I’ve been writing about music since 1975, early on publishing classical music reviews in the Chicago Reader and jazz reviews in Down Beat. Over the years, covering classical music and jazz simultaneously, I’ve written for Fugue and Coda (Canadian magazines), Tempo and The Wire (both England), the American Record Guide and Point of Departure (an online publication—where I’m currently a regular columnist), to mention just a few. I’ve been a Fanfare contributor since 1991—oops, make that 1990. Glad I double-checked. From 1981–88, I was editor of Down Beat magazine. I’ve written liner notes for over 200 jazz and classical recordings. And I’m very proud to say that I was a founding member—and was elected the first president—of the Jazz Journalists Association.

Outside of the critical arena, I’ve produced 31 recordings, including three on which I arranged the music and conducted the ensembles: three compositions by Anthony Braxton, Cornelius Cardew’s Material, and Cardew’s Treatise (the premiere recording of the complete 193-page graphic score). For 25 years I served on the programming committee of the Chicago Jazz Festival, and was the committee’s chairman from 2001 through 2007. (I won’t mention the bar band—okay, The Tirebiters; extra points if you can cite the origin of the name—which I played in nearly half of my life ago.)

I’ve been teaching poetry (and occasionally, criticism) at Columbia College, Chicago, for a couple of decades now (tempus freakin’ fugit), and several years back I coedited (with Nathaniel Mackey) Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose, an anthology published by Coffee House Press (and still in print). I’ve done lots of other things since I turned 21, but we needn’t go into all that.