Best American city for jazz? Chicago

Nice post, Howard. I lived in Hyde Park for four years and got to know the Chicago jazz scene pretty well. More than anything else, I think the difference between the New York scene and the Chicago scene is about productive isolation.

As the jazz hub of the world, New York has a steady stream of the best musicians arriving in the city for a week's time to play the Vanguard, Blue Note, Birdland, Iridium, Standard, Gallery, et al. A lot of these musicians are local, of course, but they travel so much that they don't play regular gigs in the city. New York has plenty of great local musicians who stay local, but with the Dave Hollands, Brad Mehldaus, and Wayne Shorters dominating the city's jazzscape, New York sometimes feels like a spectacular jazz showcase rather than a scene.

Chicago, on the other hand, is nothing if not a scene. The Jazz Showcase is really the only club that books major traveling acts and the top Chicago musicians spend less time out of the city than their New York counterparts. Spending more time at home playing with one another has created a really distinctive sound deeply influenced by AACM/AEC avant-gardism, the blues, and frequent European visitors like Peter Brötzmann. When you hear Ken Vandermark, David Boykin, Nicole Mithcell, and Fred Lonberg-Holm play, they all sound profoundly Chicagoan. I'm not sure who sounds distinctly "New York" or what that would even really mean.

From a Chicagoan who sometimes gets jealous of all the cutting-edge musicians you have in New York, I say "thank you."

Hope you can make it back for the Umbrella Festival.

http://www.umbrellamusic.org/2009FestPR.html

As someone who attended the Chicago Jazz Festival this year and loved it, and as someone who visits Chicago frequently but who resides in New York, I can state with some presumed expertise that it's possible that Chicago was the greatest American city for jazz during the week of the jazz festival, but in a single week in New York, the one just completed, I was able to hear four remarkable sets, James Carter at Birdland, Ravi Coltrane at the Vanguard, Christian McBride Big Band at Iridium, and Tracey Dillard at Smalls. And that yield was merely four darts thrown at the dart board. New York is the greatest American city for jazz for at least 51 weeks per year.

HM: Scott, there's no doubt a lot of great jazz in NYC -- as I wrote in my previous posting, the past week and the weeks to come are full of spirited, creative play by major artists and emerging ones. But get out of the main clubs into the vastness of the boroughs and I think we're hard-pressed to feel jazz has the impact it once did in the Apple. There's some jazz in Park Slope, some in Williamsburg, even a bit on Cortelyou Ave. in Ditmas Park, but most of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island is jazz-dry. It's just not the lingua franca anymore; it's a professional matter, not the music of the hangout culture. Maybe you're right, Chi is only great like it is during Fest week DURING fest week. But most of its neighborhood venues are active regardless of whether there's a fest or not -- just as NYC's clubs and some of its concert halls are active with or without a New York Jazz Festival. Chicago has several city-wide jazz-in-schools-and-parks programs that NYC is lacking. The City and its largest corporations seem to have a sense of pride in the music which is totally absent in New York. The cost of hearing jazz in Chi is low, compared to average costs in NYC. Otherwise, maybe it's a toss up. But I so often get the impression NYC just doesn't care, and that in Chi, jazz is crucial.

Wow. Talk about setting the right mood for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, you referred to, that is coming up this Saturday. As you said, the music will be on the streets (the Midway/59th St.) as well as inside the unique arts and cultural venues throughout Hyde Park. Jazz is the pulse of Chicago.

Thanks for the homage, Howard. You couldn't be more spot on. I moved to Chicago in 1994 precisely because of the jazz scene and, as we know of the flowering in the 90s and beyond, it is/was the epicenter of a world class improvisational community. Chicago nurtures and cross pollinates jazz idioms in a way no other city does. Chicago is sui generis. A gem.

Where now? Why in Chicago, of course. Thanks for a wonderful valentine to your hometown and the best jazz city in the world. Ancient to the future!

Thank you Howard, for your warmth, insight and telling the world of what we have. And thanks to the musicians and to Joe Segal, who let teens like myself hear the best Jazz on Sunday afternoons and make a youthful interest into a lifelong love affair.

HM: That's right, Joe let me into the Jazz Showcase on Sundays in the '60s to hear Lockjaw Davis, Jimmy Forrest, Dexter, Griffin, all those favorites of his -- and look where it's got me! Us!