Paul Giallorenzo at Experimental Sound Studio Live 07-25-2025

In celebration of his latest release, PRO FAKE NO REJECT (Corbett vs Dempsey) Erez Dessel performs a live improvised concert with Paul Giallorenzo and Sharon Udoh using piano recordings from ESS’s Creative Audio Archive as inspiration. Listen to their selections from the archive here: https://soundcloud.com/experimental-s... This event is part of an ongoing ESS initiative to put contemporary artists in direct conversation with archival materials. PRO FAKE NO REJECT highlight Dessel’s bracing approach to the keyboard and deeply intuitive sense of form. With ten concise solo piano tracks summoning references to Cecil Taylor and the Don Pullen/Milford Graves duets, and an almost Russian Romantic darkness – imagine an improvised Mussorgsky – offset by keen emotional intelligence, this music is filled with joyful melodicism and an airborne quality. Originally from Long Island, NY, Paul Giallorenzo is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, producer, and sound designer using piano, synthesizer, keyboards, and electronics in a diverse range of contexts with a wide array of Chicago and international musicians in improvised, avant-jazz, experimental, and electro/acoustic music, performing regularly locally and throughout North America and Europe. Giallorenzo’s work has been praised for its “inside-out” nature – his ability to push the boundaries of “conventional” jazz toward more freedom but also, on the other side, to bring a measure of structure to more avant-garde material. Writing in the online journal Point Of Departure, John Litweiler said, “His solos and aggressive duets are gems of after-Bop, after-Bley melody,” while AllAboutJazz.org lauded music that “smudges the lines between the tradition and the avant-garde.” His work can be found on the Chicago-based Delmark Records and Austin-based Astral Spirits labels, as well as various other imprints including Leo Records (UK), Not Two Records (Poland), and 482 Music (NY). Giallorenzo is the Artistic Director of the intermedia arts organization Homeroom and a co-founder and programmer of the music venue/art gallery Elastic Arts, producing hundreds of creative music concerts and art events in Chicago since 2001.