Recipient Information
Location
Chicago, Illinois
Medium
Jazz Saxophone & Composition
Year of Award
2020
Grant or Fellowship
Jazz Road Tours Grant
Grant Amount
$10,930
Performances
- The Mothlight. March 8, 2020. Asheville NC
- Central City New Music Series. (502) 383-3915. March 9, 2020. Huntington WV
- Outside The Spotlight. March 10, 2020. Lexington KY
- New Music Circle. March 11, 2020. St Louis MO
- Sugar Maple. March 13, 2020. Milwaukee WI
- Cafe Coda. March 14, 2020. Madison WI
About the Artist
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, and more.
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 was also the recipient of a Ragdale Fellowship from the Herb Alpert Foundation in 2017, as well as several Individual Artists Program grants from the City of Chicago.
Rempis’ musical expression draws on a number of touchstones. While heavily improvisational in nature, his Greek ethnicity, studies in jazz and ethnomusicology, an appreciation for the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary composition, and a love for unforgivingly strident yelps, screeches, and squeals that can encompass the ever-evolving state of human depravity all inform his work.