Chicago has always been one of the prime movers as far as all things jazz are concerned, from all the ‘classic’ jazz forms to those that border on other musical genres or go in any experimental direction you can imagine.
So it might be no wonder a prospective composer, drummer and producer like Jeremy Cunningham would move from Cincinnati to Chicago, collaborating and working with a myriad of different artists, and covering the complete musical ground that had even a remote connection with jazz. That covers his complete work so far, from early singles since 2015 to formally his first solo album, The Weather Up There, released in 2020, and A Better Ghost, that followed in 2022. For Passing Fires, his latest, you could say that there is no change in concept, but there is an audible change in quality.
Engaging a cast of Chicago’s current music scene, from Jeff Parker and Makaya McCraven to quite a few others, Cunningham again goes to cover as wide a musical ground that touches at some point with jazz. Yet his compositions seem to get more detailed (rather than complex) and can go anywhere from the jazz/post-rock combination of the opener of “Beyond the Veil” to a touching pop-connected ballad of the title track that includes touches of a family room recording.
With Passing Fires, Cunningham was able to come up with a varied, engaging set of jazz compositions that in many ways presents the state of current jazz.
