Biography
Rob Mazurek began as a cornetist grounded in blues-inflected hard bop yet has sustained a reputation as both an unpredictable improviser and a restless conceptual thinker while also maintaining a parallel practice as a visual artist. He helped establish the Chicago Underground collectives and went on to launch Exploding Star Orchestra, the forward-looking fusion unit Isotope 217, and the exploratory São Paulo Underground. His first outing as a leader arrived with the 1995 album Badlands, recorded alongside Eric Alexander, after which he issued a series of bold statements with the Chicago Underground ensembles. The 2002 solo cornet recording Silver Spines, multiple Exploding Star Orchestra sessions featuring Bill Dixon and Roscoe Mitchell, and two further International Anthem projects—Alternate Moon Cycles from 2014 and 2016’s Alien Flower Sutra with Emmett Kelly—kept his various artistic impulses in equilibrium. Dimensional Stardust, widely praised upon release, surfaced in 2020. After several archival live documents appeared on Rogue Art and Clean Feed, Exploding Star Orchestra resurfaced in April 2023 with Lightning Dreamers. July brought New Future City Radio, a multimedia project with Damon Locks issued by International Anthem, followed in 2024 by Rob Mazurek & Exploding Star Orchestra’s Live at the Adler Planetarium on the same label.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1965, Mazurek relocated with his family to the Chicago region before his teenage years and first took up the cornet in a school band at age ten. A short-lived switch to trumpet gave way to a permanent return to the smaller instrument. After high-school graduation he enrolled at Chicago’s Bloom School of Jazz. His earliest professional work in the city came alongside pianist Kenny Prince and drummer Yoron Israel. Formative listening centered on the hard-bop core of Blue Note Records, especially the trumpet styles of Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham, and Freddie Hubbard. Within that framework he assembled his initial quartet, completed by drummer George Fludas, bassist John Webber, and pianist Randolph Tressler. In 1993 the group secured a month-long engagement at Edinburgh’s Tron Tavern & Ceilidh House that coincided with the entire run of the Fringe Festival. Although the repertoire remained largely conventional, the performances proved successful, and the following year the quartet received an offer from Scotland’s Hep label. The resulting recordings, 1994’s Man Facing East and 1995’s Badlands, documented the ensemble’s strength.
Mazurek nevertheless sensed an emerging direction. Exposure to Ornette Coleman, cornetist Don Cherry, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago began to reshape his approach, soon supplemented by the open-form work of Henry Threadgill, Bill Dixon, and Leo Smith. By the time Green & Blue appeared in 1996, he recognized the constraints of his quartet format. That same year he inaugurated the Chicago Underground as a weekly Sunday workshop at the Green Mill. Guitarist Jeff Parker became the first regular participant; bassist Noel Kupersmith and drummer Chad Taylor soon joined the circle, establishing a stable core that later expanded to include trombonist Sara Smith under the Chicago Underground Orchestra name. Their 1998 Delmark debut, Playground, connected the project to Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians lineage through the historic label.
Several satellite groups emerged from the Chicago Underground orbit: a duo with Taylor, a trio with Kupersmith, and a quartet with Parker. Parker’s earlier move into Tortoise’s loft space fostered an ongoing exchange between experimental jazz and rock circles that broadened Mazurek’s sonic palette. Subsequent guest appearances placed his cornet on Tortoise’s TNT, Gastr del Sol’s Camoufleur, Stereolab’s Cobra and Phases Group, and Sam Prekop’s first solo album. This cross-pollination directly prompted the formation of Isotope 217 in 1997. The sextet—comprising Mazurek, Parker, Smith, bassist Matt Lux, and Tortoise members Dan Bitney and John Herndon—blended jazz phrasing, funk drive, hip-hop minimalism, and electronic textures. Its three albums—The Unstable Molecule (1998), Utonian Automatic (1999), and Who Stole the I Walkman? (2000)—appeared in rapid succession.
Concurrently, Chicago Underground releases such as Synesthesia and Possible Cube moved toward abstract sound. Mazurek’s growing interest in Morton Feldman, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and painters such as Mark Rothko informed these developments. Near the turn of the century he also pursued laptop-based musique concrète through the Orton Socket project. Relocating from the United States to São Paulo, Brazil, Mazurek extended his reach through tours and recordings with São Paulo Underground, Exploding Star Orchestra, and the trio Tigersmilk. Exploding Star Orchestra shared a bill with Bill Dixon at the Chicago Jazz Festival, where each composer presented a new extended work; Dixon’s piece marked his first large-scale use of a video score. The partnership yielded the 2008 studio album Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra on Thrill Jockey, Dixon’s final recording.
In 2010 Mazurek completed Boca Negra with the Chicago Underground Duo, Stars Have Eyes with Exploding Star Orchestra (both on Thrill Jockey), and the solo Calma Gente. He introduced the Starlicker trio—vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and drummer John Herndon—on Delmark’s Double Demon. São Paulo Underground issued its third album, Tres Cabeças Loucuras, on Cuneiform. The Chicago Underground Duo retained priority status, releasing Age of Energy in spring 2012. January 2013 saw Cuneiform issue Skull Sessions by the Rob Mazurek Octet, which drew personnel from Starlicker, São Paulo Underground, and flutist Nicole Mitchell. April brought The Space Between, a Delmark collaboration between the Exploding Star Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and videographer Marianne M. Kim. The following year Northern Spy released the Chicago Underground Duo’s Locus. After his mother’s death, Mazurek recorded the elegiac Return the Tides with the expanded Black Cube SP lineup of São Paulo Underground; Cuneiform issued the album in 2014. A concert document, Galactic Parables, Vol. 1, followed in 2015.
Rogue Art released two further projects: Exploding Star Orchestra’s Matter Anti-Matter, spotlighting Roscoe Mitchell, and the duo recording Some Jellyfish Live Forever with Jeff Parker. International Anthem issued Alien Flower Sutra, a song cycle with Emmett Kelly of the Cairo Gang, in spring 2016; October saw the fifth São Paulo Underground album, Cantos Invisiveis. Two 2017 solo statements—Rome on Clean Feed and Mother Ode on Corbett vs. Dempsey—featured Mazurek on every instrument. Also that year Clean Feed released Chants & Corners, credited to an electro-acoustic quintet. In 2018 Mazurek and Christophe Rocher co-led the sixteen-piece Third Coast Ensemble (including Tomeka Reid, Mitchell, and Parker) on the Rogue Art album Wrecks. The 2019 concert recording Age of Chaos captured a 2018 duo performance with tenor saxophonist Cene Resnik at Slovenia’s 23rd Jazz Cerkno Festival, where Mazurek played piccolo trumpet.
International Anthem released Dimensional Stardust in fall 2020; the work, scored for Exploding Star Orchestra, was performed by Mazurek and an ensemble that included vocalist Damon Locks of Black Monument Ensemble, guitarist Jeff Parker, vibraphonist Joel Ross, flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer John Herndon. January 2021 brought Instant Opaque Evening from Corbett vs. Dempsey, documenting 2020 live sets by the Underflow trio with guitarist David Grubbs and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Rogue Art issued the solo piccolo-trumpet album All Distances Inform in January 2022, recorded at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, where Mazurek resides amid permanent installations by Donald Judd and John Chamberlain.
March 2023 saw International Anthem release Lightning Dreamers, a reduced Exploding Star Orchestra configuration featuring Jeff Parker, keyboardists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn, drummer Gerald Cleaver, flutist Nicole Mitchell, electronicist/vocalist Damon Locks, and guests percussionist Mauricio Takara of São Paulo Underground and synth-bassist Cathlene Pineda; the sessions had been tracked at Sonic Ranch Studio in Marfa during summer 2021. Later that July the label issued New Future City Radio, a conceptual collaboration with Damon Locks that incorporated guests Takara and Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange). The eighteen-track, mixtape-structured set explored notions of pirate radio, community, transformation, and futurity. In March 2023 Mazurek and a nonet version of Exploding Star Orchestra—including Mitchell, Cleaver, Reid, Sanchez, and others—performed Mazurek’s music beneath a dome projection of his abstract paintings at the Adler Planetarium’s Grainger Sky Theater; director Brian Ashby filmed the event for the documentary Charles Stepney: Out of the Shadows. International Anthem issued the concert recording in September 2024, with the film premiering the following day at Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1965, Mazurek relocated with his family to the Chicago region before his teenage years and first took up the cornet in a school band at age ten. A short-lived switch to trumpet gave way to a permanent return to the smaller instrument. After high-school graduation he enrolled at Chicago’s Bloom School of Jazz. His earliest professional work in the city came alongside pianist Kenny Prince and drummer Yoron Israel. Formative listening centered on the hard-bop core of Blue Note Records, especially the trumpet styles of Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham, and Freddie Hubbard. Within that framework he assembled his initial quartet, completed by drummer George Fludas, bassist John Webber, and pianist Randolph Tressler. In 1993 the group secured a month-long engagement at Edinburgh’s Tron Tavern & Ceilidh House that coincided with the entire run of the Fringe Festival. Although the repertoire remained largely conventional, the performances proved successful, and the following year the quartet received an offer from Scotland’s Hep label. The resulting recordings, 1994’s Man Facing East and 1995’s Badlands, documented the ensemble’s strength.
Mazurek nevertheless sensed an emerging direction. Exposure to Ornette Coleman, cornetist Don Cherry, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago began to reshape his approach, soon supplemented by the open-form work of Henry Threadgill, Bill Dixon, and Leo Smith. By the time Green & Blue appeared in 1996, he recognized the constraints of his quartet format. That same year he inaugurated the Chicago Underground as a weekly Sunday workshop at the Green Mill. Guitarist Jeff Parker became the first regular participant; bassist Noel Kupersmith and drummer Chad Taylor soon joined the circle, establishing a stable core that later expanded to include trombonist Sara Smith under the Chicago Underground Orchestra name. Their 1998 Delmark debut, Playground, connected the project to Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians lineage through the historic label.
Several satellite groups emerged from the Chicago Underground orbit: a duo with Taylor, a trio with Kupersmith, and a quartet with Parker. Parker’s earlier move into Tortoise’s loft space fostered an ongoing exchange between experimental jazz and rock circles that broadened Mazurek’s sonic palette. Subsequent guest appearances placed his cornet on Tortoise’s TNT, Gastr del Sol’s Camoufleur, Stereolab’s Cobra and Phases Group, and Sam Prekop’s first solo album. This cross-pollination directly prompted the formation of Isotope 217 in 1997. The sextet—comprising Mazurek, Parker, Smith, bassist Matt Lux, and Tortoise members Dan Bitney and John Herndon—blended jazz phrasing, funk drive, hip-hop minimalism, and electronic textures. Its three albums—The Unstable Molecule (1998), Utonian Automatic (1999), and Who Stole the I Walkman? (2000)—appeared in rapid succession.
Concurrently, Chicago Underground releases such as Synesthesia and Possible Cube moved toward abstract sound. Mazurek’s growing interest in Morton Feldman, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and painters such as Mark Rothko informed these developments. Near the turn of the century he also pursued laptop-based musique concrète through the Orton Socket project. Relocating from the United States to São Paulo, Brazil, Mazurek extended his reach through tours and recordings with São Paulo Underground, Exploding Star Orchestra, and the trio Tigersmilk. Exploding Star Orchestra shared a bill with Bill Dixon at the Chicago Jazz Festival, where each composer presented a new extended work; Dixon’s piece marked his first large-scale use of a video score. The partnership yielded the 2008 studio album Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra on Thrill Jockey, Dixon’s final recording.
In 2010 Mazurek completed Boca Negra with the Chicago Underground Duo, Stars Have Eyes with Exploding Star Orchestra (both on Thrill Jockey), and the solo Calma Gente. He introduced the Starlicker trio—vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and drummer John Herndon—on Delmark’s Double Demon. São Paulo Underground issued its third album, Tres Cabeças Loucuras, on Cuneiform. The Chicago Underground Duo retained priority status, releasing Age of Energy in spring 2012. January 2013 saw Cuneiform issue Skull Sessions by the Rob Mazurek Octet, which drew personnel from Starlicker, São Paulo Underground, and flutist Nicole Mitchell. April brought The Space Between, a Delmark collaboration between the Exploding Star Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and videographer Marianne M. Kim. The following year Northern Spy released the Chicago Underground Duo’s Locus. After his mother’s death, Mazurek recorded the elegiac Return the Tides with the expanded Black Cube SP lineup of São Paulo Underground; Cuneiform issued the album in 2014. A concert document, Galactic Parables, Vol. 1, followed in 2015.
Rogue Art released two further projects: Exploding Star Orchestra’s Matter Anti-Matter, spotlighting Roscoe Mitchell, and the duo recording Some Jellyfish Live Forever with Jeff Parker. International Anthem issued Alien Flower Sutra, a song cycle with Emmett Kelly of the Cairo Gang, in spring 2016; October saw the fifth São Paulo Underground album, Cantos Invisiveis. Two 2017 solo statements—Rome on Clean Feed and Mother Ode on Corbett vs. Dempsey—featured Mazurek on every instrument. Also that year Clean Feed released Chants & Corners, credited to an electro-acoustic quintet. In 2018 Mazurek and Christophe Rocher co-led the sixteen-piece Third Coast Ensemble (including Tomeka Reid, Mitchell, and Parker) on the Rogue Art album Wrecks. The 2019 concert recording Age of Chaos captured a 2018 duo performance with tenor saxophonist Cene Resnik at Slovenia’s 23rd Jazz Cerkno Festival, where Mazurek played piccolo trumpet.
International Anthem released Dimensional Stardust in fall 2020; the work, scored for Exploding Star Orchestra, was performed by Mazurek and an ensemble that included vocalist Damon Locks of Black Monument Ensemble, guitarist Jeff Parker, vibraphonist Joel Ross, flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer John Herndon. January 2021 brought Instant Opaque Evening from Corbett vs. Dempsey, documenting 2020 live sets by the Underflow trio with guitarist David Grubbs and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Rogue Art issued the solo piccolo-trumpet album All Distances Inform in January 2022, recorded at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, where Mazurek resides amid permanent installations by Donald Judd and John Chamberlain.
March 2023 saw International Anthem release Lightning Dreamers, a reduced Exploding Star Orchestra configuration featuring Jeff Parker, keyboardists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn, drummer Gerald Cleaver, flutist Nicole Mitchell, electronicist/vocalist Damon Locks, and guests percussionist Mauricio Takara of São Paulo Underground and synth-bassist Cathlene Pineda; the sessions had been tracked at Sonic Ranch Studio in Marfa during summer 2021. Later that July the label issued New Future City Radio, a conceptual collaboration with Damon Locks that incorporated guests Takara and Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange). The eighteen-track, mixtape-structured set explored notions of pirate radio, community, transformation, and futurity. In March 2023 Mazurek and a nonet version of Exploding Star Orchestra—including Mitchell, Cleaver, Reid, Sanchez, and others—performed Mazurek’s music beneath a dome projection of his abstract paintings at the Adler Planetarium’s Grainger Sky Theater; director Brian Ashby filmed the event for the documentary Charles Stepney: Out of the Shadows. International Anthem issued the concert recording in September 2024, with the film premiering the following day at Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival.
Albums
