ears&eyes Records

After hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, uprooting music cohorts Matthew Golombisky and Quinlan Kirchner relocated to Chicago, and in 2006, they pondered: how can we connect all the recent records we’re releasing? Is there something we can do to tie them together? And with thoughtful and ambitious deliberation “ears&eyes Records” was the answer.

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After hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, uprooting music cohorts Matthew Golombisky and Quinlan Kirchner relocated to Chicago, and in 2006, they pondered: how can we connect all the recent records we’re releasing? Is there something we can do to tie them together? And with thoughtful and ambitious deliberation “ears&eyes Records” was the answer.

At first, e&e started off as an independent “label” for personal groups, such as Tomorrow Music Orchestra, QMRplus, and The Hall Monitors, but soon after, a movement started to take shape in Chicago. More and more like-minded musicians began playing together and forming groups with great effort and energy. Eventually, these groups went into the studio and recorded some fantastic music. Seeing less hope in larger labels, distanced from the Chicago & New Orleans scenes, artists looked to their friends and music cohorts within ears&eyes. Overtime, ears&eyes “records” almost morphed into ears&eyes Collective/Community. Folks began to see themselves akin to the ears&eyes community.

Between 2006 and 2008, ears&eyes organized and presented three music/art/film festivals featuring local and national artists including Eleven Dream Day, L'Altra, W. W. Lowman, Mike Reed's People, Places & Things, Philip Morris, Simon Lott, The Lonesome Organist, Gus Gavino, Megan McClain, CJ Boyd, and much more.

To this day, ears&eyes has released over 50 records from bands in Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Bay Area and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

You can hear folks such as bassist Harrison Bankhead (of Fred Anderson and AACM), Ernie Adams (of Al DiMeola and Stanley Turrentine), Ron Miles (of Bill Frisell and Fred Hess), Caroline Davis, Quinlan Kirchner (of NOMO and Wild Belle), James Davis (a Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition finalist), Dr. Jimbo Walsh (The Other Planets), Dr. Patrick Liddell (of Ontologist), Dave Miller (of blink., John Hollenbeck, Patricia Barber, Greg Ward), Charles Gorczynski (of Silences Sumire, Colorlist and Redwood Tango Ensemble) and Marquis Hill, Juan Pastor (Chinchano), Jeff Parker (of Tortoise) and much, much more!

And if you’re in Chicago, check out the weekly series “ears&eyes music series” held at Jerry’s on Division for great music, curated by Daniel Thatcher.

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