In honor of Ornette Coleman’s 85th birthday (today, March 9), here’s my report from the last time he performed in New York City — at an extraordinary concert in his honor with Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Nels Cline, Sonny Rollins and many more at Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Originally published in The Wire.

Ornette Coleman is contemporary music’s great and radical idealist, for a half-century demonstrating how the whole world might harmonize by people expressing their innate individuality, even as he hews to his roots in the cry of the blues. On a muggy mid-week night at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park bandshell, the elite of hardcore saxophonists plus performers straddling art, pop, high tech and humankind’s primal roar convened in a concert called Celebrate Ornette!, attesting to the breadth, depth, efficacy and appeal of a concept that over the last half-century Ornette has called free jazz, harmolodics and sound grammar, yet seems simply a natural, intuitive way of playing.

Organized by Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son, drummer and keeper of the flame, the show proved historic from its start, as 83-year-old Sonny Rollins, white-haired and stooped but verbally vigorous and emphatic, hobbled onstage to hail 84-year-old Ornette as a globally important musician and humanitarian, citing his credo “It’s all good!” Here was the living icon of jazz’s continuous lineage – the man who recorded with Coleman Hawkins as well as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane – proclaiming the supremacy of jazz’s ultimate iconoclast, the outsider who broke all rules while retaining the style’s essence. It was as dramatic a moment for devotees (count me among them) as when Ornette jammed with Sonny at the latter’s birthday show four years ago, the last time Rollins, now beset with respiratory problems, played publicly in New York City.

Walking with help from his grandson, Ornette edged out from the wings, humbled by the crowd’s roar, wiping his bright eyes. After receiving a rousing official commendation from the Brooklyn borough president, Ornette spoke: “Life is all we have,” he said, “so why don’t we all get together to help each other and make things happy? It’ll turn out like you will never forget it.” He took a seat. The music began.

Denardo’s Vibe, a newly established band of guitarist Charlie Ellerbee and electric piccolo bassist Albert McDowell (both from Ornette’s ’80s ensemble Prime Time), Ornette’s most recent upright bassist Tony Falanga and tenor saxophonist Antoine Roney, was to serve as foundation for an unprecedented parade of guests refreshing Ornette’s indelible if infinitely adaptable compositions, starting with “Rambling,” “The Turnaround” and “Blues Connotation.” First up was Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hyper-active electric bassist Flea and alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill, placing harsh notes so they’d stand out from the bottom-heavy din.

When tenor saxophonist David Murray joined them, Ornette called for his white alto sax, and soon Murray, Threadgill and Roney were blending on a riff through which Ornette’s wail rose, rough but commanding. Stage right, Savion Glover came on to tap dance, exuberantly physical and pouring sweat. Threadgill left, but pianist Geri Allen appeared, with trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., her son, launching long, clear lines. Ornette beamed beatifically.

Soon saxophonist Joe Lovano was onstage with them. He and Murray, Ravi Coltrane, Branford Marsalis (at one point in playful duet with pianist Bruce Hornsby) as well as Antoine Roney continued to blow various combinations at intervals throughout the evening, each saxophonist accepting the responsibility Ornette modeled to listen fully to the others as they used their virtuosic though idiosyncratic techniques to forge something new. Coltrane was particularly inspired on sopranino during one episode, in another Murray squealed roller-coaster phrases over Lovano’s fierce pumping of a motif of Coleman’s classic “Lonely Woman.” Throughout it all, Denardo driving Vibe set tempo, density and energy level changes.

Not only saxophonists or jazzers provided highlights. Patti Smith, her own band rustling behind her, recited a surreally imagistic poem that linked Ornette the child (and his parents) to Ornette the man. Guitarists Nels Cline of Wilco and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth improvised a duet based on contrasting timbres. Laurie Anderson performed on electric violin against feedback loops her late husband Lou Reed had created for Metal Machine Music, with John Zorn chirping frantically on alto sax and Bill Laswell trolling the lowest range of electric bass. James Blood Ulmer, the first guitarist with whom Ornette recorded, sat in on “Theme from a Symphony” (aka “Dancing in Your Head”) with Marsalis, Laswell and Antoine Roney, and remained when two of the Master Musicians of Jajouka arrived to increase the overtone quotient using double-reed raitas on Ornette’s explosive “Song X,” the finale in which everyone (except Threadgill, Smith and her group, Anderson, Zorn, Cline and Moore) raised an orchestral storm.

During the three-hour event, the audience of approximately 4000 ignored the threat of rain and an eventual misty drizzle. The crowd was all ages, races and genders, peppered with notable musicians, producers, critics and fans. The congregation had been called and eagerly convened, to celebrate, yes, but not worship Ornette – rather to bathe in the variety and joy of unfettered interaction he’s encouraged. His message: Spontaneous collective improvisation is the key human activity – past, present and future – productive and enriching as we listen closely, trying to help to each other. Amen.

Are you an Ornette devotee? A completist? If so, check out New Vocabulary, his most recently released recording. And, of course, keep listening.
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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, and the experience was both pleasurable and problematic.

The musical program was smartly balanced, mainstream-progressive and entertainment-oriented, like all the bookings in the 10-month jazz series (continuing April 17 with duo pianists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea; May 15 with Lebanese-born/French trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf and pianist Jacky Terrasson plus pianist Jean-Michel Pilc; June 19 with drummer-composer Dana Hall’s commissioned work celebrating the 75th anniversary of the publication of Native Son). Director of programming James M. Fahey has solid, eclectic taste, and has brought Eddie Palmieri’s Latin Jazz Band, the Dave Holland-Kenny Barron duo and clarinetist Ken Peplowski with Django/gypsy stylists to town, as well as Dianne Reeves and — wait for it — Wynton Marsalis with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Ms. Alexander, a youngish veteran with a wide range both octave- and repertoire-wise, was making her long-awaited and well-deserved Orchestra Hall debut, and should be invited to return. Re predecessors, she’s out of the Sarah Vaughan camp but writes much of her own material and last summer at the Chicago Jazz Festival was strong in a Nelson Mandela-tribute for big band led by AACM saxophonist Ernest Dawkins. Her performances are always imbued with bluesy, personal warmth that makes even occasional awkward turns of phrase (can the word “dysfunctional” work in a lyric?) forgivable/ignorable. She opened with a graceful rendition of Billie Holiday’s flirtatious “Now Baby or Never,” included her original “Butterfly” which shows off dazzling extended vocal techniques, and ended with “Lonesome Lover,” by Abbey Lincoln comprising both scat singing and a clarion call (it’s on Dee’s most recent cd, Songs My Mother Loves). Throughout, her trio of pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassist Junius Paul and drummer Yusef Ernie Adams was supportive if not assertive, and from a perch in the third balcony, sound was clear if softer than I would have preferred.

Acoustic issues, however, had a negative impact on the denser, more complicated ensemble music Bernstein and Butler have devised for their Hot 9. This touring troupe has released Viper’s Drag, first recording on the newly revived Impulse! label, with idiomatic originals and  revisits of works by Jelly Roll Morton and later Crescent City piano professors including James Booker and Professor Longhair. Butler is a volatile and versatile two-fisted pianist who also gives throaty immediacy to songs (this night, the ever-funky “Buddy Bolden’s Blues”). Bernstein’s charts for a band of longtime comrades with “downtown” cred — trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, tenor saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum, clarinetist Doug Weiselman, bassist Brad Jones among them — feature the good-time spirit of New Orleans polyphony, akin to what Morton wrought from 1926- ’30 with his never equalled Red Hot Peppers.

But to really enjoy a nine-piece (ten, counting Butler) band, you’ve got to be able to hear everyone all the time, and the house mix in this case wasn’t up to the challenge. Orchestra Hall has long been criticized and a couple times renovated due to significant concerns about the acoustics; according to Wiki, in one renovation 50% of Burnham’s original interior was destroyed.

No concert hall engineered more than 100 years ago with symphonic orchestras specifically in mind is going to be an automatic good fit for groups with amplification and traps drums. We know there’s an art to live mixing — and the best financed touring bands (including, for instance, Marsalis’ LCJO) travel with their own sound technicians. The Hot 9 + Butler doesn’t carry anyone to be at the mixing board (Corea and Hancock upcoming will do so). From the start of the second half of this concert I couldn’t make out Bernstein’s trumpet playing — which is hardly ever a problem — and Butler’s grand piano seemed like a very trebly electric keyboard.

Moving to the rear of the first floor, I still had trouble discerning Berstein’s solos on baritone horn, much less the violin (sitting next to the trombone) or niceties in the three-reeds line. Electric guitar rang out, but bass and drums were dim, and the group harmonies were tonally colorless.

During the course of the set the sound improved slightly, and the band remained jolly. The irrepressible nature of this music survived, and when the musicians (except Butler) left the stage briefly to parade, playing, through front-of-hall seating, the audience was roused to a standing ovation. Afterwards Bernstein kvelled about the onstage sound, so what was coming from monitors evidently worked for the performers. But when a friend who’d been sitting elsewhere asked me how I liked the music, I couldn’t say. I felt like I hadn’t really heard most of it. And when 10 experts in ensemble improvisation are pumping the second-line rhythms of “Iko Iko” to little more effect than a muffled roar, that just ain’t right.

Orchestra Hall staff doesn’t deny the problems and are at work to improve matters, so I’m encouraged to try the venue again. Some music, after all, will not be presented anywhere else. Dana Hall’s ambitious project in consideration of Native Son may be a must-hear.

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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 thing.” Posters of some of the ’60s concerts are exhibited at nearby Du Sable Museum of African-American History‘s exhibit “Free at First: The Audacious Journey of the AACM,”open through next September 6.

Brown is a genially powerful tenor and soprano saxophonist, who between his original  funny, self-deprecating stories  whose group with his brother Kirk on piano, basisist Yosef Ben Israel, and drummer Avreeayl Ra (Dr. Cuz sat in on congas) offered rousing but ultimately peaceful modal pieces to approximately 150 attendees, including former AACM chairman Mwata Bowden, recipient of the radio station’s 2015 Reach Award. Bowden, also a saxophonist, is the UC Department of Music’s director of jazz ensembles, and in remarks from the stage spoke of the significance of continuity, in part represented by spoken word artist (“discopoet”) Khari B., his son, now serving as AACM-Chicago chair.

It’s not too much of a stretch to similarly praise the continuity 47-year-old WHPK sustains despite its relatively small (100 watt) signal and effective broadcast range. Staffed by the University’s students, staff and neighborhood volunteers, the station boasts of being the first to broadcast hip-hop in Chicago, and giving early exposure to Common and Kanye West, among others.

Chicago is lucky to have at least three non-profit, university and college-connected radio stations promoting local and experimental musics, jazz in particular. Besides WHPK, WDCB (90.9 FM, 5000 watts) from College of Du Page operates out of west suburban Glen Ellyn, with a professionally-produced playlist full of jazz, blues, salsa, folk and radio Golden Age programs, and WNUR (89.3 FM, 7200 watts) from Northwestern University in north suburban Evanston has student and volunteer deejays playing the strangest mix in the area.

Of course it’s not just Chicago. Boston’s got a handful of college stations with jazz deejays, Columbia University’s WKCR is a Manhattan-based institution, WWUH of Hartford CT. is another (giving a shoutout to devoted jazz host Chuck Obuchowski) — without college radio (and here’s a list of 469 in North America), jazz would be almost completely absent from the airwaves.

100 watts may not seem like much, getting far — but doesn’t that depend who’s listening? And anyway, like the best bigger stations WHPK too is streaming.

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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 produce a party beat for the present, rather than Santeria rite, folkloric demonstration or featured bit within a larger salsa orchestra — though one sensed he’d be comfortable presenting himself in any of those contexts, too.

This appearance seems to have been part of the 41-year-old Grammy-nominated Martinez’ midwestern mission: he’s just been in Madison and Port Washington, Wisc. (where he inspired this exemplary blog post by Mark “Darkviolin” Underwood + photo gallery by Steven Sandick) and in March Pedrito brings his Latin thing to Moorhead, Minnesota and Mason City and Des Moines, Iowa, visits bound to do folks in those locales good. Quite evidently he’s a draw, recently contracting to make New York City’s Subrosa, a new hot spot in the meatpacking-district, his band’s home base after a ten year stand at the eatery Guantanamera in midtown. Nobody in NYC other than the Vanguard Big Band and Mingus ensembles at the Jazz Standard has a 10-year stand. Oh yeah, he announced his upcoming record will be produced by his hero Ruben Blades.

There was a poppish, post-Van Van aspect to PMG’s repertoire, as it included close vocal harmonizing, jazzy solos alternating with pseudo string chorus by Pantoja-Aleman, and rough ‘n’ tumble bass. But percussion rules when bright musicians conjure primal recollections via hands on skins and pulsing, interwoven rhythms. In the plush surroundings of City Winery Chicago — an artfully designed, airy and oaky supper-club (highly curated vino list, and try the duck tacos) seemingly twice the size of City Winery New York — PDG motivated hips, shoulders and feet (not necessarily in that sequence) of people at stage side and also rising from their seats. The band showed how to have fun without a lot of fuss. Listeners didn’t have to share the language being sung (though many seemed to), as they felt the music’s rush. And with an afternoon’s light dusting of white stuff covering the grey encrusted crystal slush of a two week old snowstorm — yeah, the tropical breeziness was easy to love.

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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 boundaries.

Subtitled “Jazz in the present tense” the New Frequencies performers — 15 separate acts from Wed., Feb 4 through Sat the 8th (kickoff: drummer Scott Amendola‘s electric string band with guitarists Nels Cline and Jeff Parker, fiddler Jenny Scheinman and bassist John Shifflett was at Duende restaurant in Oakland) — represented the aesthetic vision of YBCA’s artist-in-residence pianist Myra Melford, who curated it in conjunction with YCBA’S associate director of performing arts Isabel Yrigoyen.

Their emphasis was on excellence, originality and expressivity. A sense of community pervaded most of the concerts — especially Kidjo’s, which youthful ticketholders took as an opportunity to jump and shake in support of her urgent singing and patter demanding female education, freedom from sexual mutilation and forced marriages; John Calloway keeping the clavé for the high school age salseros and amateur movers (admission fee: 50 cents) just there for fun, and Henry Threadgill’s Double-Up sextet, which many notable locals musicians and aficionados attended, knowing he’s seldom booked in the Bay Area.

I believe Melford is one of the most remarkable, imaginative and devoted artists currently creating in any musical field or discipline, but disclosure: I’m working on an audience engagement project with her, funded in part by the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards program. That said, I’ve followed her music closely for 30 years, and my views are informed by observation, personal reaction and analysis rather than compensation. If you suspect otherwise, you may stop believing what you read here.

Besides curating the fest, Melford performed four times, including two tunes on harmonium with Northern California-based fiddler and wry singer-songwriter Scheinman. She made substantial contributions (including explosive solos) to conceptual saxophonist Matana Roberts heritage-diving collage Coin Coin and clarinetist Ben Goldberg’s orchestral, poetic Orphic Machine; she brought her exemplary, expansive keyboard techniques — precise fingering of darting single note runs; rhythmic forearm block-punctuations; tense passages at quiet dynamics; fast and witty responsiveness, sustained melodic lyricism — to a masterfully spontaneous interactive trio with flutist Nicole Mitchell (a star at tunefulness and unusual timbres) and bassist Joelle Leandre (strong and propulsive, bowing and plucking).

But this festival was not about Melford herself. My big discovery was bassist-composer Lisa Mezzacappa’s avantNOIR project, previewed as four 15-to-20 minute pieces jauntily and cinematically evoking (as well as fed by) the crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster. The score was fast-paced and kaleidoscopic, Mingus-like; the ensemble (percussionist William Winant and synthesist Tim Perkis joining her quartet Bait and Switch) hurtled from one written episode to another but gave each turn its jazz-essential immediacy, as if the music were freshly imagined. avantNOIR speaks directly to my delights, as I recognized specific scenes in The Maltese Falcon (book and movie) which the composition portrayed, and found it refreshing to hear Perkis’ boldly atonal squiggles/swirls/sirens afforded space in a “jazz” context. Mezzacappa played a bass line suggestive of Dolphy’s “Hat and Beard,” too. I want to hear it again! Here’s some video . .

Ben Goldberg’s Orphic Machine, with a cd release imminent, similarly embraced through-composed arrangements and open improvised passages, at one point building to a New Orleans-style collectively improvised climax. In demeanor Goldberg is thoughtful and virtuosic, yet his clarinet retains rawnesss. Wisely casting a front line with Ron Miles’ trumpet and Rob Suddruth on tenor sax, plus Kenny Wolleson on vibes, Melford piano, Nels Cline guitar, Trevor Dunn bass, Ches Smith drums, he introduced song-sculpted settings inspired by “speculative poetics” of the late Allen Grossman. As sung by Carla Kihlstedt, who also played violin, this repertoire had an air of wry yet luxorious inquiry, recalling to me some spirit of Carla Bley and Paul Haines’ long ago collaboration Escalator Over the Hill. 

Further: Pianist Satoko Fujii and her trumpeter partner Kappa Maki, exploring dissonant clusters, brass blurts and pure tones; drummer Rudy Royston 303’s sophisticated post-bop/pre-electric Miles sextet (soloists Jon Irabagon, tenor; Niles Felder, guitar; Sam Harris, piano, trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis, and two basses: Mimi Jones and Yasushi Nakamura); the trio Grex (billed as an “art-rock/post-jazz trio” — leader Karl Evangelista into Hendrix) and the Elliott Smith Hour, for which Roger Kim arranged movements from Brahms’ Third Symphony for his guitar and banjo, cello, bass clarinet/alto flute and two violins.

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is a comfortable, flexible multi-arts space comprising a large auditorium designed mostly for theater and dance; a gym-sized “forum” that could be set with chairs or not as appropriate, and classroom/exhibition spaces. It has seldom ventured into music as nominally radical as New Frequencies intended to be. So it must have been heartened by the evident interests of a sizable crowd for generally adventurous programming. Although a healthy coterie of progressive and experimental musicians lives here, they long like artists everywhere for more opportunities to perform locally. The other regular concentration of such programming, though coming more from the contemporary “classical” and maverick composition side, is the annual Other Minds festival. It runs March 6 through 8, at SFJazz.

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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 first ever reconvening of Hancock’s music-stretching early ’70s Mwandishi band; Chaka Khan, guitarist Ray Parker, drummer Questlove and bassist Verdeen White of Earth, Wind and Fire hailing Verdeen’s brother and EWF founder Maurice White, who copes with Parkinson’s disease ,and a segment devoted to trumpeter Clark Terry, 93 and ailing yet right now on movie screens in the documentary Keep On Keepin’ On.

Quincy Jones will present Hancock’s award and a dozen sterling musicians ranging from tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath, now 88, to 13-year-old piano prodigy Matthew Whitaker will be featured throughout the evening. For some reason, Bruce Willis will be there, too. If you can’t attend, you can still donate — the JFA does truly great work in support of creators of America’s cultural treasure which, as ArtsJournal today headlines, “don’t get no respect.”

This Great Night caps a couple of weeks of similar ceremonies. In Washington D.C. the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation presented the BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award to pianist-educator JoAnne Brackeen at the Kennedy Center. I was there, along with a prestigious coterie of previous honorees including Kenny Barron, Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Larry Ridley, Roy Haynes, Rufus Reid and Muhal Richard Abrams, who performed with a superb quintet. Early in the day, prior to the Award reception, program and concert, this troupe had been gotten a tour of precious jazz artifacts held at the National Museum of American History by Ken Kimery, director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, and John Edward Hasse, NMAH curator of music. They were reportedly wowed by Ellington’s handwritten signature and scores, Coltrane’s chart for A Love Supreme and Louis Armstrong’s horn.

In Chicago on Oct 15, the Jazz Institute held a gala at the Drake Hotel, during which honors were conferred on Muhal (as co-founder of the AACM, mentor to generations of free-thinking musicians, NEA Jazz Master, and composer/bandleader/pianist extraordinaire — incidentally, he’s performing again with a quintet tonight in NYC), Richard Wang (U of Illinois music prof emeritus), Dr. Carol Adams (exec director of the DuSable Museum of African American History),  James Fahey (director of programming

for Symphony Center Presents), and Marjorie Kiewit (Jazz Institute of Chicago supporter and philanthropist). The JIC gala brought something like $70k to the activist organization that programs the annual free summer jazz festival, but just as importantly runs year-round programs in parks and schools throughout the city, presentations in decentralized locales and has helped enormously to better a scene that now reaches across some longstanding social/racial/ethnic chasms towards more inclusiveness and outright neighborly relations.

Awards events and galas like these are not empty or self-congratulatory, though they are sometimes criticized as such. They all serve as signal occasions meant to raising the profile of (besides $$ for) our American cultural treasure, a gift enjoyed and practiced world-wide, maybe taken for granted or deemed uncommercial but deep in the heart of the soundtrack here at home.

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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 disruption that occurred on Friday).

Jackson’s slideshow was commissioned by the Chicago Sun-Times. The portraits show the intensity, thoughtfulness, intimacy and drama of some of the music (in particular, I was struck by all that in Detroit-raised, now NYC-based pianist Craig Taborn‘s first solo concert in a long while), but don’t focus on how Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House itself became a virtual sound speaker (that thought thanks to another photo-journo, Marc PoKempner); how Trinidadian-born trumpeter Etienne Charles‘ set stirred up a hip Caribbean dance party down front; that the Fat Babies‘ traditional repertoire also drew foxtrotters to the temporary dance floor, how flutist Nicole Mitchell (now living in California, she claims Chicago is “still home”), vibist Jason Adaseiwicz, bassist Josh Abrams and drummer Frank Rosaly as Ice Crystal worked so well together.

Add in this info: the fest events were free (although donations of $5 were encouraged and welcomed) thanks to lead and founding sponsorship from the University of Chicago’s Office of Civic Engagement and support from the non-profit Hyde Park Jazz Society, while being incorporated as a non-profit — Hyde Park Jazz Festival — itself. A gift to the neighborhood and city, to musicians and citizens, for which we must say: Thanks!

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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 Mitch Cocanig as a funeral for the Wednesday nights he’d curated since 2006, in conjunction with the larger Umbrella Music collective which puts on shows at other venues, too. I wasn’t clear on why events at the Hideout ended, or whether Mitch had options to continue the Immediate Sound Series elsewhere. There were some teary eulogies, but overall the mood in this casual haunt tucked away between warehouses and the city’s Department of Fleet and Facility Management site (where Richard M. Daley still reigns as Mayor, at least in signage) was upbeat, and the Hideout continues rad programming like this weekend’s Festival of Joyous Rebellion.

Of course musicians and their fans grieve when a venue that’s been good for them closes. Attendees I recognized included reedist Mars Williams, pianist/Arp improviser Jim Baker, drummer-Constellation operator-Umbrella member Mike Reed, John Corbett (who began the Immediate Sound Series at the Empty Bottle and turned it over to Cocanig) and Fula flutist Sylvain Leroux (visiting from New York). Also in the room, which reminded me somewhat of New York’s late, lamented Tonic:  jazz journalists Bill Meyer

and (unrelated) Mitch Myers, WNUR radio show host Alain Drout and the inexhaustible Jim DeJazz. There were two sets, and I spent much of the second hanging out on the Hideout’s front stoop “patio,”noshing on delicious fresh tamales sold by a middle-aged Mexican man heaving a huge hotbox down this off-the-track sidewalk at 11:30 pm.

The music of McPhee, (playing pocket trumpet in the legacy of Don Cherry and soprano sax with reference to Steve Lacy), Lonberg-Holm (who discovers odd, fragmentary bowed and plucked bleeps up to enriching counterpoint) and Zerang (sensitive lowdown grooving) blared outside from speakers that anywhere but in such a gritty, lonely spot would have been decisively squashed by neighbors. Here no one cared. Much of the crowd might have been taken for hipsters, and though there’s nothing wrong with that, they struck me as simply people in their 30s and 40s intelligently interested in daring sonic research by masterful explorers. I can’t image the Hideout would want to lose touch with such an audience. Most everyone seemed to be drinking, having paid a $12 entree fee.

Mitch Cocanig himself obviously has his own following. I bet he’ll establish another outpost. Not easily deterred, people devoted to this jazz beyond jazz. Maybe down, not likely out.

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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 penultimate concert (it was followed by a intensely propulsive performance by master drummer Milford Graves with tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan and pianist DD Jackson) had been prepared. The 100th anniversary year of Sun Ra’s arrival on Earth (May 24, 1914; his parents called him Herman Blount) occasioned keynote speeches, scholarly presentations and a panel of journalists (including yours truly) at the Guelph Jazz Colloquium. There was much interesting if sometimes esoteric discussion of ideas and speculations inspired at least in part by Ra, the visionary and prophetic composer/arranger/keyboardist/conceptualist/pamphleteer who experienced his own lift off May 30, 1993. I’m compelled to include this ancient video clip of Sun Ra in Sardinia and at the pyramids:

I’ll have a fuller review of the Festival and Colloquium in an upcoming edition of The Wire — but admit here and now that I abandoned conventions of journalistic objectivity when I was called by a dancer to take to the aisles, buzzing to a jaunty Ra riff. And I feel all the better for that.

howardmandel.com

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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 each song a highly charged story.

The Sun Ra Arkestra led by nonagenarian alto sax sprite Marshall Allen, performing its wild and wooly show  with a not-entirely-goofy cosmic message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Composer Ernest Dawkins conducting a big band through an original suite in tribute to Nelson Mandela.

I had some issues with Dawkins’ work; it could have benefited from an editor, and didn’t seem to me to take full advantage of singer Dee Alexander. But the comfortably integrated, neighborly, Chicago-representative crowd filling the seats and surrounding grasses were patient with declamations of the atrocities practiced under apartheid and moved by Dawkins’ South African-referent rhythms).

There were many other exciting performances at this fest, which ran Thursday through Sunday — I’ll mention just one (hoping still for more photos): Kevin Eubanks setting loose skeins of hot guitar licks to rock out bassist Dave Holland’s quartet Prism (Craig Taborn on both grand and Fender piano and drummer Eric Harland plus Holland himself provided solid counterweights, a la Miles Davis electric circa 1970.

Ok, more: pianist Myra Melford’s Snowy Egret, bassist Rufus Reid‘s solid post-bop, trumpeter Terence Blanchard authoritative with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and guitarist Lionel Loeke; Chicago post-Trane saxist Ari Brown, king of cool vibes Gary Burton with his New Quartet; trumpeter Tom Harrell’s impressionistic Colors of a Dream ensemble; electric guitarist Bobby Broom‘s crisp trio; alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon‘s no-nonsense quartet with pianist Luis Perdomo. And I missed much more.

 

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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 Brown. Tomorrow’s finale includes guitarist Bobby Broom’s trio, alto saxist Miguel Zenon’s quartet, great young singer Cecil McClorin Salvant, and the Sun Ra Arkestra, led by high-energy 90-yr-old Marshall Allen.

And there are Labor Day weekend jazz fests across the U.S. — Kingston NY, Philadelphia, Aspen, Macinac Island, among other spots. Hear something to celebrate summer’s end 2014.

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