Jazz images Made in Chicago: PoKempner sees Steve Coleman, Greg Ward & Onye Ozuzu, Gary Bartz and more

Marc PoKempner may be best known for his photos of pre-presidential Barack Obama, Chicago’s reform mayor Harold Washington and the blues — but his jazz photography illuminates what we hear by refreshing how we see it.

Here are some of his complex compositions in bracing color from the Pritzker Pavilion stage in Millennium Park, incorporating “The Screen” that blows up live video of the events, such as performances in the city’s current free-admission Made In Chicago: World Class Jazz series (programmed for the past 11 years by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, as it has the free Chicago Jazz Festival (coming right up, September 3 through 6).

Alto saxophonist Steve Coleman‘s sterling performance Aug. 6 was the culmination of his three-week Chicago residency (yet another Jazz Institute project)  during which he and colleagues from his octet set down to show what they do and invite others to join in at South Side school rooms, community facilities and the co-presenting University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts. Coleman, b. 1956, grew up here and became a professional under the street-wise guidance of saxophonist Von Freeman; since 1979 he’s been an East Coast resident and world-traveller, prolific, exploratory, well-connected as well as independent and highly influential. In 2014 he was financially rewarded with prestigious and generous fellowships from the MacArthur, Guggenheim and Doris Duke foundations, but money needn’t change everything. Coleman is proceeding artistically as he has for some 35 years.

For Made in Chicago, with bandmates trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, tenor saxophonist Maria Grande, guitarist Miles Ozaki, bassist Antony Tidd (sometimes spelled by Chicagoan Mark Harmon), drummer Sean Rickman and frequent associate Chicago guitarist and project co-coordinator Mike Allemana, Coleman wove layers of melodic lines over synchronized, syncopated, shifting, cyclical rhythms. It was quite possible to get lost in the depths. The saxophonist-composer is not, however, purposefully obscure, and launched the summer’s weekly park concerts playing bebop standards his own way, as well as chant-like riffs that tugged and tumbled with irresistible back-beats and one piece I think was a semi-classical air from an early 20th century operetta. Mesmerizing.

On Aug. 13 Greg Ward, a Chicago-bred rising star alto saxophonist a generation younger than Coleman, assembled a crack ensemble to play his swirling version of Charles Mingus’ Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, an album from 1963 originally imagined for dance. Onye Ozuzu‘s choreography for a troupe of physically diverse but all highly energized and dramatic movers seemed inspired and perfectly attuned to/interactive with the music. This performance was well-documented — but it should be repeated, and will travel well. Ward lives in NYC now; Ozuzu teaches at Chicago’s Columbia College.

PoKempner’s vision is also vivid and informative in the most straightahead settings. Fireburning veteran alto saxophonist Gary Bartz helped celebrate Charlie Parker Month at the Jazz Showcase, delighting in the Chicago all-stars who he’d had one rehearsal with: Pianist Willie Pickens, bassist Larry Gray and drummer Ernie Adams. See the interplay, hear the moment?

 

 

 

 

howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email |
Subscribe by RSS |
Follow on Twitter
All JBJ posts |