Keyboardist and synthesizer specialist Jim Baker has led the collective quartet Extraordinary Popular Delusions playing every Monday night in obscure Chicago venues for the past 13 years. My article on EPD, which features saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (they switch off), multi-instrumentalist (bass, guitar, trumpet) Brian Sandstrom and percussionist/drummer Steve Hunt — all of whom have extensive creative music experience — was published today in the Chicago Reader — which I last wrote for in the 1980s.
Photos here by Marc PoKempner, from the free-form improv ensemble’s current regular gig, in the upstairs loft of the Beat Kitchen (they start around 9 pm, usually end by 11). No cover, no minimum (they put out a tip jazz), no limits — same as their interactive performance as part of painter Lewis Achenbach’s Jazz Occurrence at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, 6 pm. on January 24. See you there?