New Dreams, New Masters

Since 2015, the Paris-born Makaya McCraven, has been redefining the genres of jazz music with his unique brand of organic beat music.  Raised in New England and a long-time Chicago resident, his breakout album, In The Moment, was culled, cut, post-produced and re-composed by McCraven. Using recordings of free improvisation he collected over dozens of live sessions in Chicago, In The Moment established a procedural blueprint that McCraven has since been sharpening and developing ever since. 

Now, after four-plus years of refining his approach, McCraven has produced an ambitious new work, Universal Beings, a culmination of the concepts conceived by In The Moment and his most elegant and articulated work yet. McCraven traveled to Los Angeles, New York, London, and back to Chicago to record gigs with a top tier of players, from Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming) and the AACM's Tomeka Reid to Jeff Parker and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.  He then edited excerpts of these sessions together, forming a globetrotting and style-shifting narrative that weaves in and out frames like a masterful mixtape or a well-written travelogue. Universal Beings projects an all-encompassing message of unity, peace and power by embracing transcendence in all its expressions. It's no surprise, then, to hear echoes of Alice Coltrane in the cut Mantra.

At this point, I doubt you'd be surprised to learn that McCraven will be performing next month at the Mill & Mine in Knoxville, Tennessee as a part of the Big Ears Festival.  In a cruel twist of fate, he's performing at the same time as the legendary Harold Budd at St. John's Cathedral and as Nils Frahm at the majestic Tennessee Theater. 

On the positive side, his set will be followed by Sons Of Kemet, also at the Mill & Mine, so there's that.