Dave Rempis, Pandelis Karayorgis, Bill Harris, Jakob Heinemann

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Cengiz Yar

Dave Rempis and sax.

Dave Rempis

BlueStem Jazz has dubbed this three-night stand at the Cabaret the Mini Music Fest, an appropriate appellation for a trio of top-line concerts. QUAD, a quartet fronted by Dave Cooper (trumpet) and Tom Gullion (sax), with percussionist Dane Richeson and bassist Mark Urness, takes the stage June 29 (7 p.m.); former Garaj Mahal guitarist Fareed Haque brings an ensemble on June 30 (8 p.m.); and a quartet of saxophonist Dave Rempis, pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, drummer Bill Harris, and bassist Jakob Heinemann visits July 1 (8 p.m.). While enjoying the panoply of free outdoor music festivals during the summer, don’t forget to also support our indoor venues who keep us entertained all year long.

BlueStem Jazz: Mini Music Fest.

media release: I should say at the outset that Pandelis Karayorgis is one of my favorite pianists - he takes the instrument one step beyond the innovations of Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor, while keeping the former's sense of space and the latter's dynamism and injecting a healthy dose of chromatic lyricism reminiscent of Andrew Hill. ... the whole thing swings like hell. ... "Centennial" - definitely my selection for Best Ballad of the year, in case anyone asks - looks at the Duke's "Frustration" through a melodic/harmonic kaleidoscope, with ravishing results.

      Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic 

Saxophonist, improviser, and composer Dave Rempis has been an integral part of the thriving Chicago jazz and improvised music scene since 1997.  With a background in ethnomusicology and African studies at Northwestern University, including a year spent at the University of Ghana, Rempis burst onto the creative music scene at the age of 22 when he was asked to join the now-legendary Chicago jazz outfit The Vandermark Five. This opportunity catapulted him to notoriety as he began to tour regularly throughout the US and Europe, an active schedule that he still maintains to the present day.  At the same time, Rempis began to develop the many Chicago-based groups for which he’s currently known, including The Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Engines, Ballister, Rempis/Abrams/Ra, Wheelhouse, Triage, The Rempis/Rosaly Duo, and The Rempis/Daisy Duo.  Other collaborations have included work with Paul Lytton, Fred Anderson, Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Tomeka Reid, Steve Swell, Elisabeth Harnik, John Tchicai, Roscoe Mitchell, Nate Wooley, Jaimie Branch, Jeff Parker, Paal Nilssen-Love, Nels Cline, and Joe McPhee.  In 2013, he started his own record label, Aerophonic Records, to document this ongoing work.  Rempis has been named regularly since 2006 in the annual Downbeat Critics’s Poll as a “rising star” on both alto and baritone saxophone, a category that he won in 2017.  He’s received funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jazz Road Touring sponsored by the Doris Duke and Andrew Mellon Foundations, the City of Chicago Individual Artist Program, and was the recipient of a Ragdale Fellowship from the Herb Alpert Foundation in 2017.

Jakob Heinemann is a bass player, composer and educator from Madison, Wisconsin. Taking up the bass at age 10, he has worked in professional contexts since age 13, performing all over the Midwest at venues such as the Fox Valley Performing Arts Center, the Trout Museum of Art, Chicago's Park West Theatre, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, and the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, in addition to a large majority of the jazz venues in Madison, Milwaukee and the Fox Valley area. These many years of playing experience have led him to work in a wide diversity of genres with many well-respected musicians, including Devin Drobka, Hal Rammel, Andrew Trim, Jon Deitemyer, Dane Richeson, Paul Hastil, and Qanun virtuoso Ali Paris. His recent projects include Indie-rock outfit Riverbug, the hip-hop/neo-soul collective Backpocket, and his ongoing original music jazz septet Good Trouble, in addition to work on his own music for quartet. Jakob graduated from Lawrence University with a degree in Double Bass Performance in 2017. His main mentors at Lawrence included Bill Carrothers, Matt Turner, Mark Urness, and Patty Darling.

Bill Harris is a percussionist, composer, improviser, and audio engineer from Pittsburgh currently based in Chicago. He also operates and produces for Amalgam, a Chicago-based label and collective, and co-operates Chicago recording studio Marmalade.

Bill is a Chicago-based drummer and improviser working at the fringes of improvisation, noise, rock, folk, and bluegrass. His work has been presented at places ranging from centers for improvised and creative music such as Elastic Arts, Constellation, and ESS; to vital rock and indie clubs such as The Empty Bottle, The Hideout, Evanston Space, Beat Kitchen, and Spot Tavern; to concert halls and centers for the arts such as Lincoln Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, Navy Pier, and The Chicago Museum Of Contemporary Art.

Some of his primary groups are Je'raf; an improvising trio with Jeff Kimmel and Ishmael Ali; Hearsay, with Allen Moore and Ishmael Ali; Joybird, with Jess McIntosh and Aaron Smith; and Errata, with Ishmael Ali and Eli Namay. Some of his most frequent collaborators include Ishmael Ali, Jake Wark, Carol Genetti, Emily Beisel, Allen Moore, Timothee Quost, Dave Rempis, Jim Baker, PT Bell, Gerrit Hatcher, Eli Namay, Peter Maunu, Matt Piet, Brianna Tong, Wills McKenna, David Fletcher, Jess McIntosh, Aaron Smith, Jeff Kimmel, Molly Jones, and Keefe Jackson.