Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek (NEW FUTURE CITY RADIO)

Saturday, December 6th, 2025 | 7pm Doors / 8pm Show
Off Broadway ( 3509 Lemp Ave, 63118 / map )

Advanced tickets through eventbrite (online tickets end at 3pm day of concert) / tickets also available at the door.
Tickets are sliding scale from $20 – $10 all ages event (please bring id)

Damon Locks – voice / sampler
Rob Mazurek – trumpet / sampler / electronics

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/new-future-city-radio

Both key figures in Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene, and are multifaceted artists who have been working together since the peak days of Chicago’s late 1990s and early 2000s music scene up through the present day. While both artist’s respective discographies run deep, Locks was notably featured as lead vocalist on multiple critically-acclaimed albums by Exploding Star Orchestra, an adventurous jazz outfit led by Mazurek, and Locks has also earned great renown for his revolutionary latter-day gospel/jazz project Black Monument Ensemble. The two artists have joined forces for the collaborative album that was released by International Anthem Records on July 28th, 2023. The album runs like a boombox mixtape as it sonically contemplates community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people.

is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in fine arts. Since 2014 he has been working with the Prisons and Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Correctional Center teaching art.

He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award. In 2017 he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received a Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015. In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee. He spent four years as an artist in residence as a part of the Museum of Contemporary Arts’ SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School. He teaches Improvisation in the Sound Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Damon leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of Exploding Star Orchestra and co-founded the band The Eternals.

– Chicago Tribune

is an interdisciplinary artist & abstractivist, with a focus on electro-acoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, film, and installation, who spent much of his creative life in Chicago, and then Brazil. He currently lives and works in Marfa, Texas.

As a composer Mazurek has written over 500 compositions over the past 30 years and has released 80+ recordings on various labels including International Anthem, Nonesuch, Astral Spirits, Corbett vs Dempsey, Cuneiform, CleanFeed, Delmark, Family Vineyard, Mego, Northern Spy, Rogue Art, and Thrill Jockey. He has led/co-led many ensembles of various sizes and shapes including Isotope 217, Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet, and Orchestra), Pharoah and the Underground (featuring Pharoah Sanders), Jeff Parker Duo, São Paulo Underground, and Exploding Star Orchestra.

Originally inspired by a joint commission from the Chicago Cultural Center and Jazz Institute of Chicago, Mazurek founded the Exploding Star Orchestra in 2005 to investigate the city’s avant-garde musical traditions. He brought together a group representing the diversity of the city’s contemporary music scene including musicians from Chicago’s North, West, and South-sides, from the then burgeoning post rock scene to the highly influential AACM and Northside Improvisation Scene. Since the inception the Orchestra has expanded to include musicians from around the world, with an ever-expansive pool of visionaries joining the fray based on the needs of the composition at hand.

Host or Publisher New Music Circle