Author Talk: John Corbett

John Corbett is a writer, curator, and music producer based in Chicago, where he is co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery. Since the mid 1980s, Corbett has been involved in contemporary jazz and improvised music, as a journalist, scholar, and presenter. In 2002, he was invited to serve as artistic director of JazzFest Berlin, in Germany, and he's worked to bridge European and American musical spheres, helping initiate bands such as saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet and coordinating a 16-piece Stockholm-Chicago project called Pipeline with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Corbett's interests extended far afield from jazz to include manifold popular and traditional musics. He's tapped this range in his recent book, Microgroove: Forays into Other Music (Duke University Press, 2015), a collection of more than 50 essays, articles, and interviews featuring figures from Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, and Sun Ra to Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, R.L. Burnside, and Helmut Lachenmann. Corbett will read from Microgroove, as well as his recent A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation (University of Chicago, 2016), the imminently forthcoming Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium (Duke U. Press, 2017), and a work-in-progress on the music of the 1970s.

Free; no ticket required.

Presented as part of the Bellwether series.