This year, this momentous collaboration now spans two nights, and will include even more free concerts at the Chicago Cultural Center on Thursday, November 4. The Umbrella Music Festival continues at the regular venues over the weekend.

Lineups and schedules will be available the last week of August, but dozens of performers already have been confirmed.  Some of our favorites include Nicole Mitchell, Harrison Bankhead, Wadada Leo Smith, Tim Daisy, Mike Reed, Nick Broste, Charles Rumback, Keefe Jackson, Josh Berman, Josh Abrams, Jim Baker, Jason Stein, Jason Roebke, Devin Hoff, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Dave Rempis, and Frank Rosaly.

Check out www.umbrellamusic.org for announcements and updates.

Umbrella Music Festival:

11/3/2010 @ Chicago Cultural Center
11/4/2010 @ Chicago Cultural Center
11/5/2010 @ Elastic Arts
11/6/2010 @ The Hideout
11/7/2010 @ The Hungry Brain

To be fair, it’s not as if Bell made the transition from punk rocker to folk experimentalist overnight, out of nowhere. The multi-instrumentalist played bass in the seminal trance-inducing rock band Lungfish from 1996 to 2003. Even then, he says, the grit and twang of the indigenous music of the Maryland backwoods was seeping into his psyche.

“Growing up in rural Virginia, my father always had an interest in banjo music,” Bell says from his adopted hometown of Baltimore. “He gave me his banjo, but due to an introduction to punk and hardcore music in the early ’80s, I swayed more towards playing cheap electric guitars with way too much distortion rather than pursuing the folk music of banjo.”

It wasn’t until later in the ’90s that Bell began to find the call of his unique heritage overwhelming. Having recorded with more than a dozen disparate bands, including P.W. Long, Miighty Flashlight, and Television Hill, Bell says that he became engulfed with all facets of folk music, both domestic and foreign.

“As far as the style in which I write, the influence first came to me when my father took me to the house of a superb banjo player in Pennsylvania,” he says. “To my surprise, he was an expert on classical music on a five-string banjo."

The experience of seeing a talented musician stepping outside the normal confines of his instrument had an immense and lasting effect on the young Bell.

“This completely justified my frustrations of not being able to pick the Scruggs manner (a three-finger picking style) and to just ride down the river in my own raft of writing,” he says.

Bell’s education took another twist when he became friends with Peter Ross, a renowned builder and player of gourd banjos, a primitive instrument first made by slaves who formed the body of the banjo from a gourd. Ross has painstakingly researched both the construction and playing techniques associated with these once-forgotten but historically important instruments.

“It was from Pete that I learned the technique of frailing, otherwise known as the clawhammer technique,” Bell says.

Unlike the more widely used Scruggs picking style, the clawhammer uses a primarily downward picking motion. The hand, clenched into a claw, with the strumming index or middle finger kept stiff, strums the strings with a wrist motion rather than the flicking of the fingers. It’s an extremely rhythmic technique, and one that Bell employs to great effect in his most recent project, Brassa Bell.

Luciano Luis Valerio, owner of Brazil’s Desmonta Records, frequently brings foreign musicians, including Joe Lally (Fugazi), Jeff Parker (Tortoise) and Josh Abrams (Town & Country) to Brazil. Valerio heard Bell’s music and brought him to Brazil to play with Richard Ribero, Rogerio Martins, and himself — a group that would become Brassa Bell.

This hodgepodge grouping was instantly positive, according to Bell, who says that the group stumbled upon a new and bold musical form despite its members’ disjointed playing styles.

“The combination of electric banjo music with Brazilian rhythms has been a sound defining itself through us,” Bell says. “In other words, a completely coincidental collage of music, rhythms, and sounds."

Playing down-tuned dirge metal a la Pelican or Isis, Kylesa rumbles with crust punk, sludge, metal, hardcore, and psychedelia, often laced with atmospheric samples.  To date, Static Tensions is the group's most powerful album, a deliberately straightforward record that exemplifies the vibes of its title.

The group's trademark tri-vocal attack has been whittled down to two for this album, with guitarist Laura Pleasants adding clean vocals to her guttural screams.  Tracks like “Insomnia for Months” and “Almost Lost” bear a crushing weight akin to a sonic bulldozer; elsewhere, the music has shifted increasingly towards the psychedelic, such as “Perception” with its guitar freak-out ending.

Kylesa: "Almost Lost"
Kylesa: \"Almost Lost\"

Les Claypool: Of Fungi and Foe (Prawn Song)

Oddball bassist extraordinaire Les Claypool returns with his ever-shifting cast of collaborators for this follow-up to his 2006 album Of Whales and Woe.  Still vibrant and weird, Of Fungi and Foe is comprised of material penned in conjunction with his work on Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars, a bizarre new videogame, and Pig Hunt, a dark comic horror film.

This time around, the material is wonderfully accented by the active bow work of cellist Sam Bass, and percussionist Mike Dillon (Critters Buggin) reprises his role in the backing band.  Saxophonist Skerik (Critters Buggin) and sitar/theremin player Gabby La La have moved on, but the tunes are as idiosyncratic and engaging as ever.  Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hütz appears on "Bite Out of Life."

Melvin Gibbs' Elevated Entity: Ancients Speak (Livewired)

Funk/rock/jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs has worked with an array of notable musicians, including Femi Kuti, Vernon Reid, John Zorn, Jeff Parker, John Medeski, Bill Frisell, the Rollins Band, and more.  His work as a musician and producer has been as varied as the aforementioned artists and has included splashes into hip hop with DJ Logic and Dead Prez.

In this venture as bandleader, Gibbs expands his palette further with Ancients Speak, incorporating tastes of Brazilian hip hop and African Yoruba culture.  With Gibbs' vision and a lengthy list of collaborators, this album honors no musical demarcations, fusing the above genres with psychedelic jam rock and Afrobeat grooves.

Melvin Gibbs' Elevated Entity: "Ancients Speak"
Melvin Gibbs\' Elevated Entity: \"Ancients Speak\"

Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Beware (Drag City)

Continuing a prolific decade under his Bonnie "Prince" Billy moniker, Will Oldham issues another tome of harmonized folk with accents of Americana.  Beware is something of a compendium to Lie Down in the Light, Oldham's most recent full-length that was released just last May.

Performing in nonstandard capacities, a number of Chicago jazz luminaries provide accompaniment on Beware, which includes the services of Michael Zerang, Rob Mazurek, Nicole Mitchell, Josh Abrams, Dee Alexander, and many other notable musicians.

Chicago Afrobeat Project: Off the Grid EP

Following the late 2007 full-length (A) Move to Silent Unrest, this self-evidently named group mixes classic Afrobeat elements with bits of modern groove, organ-splashed post-jazz, and funk rock.  This EP features three new tracks as well as a remix of "Media Man," the third track from (A) Move to Silent Unrest.

Chicago Afrobeat Project: "(A Warm) Global Warning"
Chicago Afrobeat Project: \"(A Warm) Global Warning\"

Incorporating elements of traditional Mexican and Spanish music into his expansive repertoire, tireless composer John Zorn bangs out another soundtrack, this time for a documentary about Mexican dictator Plutarco Elias. Another accessible, beautiful release, El General is scored for guitar, marimba, bass, piano, and accordion, with drums and vibraphone showing up in spurts.

Mountains: Choral (Thrill Jockey)

Making its Thrill Jockey debut, this electro-acoustic duo creates acoustic melodies that breathe with the field recordings and electronics that surround them. Tranquil, crackling bits pile on layers of atmosphere; drones circle around extended passages and repetitive themes. The result is a serene album that is as apt for detached meditation as it is for intense musical focus.

Mountains: "Choral"
Mountains: \"Choral\"

Rob Mazurek Quintet: Sound Is (Delmark)

Following a solo release and albums from Sao Paulo Underground and Exploding Star Orchestra, jazz composer/cornetist Rob Mazurek returns with a new quintet. The group features a loaded lineup of Chicago standouts, including drummer John Herndon (Tortoise), vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz (Rolldown), acoustic bassist Josh Abrams (Black Earth Ensemble), and electric bassist Matthew Lux (Isotope 217).

With 14 new compositions, Sound Is sees Mazurek continuing to push the boundaries of modern jazz while using semi-traditional instruments.

Steven Wilson: Insurgentes (Kscope)

The founder of English rock band Porcupine Tree, guitarist/singer Steven Wilson has taken a wandering path throughout his musical career, traveling through metal, pop rock, progressive psychedelia, and atmospheric ballads.

Wilson's solo debut, Insurgentes, shows a similar penchant for diversity. Rock structures overlap with electronic ambiance, moody acoustic guitars, dark synths, and soft vocal harmonies, making a malleable foundation as Wilson channels Thom Yorke in much of his signing.

A bit of the balladry gets too close to Coldplay and other melodramatic radio artists, but most of the album is an interesting exhibition in songwriting.

Steven Wilson: "Harmony Korine"
Steven Wilson: \"Harmony Korine\"

The Quin Kirchner Group @ Heaven Gallery (Chicago)

This newly formed improvisational outfit features four young standouts in Chicago's jazz, rock, and electronic scenes.

The quartet's style is more accessible than the type of experimental/free jazz that one might imagine from an improvisational outfit; according to alto/soprano saxophonist Charles Gorczynski, the group's songs aim to sound more like compositions, using repeated melodies and apparent sections.

This makes sense in the context of the members' other groups: Gorcynzki's Colorlist, upright bassist Matt Ulery's Loom, and clarinetist / tenor saxophonist Elliot Bergman's NOMO, for which Kirchner also drums.

The night's other set belongs to the collaboration of bass clarinetist Jason Stein, pianist Jim Baker, and bassist Josh Abrams — a trio with its own esteemed members that should rely more on solos and less on conventional structure.

Mike Reed's Loose Assembly @ The Hungry Brain (Chicago)

With a melody-filled free-jazz oeuvre, drummer Mike Reed gathers a host of exceptional local jazz performers for his Loose Assembly, including saxophonist Greg Ward, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, cellist Tomeka Reid and bassist Josh Abrams.

The group's September release on 482 Music, The Speed of Change, is a deft journey through beauty, ambience, minimalism, clashing instrumentation and avant-classicalism, and many types of jazz and experimental fans would be wise to check it out. Abrams pulls double duty this evening, performing the opening set in an improvisational trio with pianist Jim Baker and drummer Tatsuya Nakatani.

Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble @ Velvet Lounge

With nimble fingers and fluttering melodies, flutist/composer Nicole Mitchell is a master of her instrument. Here she gathers a quartet version of her Black Earth Ensemble, a hard-bop lineup with plenty of grooves to hold down the solos and improvisational moments.

Her veritable cast powers out mean jazz rhythms with the aid of bassist Josh Abrams (Town and Country) and drummer Marcus Evans, while saxophonist David Boykin (David Boykin Expanse) handles stirring leads and riffs alike.

The group often expands to include the talents of cellist Tomeka Reid, guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise) and vocalist Ugochi, but this Velvet Lounge performance should be just as compelling as Mitchell caps three local shows in four nights.