ROB MAZUREK ON CHICAGO UNDERGROUND DUO'S CONCERT AT THE 42ND BELGRADE JAZZ FESTIVAL: "EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!"

Rob Mazurek, American trumpeter, composer and multidisciplinary artist, and drummer Chad Taylor, two legends of the American music scene, will perform as Chicago Underground Duo on 22 October at 9 pm in the Main Hall of the Belgrade Youth Centre, as part of the 42nd Belgrade Jazz Festival.

Built on Mazurek and Taylor's long-standing musical dialogue, the duo explores the space between jazz, electronics and free improvisation, creating a sound that defies genre boundaries. Through improvisation, electronics and elements drawn from diverse musical traditions, they connect the experience of the Chicago scene with a forward-looking vision. After an eleven-year hiatus, Chicago Underground Duo returned in 2025 with the album "Hyperglyph", continuing to explore unpredictable sonic structures and new possibilities for making music together. Ahead of their Belgrade concert, Rob Mazurek discusses an artistic approach that brings different disciplines together, creative dialogue and music shaped by an ongoing quest for the unknown.

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Your work has always moved between jazz, electronic music, improvisation and visual art. What continues to attract you to combining such different forms of expression, and how does that approach shape the music you make today?

Rob Mazurek: I consider myself an Abstractivist. For me, sound, painting, sculpture, film, poetry, and architecture are not separate disciplines but interconnected possibilities within a unified field of artistic exploration. I am interested in distilling things to their intrinsic essence, discovering the hidden relationships between seemingly disparate elements, and creating something that did not previously exist.

A sound can become a drawing, a drawing can become a painting, a painting can become a sound, and that sound can become an entirely new architecture of perception. It is an ongoing process of transformation, displacement, and discovery. I am interested in the space between things. The unknown. The possibility of creating new perceptual realities. My work today is increasingly concerned with the dissolution of boundaries, where all these elements coexist and inform one another in a continuous state of becoming.

Chicago Underground Duo has been active for more than two decades, yet the project continues to evolve. What keeps the musical dialogue between the two of you open and unpredictable after so many years of playing together?

Rob Mazurek: Chad and I have been making music together for nearly thirty years. There is an extraordinary level of trust and understanding between us, but equally important is our willingness to disrupt that understanding. We are constantly listening, questioning, challenging, and discovering. Neither of us is interested in repeating what we have already accomplished. The music must continue to move into unknown territory.

There is something very powerful about two individuals who have developed a profound musical language together but remain completely open to dismantling that language at any moment. The dialogue remains alive because we are still curious. We are still searching. We are still willing to fail in order to discover something extraordinary.

Improvisation is at the heart of your music, but there is also a strong sense of structure and composition. How do you find the balance between what is prepared and what emerges in the moment?

Rob Mazurek: I don't necessarily see composition and improvisation as opposing forces. They are different manifestations of the same creative energy. A composition can be a constellation of possibilities rather than a fixed set of instructions. It can suggest a direction, a density, a color, a gravitational center, but the actual realization exists in the moment of performance.

I am interested in structures that breathe, expand, collapse, and regenerate. The unexpected is essential. Sometimes the most profound discoveries occur when a composition begins to disintegrate and something entirely unforeseen emerges. The balance is not something I consciously calculate. It is something that reveals itself through deep listening, intuition, and the collective intelligence of the moment.

Chicago Underground Duo has developed a sound that is difficult to place within a single genre. Do you still think in terms of genres when creating music, or have those boundaries become less relevant to you?

Rob Mazurek: Genres are useful for organizing record stores, but they have very little to do with the actual act of creation.

I have never been particularly interested in adhering to stylistic categories. My work is concerned with sound, form, energy, perception, and the possibility of transformation. Jazz, electronic music, contemporary classical music, noise, ritual, silence: these are all materials, histories, and possibilities that can coexist without hierarchy. The idea of Abstractivism is inherently borderless. It is about inclusion rather than exclusion. I want the music to exist on its own terms, without the limitations imposed by predetermined classifications.

What matters is whether the work illuminates something previously unseen or unheard.

You have performed at the Belgrade Jazz Festival before. Do you remember anything from that visit or from the audience and atmosphere in Belgrade? What comes to mind when you think back to that performance?

Rob Mazurek: I have always felt a strong connection to audiences who are willing to enter the unknown with the artist. There is a particular energy that develops when people listen with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to experience something outside their expectations.

What stays with me from performances is often less about specific details and more about the exchange of energy between the performers and the audience. That exchange can transform a concert into something much larger than the individuals involved.

I look forward to returning to Belgrade and continuing that conversation.

What can the Belgrade audience expect from your performance at this year's festival, and what are you looking forward to bringing to the stage this time?

Rob Mazurek: Expect the unexpected.

Chad and I will be bringing music from our most recent recording, "Hyperglyph", alongside other compositions and spontaneous constructions that may emerge during the performance. We are interested in creating an immersive sonic experience where rhythm, melody, electronics, silence, and raw physical energy coexist and transform one another.

Every performance is an opportunity to enter a new dimension of possibility. We are not interested in reproducing a recording or presenting something predetermined. We want to create an experience that can only exist in that particular space, with those particular people, at that particular moment.

Something alive, unpredictable, and perhaps even revelatory.

The 42nd Belgrade Jazz Festival takes place from 21 to 24 October at the Belgrade Youth Center, presenting 13 concerts by leading international and Serbian artists, followed by a closing jam session. This year, 12 ensembles are making their Belgrade Jazz Festival debut, spanning a wide range of styles, from blues, bebop and post-punk to hip-hop, R&B, neo-soul, flamenco, Latin, funk, mainstream jazz and avant-garde.

The festival is organized by the Belgrade Youth Center. Patrons of the 42nd Belgrade Jazz Festival are the City of Belgrade – City Administration – Secretariat for Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia. Friends of the festival are SOKOJ and DPC Networks. The festival is supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in Belgrade, Instituto Cervantes, the Embassy of Portugal and Instituto Camões, Zbigniew Seifert Foundation and Mid Atlantic Arts. The festival’s creative concept and visual identity are by McCann Belgrade.