Mai Sugimoto
Fred Jackson
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
Our friends at Asian Improv aRts Midwest once again bring their AIRMW Arts Initiative to Elastic Arts for a special performance from the woodwind trio Hunsinger/Jackson/Sugimoto. Join us!
$20 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
Artist Bios
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and educator. She performs with Eastern and Western oboes, single reeds and fiddle often incorporating reactive visuals, micro-controlled motors and hacked game controllers. Her interactive art weaves original music and new media into playable environments using sculpture, projections, sensors and motors, creating frameworks for compelling sensory exploration. Conservatory trained as an oboist, she toured internationally as a classical and avant-garde instrumentalist with a career that includes concerts, tours and a Grammy with the Chicago Symphony and performances with the Atlanta Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera, Marlboro Music Festival, the Chicago Jazz Festival, FMP Festival, the Chicago World Music Festival and SXSW. She has played with Evan Parker, toured with Michael Vorfeld, studied with Roscoe Mitchell and her Trio album with Joseph Jarman and Tatsu Aoki received 4 stars from Downbeat Magazine. Her interactive installations have been written up in Make Magazine, supported by the NEA and exhibited at the MCA, ISEA and Thomas Blackman Gallery. This year she was selected to participate in the Chicago International Puppet Festival's Puppet Lab cohort and has active duet projects with Tatsu Aoki and Tim Daisy with soon to be released recordings. She is an environmental and animal activist and founded the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. You can find out more about her @robbiehunsinger on FB & IG and at robbiehunsinger.com
Fred Jackson Jr. (he, him, El) was born in 1974 in Fort Worth, Texas. After high school he would attend Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. where he would study with his mentor Alvin Batiste becoming the first graduate of Batiste’s AA in Jazz studies. After graduating with a BA in music performance in 1999, he would moved to Chicago, IL. In 2010 he became a member of AACM. Performed with The A.A.C.M. and Saalik Zyiad on Poznań, Poland on a “Made in Chicago” tour. He traveled to Germany was with the AACM New Generations ensemble (under the direction of Ben Lamar Gaye). He was in the first inaugural band of “The Bridge” that played at the MCA in 2010. Since then because of the the Bridge, has toured France in 2017 with that same ensemble. He went back to school in 2012 - 14 and received his Masters in Jazz studies from DePaul where he studied with Mark Colby, Dana Hall, Dr Robert Lark Tom Matta (composition) and many other professors. . Also He studied extensively the music of the African diaspora for ten years, “Magic Carpet (band) allowed me the opportunity to study music from all over the world”.
Besides his musical ventures into theatre with “American Myth Crossroads” (Jerrell L. Henderson) and “Little Carl” (Michael Montenegro) Jackson is currently working with Sitarist (Shanta Nuerulla of AACM), Mai Sugimoto Quartet, The Great Black Music Ensemble (AACM), Heliacal Rising Of Sothis (Adam Zanolini), his own ensembles Erudition Project and
experimental ensemble “Where’s Charlie”? Spacetonic Music is his music publishing label created in 2017. He was awarded the 2020-21 “Fresh Works, New Voices” grant from the Jazz Institute of Chicago. This grant was an opportunity record two albums one improvised and one of original compositions. Genre (released in 2022). Also Jackson founded the group Double
Helix Quartet with a self titled album (recorded in 2022 and released In 2024). The latest albums where you can find Fred Jackson Jr’s sound would be on Erez Dessel’s “Look Both Days” and Lily Finnegan’s “Heat On.” More releases to come from Fred’s group “Where’s Charlie”? in 2025.
Mai Sugimoto is a saxophonist, composer, educator, and active member of Chicago's jazz and creative music scene. Born/Raised, her debut album (Asian Improv Records, 2018), explores this cultural and musical binary, juxtaposing her Japanese upbringing with the American jazz idiom. Sugimoto is a core member of the quartet Hanami, whose two albums similarly mix Japanese culture into creative music. Sugimoto has performed five times at the Chicago Jazz Festival: in 2015 with Hanami, in 2019, 2022, and 2024 as a leader, and in 2018 and 2022 with renowned bassist Tatsu Aoki, with whom she frequently plays, including appearances in his Fred Anderson Legacy Band. Her first solo album, monologue (Asian Improv Records) was released in March of 2021. Sugimoto’s work also appears on Natural Information Society’s album, Since Time Is Gravity (Eremite, 2023). Of her latest album, Sunlight filtering Through Leaves (Asian Improv Records, 2024), music critic Peter Margasak writes that “[the album] conveys that singular joy of good improvised music, when it’s not about ripping solos but group unity. Naturally, I’m advising you all to pay close attention to Sugimoto from here on out.” "