the release and a few shows, Mazurek resumed an intense period of solo and small ensemble collaborative work. In 2016 he and guitarist/vocalist Emmett Kelly released Angel Flower Sutra on International Anthem, and over the next several years, Mazurek recorded the solo Chimeric Stoned Horn and Rome, and several duo and septet offerings for different labels before issuing the unaccompanied synth recordings Psychotropic Electric Eel Dreams IV, Love Waves Ecstatic Charge, and Desert Encrypts, Vol. 1, a quintet offering that included pianist Kris Davis, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and drummer Chad Taylor. Mazurek returned to Chicago in 2019 to gig, rehearse, and write. The folks at International Anthem coaxed him into a handful of sessions between August 2019 and March 2020, stopping only when the pandemic made it impossible to continue. His 11 collaborators included Mitchell, Parker, Jaimie Branch, Joel Ross, and Tomeka Reid. Further, Mazurek commissioned his longtime lyricist Damon Locks to draft original texts and record vocals for each title. After three months of rigorous post-production, editing, and assembly work, Mazurek and ESO issued the globally acclaimed Dimensional Stardust. Unable to tour despite the record's laudatory arrival, Mazurek contented himself with the releases of solo and session work he'd done during the previous couple of years. In 2018 and 2019 he recorded with a re-formed Chicago Underground Quartet (with Parker, Taylor, and keyboardist Josh Johnson), resulting in 2020's Good Days from Astral Spirits. In January 2021, the digital outing Instant Opaque Evening arrived, credited to the Underflow, an improv power trio with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and guitarist David Grubbs, who had assembled in a New York recording studio exactly a year before. That September, the U.K.'s Keroxen label released Saturno Mágico, an archival 2016 live collaboration between Sao Paolo Underground and experimental Spanish electronics trio Tupperware. The concert took place in a disused kerosene tank in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Over two days in September 2021, Mazurek assembled another incarnation of ESO in his Marfa, Texas studio before they went on to play the Trans Pecos Festival. The group included veterans Parker, Mitchell, and Locks alongside pianist Angelica Sanchez, Craig Taborn on synth and Wurlitzer, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. Takara and synth bassist Cathlene Pineda also assisted. The completed mixed and mastered recording was released as Lightning Dreamers in March 2023 by International Anthem.
© Thom Jurek & Steve Leggett /TiVo