The music of composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and poet Ben LaMar Gay is mystifying. From swooning bluesy R&B refrains to minimal toybox synthesis, his experimentations in and through jazz bubble with noisy textural wonder and free-spirited adventure. Tethering the songs in place is the voice of LaMar Gay: it echoes out atop the textured rubble like a hand emerging from the wreckage. Rampant experimentation sits at the core of LaMar Gay’s music. Encapsulating this beautifully is a credit on the album Open Arms to Open Us (2021), which lists his contributions: among cornet, organ, triangle, and percussion, he is credited for his use of “things.” A prolific collaborator in the jazz scene of Chicago and beyond, he has played with Theaster Gates’s The Black Monks and Matthew Lux’s Communication Arts Quartet, and on Nicole Mitchell & Lisa E. Harris’s EarthSeed (2020) and Mike Reed’s Flesh & Bone (2017). Playing music from his forthcoming album on International Anthem, the ensemble consists of Matthew Davis, Tommaso Moretti, and Will Faber.