​​ABOUT THE TATSU AOKI COLLECTION at EXPERIMENTAL SOUND STUDIO

In 2024, longtime Japanese-born, Chicago-based musician and arts organizer Tatsu Aoki shared a part of his collection documenting legendary jazz musician and venue owner Fred Anderson to Experimental Sound Studio’s Creative Audio Archive, in joint ownership with Asian Improv Arts Midwest. This concentrated collection of over 60 items spans 1998-2000 and documents an important period in Fred Anderson’s career and in Chicago jazz and improvised music, as well as the little studied connection between the Chicago jazz and Japanese music scenes.

 

These items consist primarily of live recordings from 99-2002 of The Fred Anderson Trio at The Velvet Lounge, as well as a handful of VHS tapes from live shows. They are being cataloged and preserved by the Creative Audio Archive at ESS, and made publicly available for listening and research.

 

The featured concert below features archival footage that documents a live performance by the Fred Anderson Trio in Osaka in 1999.

 

Funded by a Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation Broadening Narratives grant, this series is part of a larger initiative by ESS to share many of the materials and recordings in the Creative Audio Archive more widely through first person narratives and contemporary artistic engagement with its ten collections. Our goal is to celebrate these unique, often singular recordings as part of the historical canon and as generative, living materials with the power to inspire new work for generations to come.
 

Listen to a selection of the digitized recordings on Soundcloud

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ABOUT THE CREATIVE AUDIO ARCHIVE
ESS’s Creative Audio Archive (CAA) currently houses ten collections of 7,000+ recordings and sonic art ephemera documenting the experimental music landscape of the latter half of the 20th century (Chicago focus). The collections provide a look into pivotal decades in the development of Western experimental cultural expression, the evolution of race and gender in independent cultural production, and the evolving interdisciplinarity in sonic cultures.

 

ABOUT ESS

Experimental Sound Studio is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization dedicated to artistic evolution and the creative exploration of sound. As an international hub for sonic experimentation, ESS nurtures artists, heralds new works, and builds a broad, supportive community of makers, enthusiasts, and creative partners through production, presentation, education, and preservation.