Born 1966 in Jersey City, NJ, Rob Mazurek has moved to Chicago as a pre-teen and eventually cut his teeth on the city's bop scene. Early on he played with the late pianist Kenny Prince and drummer Yoron Israel, but it was his quartet with drummer George Fludas, bassist John Webber and pianist Randolph Tessler where his skills began to get noticed.
Later, while in Edinburgh as part of an experimental theater piece with actor Kevin McCoy for the city's International Fringe Festival in 1992, Mazurek jammed with local musicians was so warmly received that the following year he booked his quartet into an Edinburgh spot called the Tron Tavern & Ceilidh House for an engagement concurrent with the Fringe Festival. The band was a big hit and the British Hep jazz label took notice, signing them.
While long a fan of the great trumpeter Don Cherry, Mazurek borrowed his lyricism without necessarily tapping into his freedom-seeking conception, but that all changed in the winter of 1995 when he began playing with guitarist Jeff Parker. Suddenly he began absorbing new sounds, from the coloristic work of trumpeter Bill Dixon to the spacious, slowly evolving compositions of Morton Feldman.
Upon cementing his musical bond with Parker, Mazurek began gigging under the name Chicago Underground Orchestra with a loose-knit coterie of Chicagoans who all shared an inetrest in tearing down musical boundaries, including Mazurek's drummer of choice for his flexibility, Chad Taylor.