Jazz Beyond Jazz

Butler, Bernstein and the Hot 9 -- that's pianist Henry Butler, brassy brassman and arranger Steven Bernstein, and their touring NYC-based all-stars -- plus beloved local singer Dee Alexander with her trio were double billed on a cold, cold night last week (Feb. 27) at Chicago's downtown Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center. It was the first time I've been to hear jazz at the 2500 seat concert venue, built in 1904 as designed by architect Daniel Burnham to be the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's home, since returning to Chicago eight months ago, … [Read more...]

WHPK, Chicago's Hyde Park-based non-profit jazz-broadcasting community radio station at 88.5 fm, held its annual Black History Month gala last Saturday (Feb 21) with music by reedsman Ari Brown's quartet celebrating the 50th anniversary year of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). International House, where the party was held, was an appropriate setting, as it's one of the venues where the AACM's found an early audience for the next step in evolution of organized sound beyond the then-prevalent high energy "new … [Read more...]

Conguero Pedrito Martinez brought his charismatic Afro-Cuban quartet to Chicago's City Winery last night (Feb. 15), pleasing an upbeat crowd at the supper set (and no doubt later show, too) with an up-to-date performance of roots rhythms, solo and group singing and tightly synchronized, syncopated play. Accompanied by fleet keyboardist Edgar Pantoja-Aleman, electric bassist Alvaro Benavides, and percussionist Jhair Sala (mostly on cowbell and bongos), Martinez slapped, tapped, thumped and bumped his congas and bata drums to … [Read more...]

Inexhaustible Angelique Kidjo singing her ya-yas out about serious issues amid an onstage throng -- the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco at noon on a Saturday reviving Cuban conga with free-styling dancers -- women prominent among the fervently unfettered improvisers and daring composers leading ace ensembles.  The New Frequencies festival: Jazz@YBCA (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) put this all out last week for a multi-generational Bay Area audience that embraced edgy, energized now music that crossed most genre … [Read more...]

Tonight (Oct. 24) will be a Great Night in Harlem, as pianist Herbie Hancock, winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's 2014 Award for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz, receives likewise recognition at the Jazz Foundation of America's gala fundraising show (goal: $1.7 million to help health-, housing- and employment-challenged jazz and blues musicians), genuinely studded with stars and heartfelt tributes. The concert at the Apollo Theater, being broadcast live by New Orleans radio station WWOZ starting at 8:30 pm Eastern time, includes the … [Read more...]

The 8th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival Sept 27 and 28th was as mellowly festive a scene as has ever graced the Midway Plaisance, the grassy fields between University of Chicago's faux Gothic buildings, originally created for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Photo-journalist Michael Jackson created portraits of local fans and players such as Irvin Pierce, last-minute tenor sax sub for altoist Oliver Lake (who had been scheduled to perform with soon-to-be-famous singer Dee Alexander, but was deterred by the strange airline tower … [Read more...]

After nine years, the free-thinking Immediate Sound  Series ended at Chicago's indie-alt. Hideout on Sept. 17. Survival Unit III, the decade-old but only  occasionally united ensemble of multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee (from Poughkeepsie) and Chicago-based cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and drummer Michael Zerang performed highly sympatico improvisations before a rapt and appreciative audience of aficionados and sometimes-collaborators, most of whom seemed to know each other. It was a warm, colorful, informal scene, promoted by its organizer … [Read more...]

The Guelph Jazz Festival last week (Sept 3 through 7), held in a mostly placid river-run university town about 60 miles west of Toronto, climaxed with a blast-off to other worlds fueled by the Sun Ra Arkestra (led by saxophonist Marshall Allen) and Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie dance troupe. Photographer Lauren Deutsch captured the ecstasy of concert-goers joining musicians and movers onstage, more eager than Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind to clamber aboard the aliens' spaceship. Attendees at that … [Read more...]

No one was shot at any jazz festivals held throughout the U.S. over Labor Day weekend, unless artists and audiences captured by photography count. Marc PoKempner was among the expert photogs creating views of the sounds at the 36th annual Chicago Jazz Festival. Marc is especially good incorporating into his compositions the huge video image projected behind artists on the stage of the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion. Some fest highlights he depicts: Cecile McClorin Salvant, as powerful an actress as she is nuanced a singer, making … [Read more...]

The 36th annual Chicago Jazz Festival (mostly free) kicked off Wednesday with a trolley tour of neighborhood clubs. Marc PoKempner captured performers' and crowds' spirits in his images: The Jazz Festival continues tonight -- Saturday -- with headlining vibist Gary Burton receiving JJA Jazz Awards for his playing and Best Book of the Year -- Learning To Listen, his autobio-graphy. Also on the bill tonight: trumpeter Tom Harrell's Colors of a Dream, bassist Dave Holland's quartet Prism, and Chi's own sax colossus Ari … [Read more...]

The Promontory, a large, flexible, shiny new performance hall in Chicago's upswinging Hyde Park neighborhood (home to the Obamas) opened for music last weekend with the South Side Big Band, directed by veteran composer/arranger Tom Tom Washington. It's an audacious attempt to restart commercial entertainment in an area that for decades has mostly been served by University of Chicago events. It's also a test of the city's South Side/North Side  (read: black/white) divide. For the musical launch (The Promontory restaurant has been open for a … [Read more...]