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Michael Zerang

Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, 1958, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He am a professional musician, composer, producer, and educator since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.

As an ensemble member, he has worked in a concentrated fashion with several small and large groups over the years, contributing as a composer and performer, including Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Liof Munimula, Survival Unit III, Brötzmann/McPhee/Kessler/Zerang Quartet, Resonance Ensemble, Friction Brothers, Johannes Bauer Band, and The Winter Solstice Concerts with Hamid Drake – an annual event in Chicago since 1990.

As an instrumentalist and composer, he has over one hundreds titles in his discography, and have toured and performed nationally and internationally to 35 countries since 1981. He continues to work with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. He have also collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms.

He has received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Original Music for Theater in 1996 for Frankenstein, 1998 for The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny, and 2000 for Hunchback – all in collaboration with Chicago’s REDMOON THEATER.

As an arts activist, he has sat on the Board of Directors of several Chicago- based arts organizations including Links Hall, Experimental Sound Studio, Curious Theater Branch, and The Children’s School, as well as in an advisory capacity for The Elastic Arts Foundation.

He founded, and was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985 -1989 where I produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. He was a Board Member of Links Hall from 1989 - 2013. During this time, Links Hall moved from a small, artist-run volunteer organization, to a vital and long-standing laboratory for experimentation in the performing arts. Links Hall encourages artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development and presentation of new work in the performing arts.

He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at my own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 - 2005. All of these efforts at grass-roots activism yielded expanding opportunities for contemporary local, national and international artists in Chicago, and have added to the vibrant underground culture of the city. All of the concerts he produced at Links Hall and at Candlestick Maker have been documented on audio-tape and are available for scholars, researchers, and the public at the Creative Audio Archive at the Experimental Sound Studios in Chicago.

Awards

Joseph Jefferson Award for Original Music for Theater in 1996 for Frankenstein, 1998 for The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny, and 2000 for Hunchback – all in collaboration with Chicago’s REDMOON THEATER.


Tags

3
Album Review

The Chicago Plan: For New Zealand

Read "For New Zealand" reviewed by John Sharpe


German reedman Gebhard Ullmann and American trombonist Steve Swell, front line comrades for over 15 years in a variety of outfits, reunite on For New Zealand for the second release from their joint led initiative The Chicago Plan. Rounding out the foursome and providing some allusion to the band's moniker are the Windy City pairing of drummer Michael Zerang and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm (although the latter decamped to Kingston, NY in 2017 following a 22-year stay). They share deeper connections ...

8
Album Review

Dave Rempis / Elizabeth Harnik / Michael Zerang: Astragaloi

Read "Astragaloi" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Sometimes listening to free improvisational music is, truth be told, an act of social anthropology. Who is making music? How is the combination of individual instruments configured? Where are the musicians from? Maybe more significant, how has this musical society developed? Astragaloi from the trio of Dave Rempis, Elizabeth Harnik, and Michael Zerang could be a perfect study for scholars. It is Chicago (Rempis and Zerang) meets Graz, Austria (Harnik), but maybe more important, it is the evolution of the ...

2
Album Review

Elisabeth Harnik / Michael Zerang: Dream Disobedience

Read "Dream Disobedience" reviewed by John Sharpe


On Dream Disobedience American drummer Michael Zerang and Austrian pianist Elisabeth Harnik head way out left field, treating their instruments as noise generators in a duet captured live at the Sound Disobedience Festival, in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, in March 2019. Zerang may be best known as a member of Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet and one third of {Joe McPhee}}'s Survival Unit III, but he also plays with the likes of Ed Wilkerson, Hamid Drake and Steve ...

518
Liner Notes

Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet: 3 Days in Oslo

Read "Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet: 3 Days in Oslo" reviewed by Lloyd N. Peterson Jr.


We live during a time when society needs music in boxes, connected with dots; music that can be readily explained and even more readily understood. But Peter Brotzmann tears down the walls, rips apart the boxes and completely shatters any preconceived notions of what music is supposed to be. He understands the necessity of art being able to express from the soul and spirit of the artist, and that is a freedom fought for, one that is intensely fought for. ...

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32

Performance / Tour

Jazz This Week: Chucho Valdes, Robert Glasper, Ligertwood/Garfield/Stevens, Michael Zerang, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Bonerama, and More

Jazz This Week: Chucho Valdes, Robert Glasper, Ligertwood/Garfield/Stevens, Michael Zerang, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Bonerama, and More

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

It's definitely a busy week for live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with so many touring musicians in town that we can barely fit them all into the headline of this post. Let's go to the highlights... Tonight, singer Alex Ligertwood, who's worked with Santana and Brian Auger's Oblivion Express, will team up with keyboardist and St. Louis native David Garfield, who's currently working with George Benson, and saxophonist Jim Stevens for a show at BB's Jazz, Blues ...

101

Performance / Tour

Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang Whitney Museum of American Art Friday, February 24th at 7 pm

Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang Whitney Museum of American Art Friday, February 24th at 7 pm

Source: All About Jazz

Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang Kick Off the Whitney's 2006 Performance Line-up With The New York Premiere of their percussion project, Winter Dream

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 at 7 pm Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Avenue NYC 10021 212.671.8345 Free with pay-what-you-wish museum admission

Part concert, part theater, part sacred ritual, Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake--two of Chicago's most important composers/ percussionists--take the audience on a journey as primordial ...

Michael Zerang has a rich history of collaboration with these wonderful, Chicago-based musicians, in some cases dating back over 30 years. Their heady rhythms buttress and color the all-out assault of brass rupturing from Windy City heavies Rempis, Williams and Berman. Their first performance is a great indication, expect deep acid grooves in a potent decoction of World vernaculars. — Uncanned Music Chicaco

The intricate counter-point of massed horns versus bass on Bright Lights And Saucy Tights brings to mind J.S. Bach, while the syncopated cadences and earthy, low-end melody of Chicago Rub Down contain the potential for some serious funk. But this is still music for improvisers, and it won’t be complete until the last time these musicians play it. — Bill Meyer, Chicago Music

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Dan Phillips Quartet...

Lizard Breath Records
2023

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Astragaloi

Aerophonic Records
2022

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Escape from Dark...

Pink Palace
2022

buy

For New Zealand

NotTwo Records
2022

buy

Dream Disobedience

Not Two Records
2021

buy

3 Nights In Oslo

Catalytic Sound
2017

buy
https://pinkpalace.bandcamp.com

Welcome to the Red Island

From: For New Zealand
By Michael Zerang

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