Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Who plays the saxophone? And why?

I love the sound of a saxophone, or rather the broad range of sounds available from this family of reeds

The author, who has never been very serious about his alto playing, with
apologies to Neil Tesser on tenor sax, Jim Baker on guitar;
photo by Lauren Deutsch

instruments. Breathy, vocal-like, smooth, light, penetrating, gritty or greasy, able to cry and/or croon (sometimes both at once), it strikes me as capable of the most personal of musical statements, although that’s probably a projection based on my imagination set free listening to these horns, mostly in the context of jazz, for more than half a century.

But in some ways the sax seems a throwback. By the time I started actively seeking out music, electric guitars had asserted their dominance and ubiquity as the instrument of a successful, popular musician. Pianos are classy and useful; electric keyboards, including synthesizers, offer many more dimensions of sound production, notably polyphony, than horn players can summon only with the most assiduous practice.

It’s not just a matter of volume — electric wind instruments have been available for decades, but remain curiosities. In pop music, the sax has become conspicuous by its absence. To hear any saxophonics beyond the inanities of Kenny G and soul licks of Maceo Parker, you simply have to turn to jazz — with which the sax is virtually synonymous, having a leading if not fundamental role.

So who plays the saxophone? The schedule of the upcoming Chicago Jazz Festival, Sept 1 through 4 in the city’s Millennium Park tells us: Pulitizer Prize-winner Henry Threadgill, heading his unique band Zooid. Donald Harrison, 2022 NEA Master and Big Chief of The Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group.

Miguel Zénon, a MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow and multiple-Grammy nominee. James Brandon Lewis, winner of the year’s Jazz Journalists Association Award as well as the DownBeat Critic’s poll for tenor saxophone players, and his alto-playing fellow honoree Immanuel Wilkins. J.D. Allen, a close runner-up in those and other ratings. Joel Frahm and Rob Brown, for decades New York-based sax stalwarts. Multi-talented New Orleans bandleader/performance artist Aurora Nealand.

Those gents are internationally or at least nationally known. That can’t be claimed so assuredly of Chicago’s own voracious, masterful sax players, but it should be. Greg Ward, Geoff Bradfield, Nick Mazzarella, Isaiah Collier and Lenard Simpson (from Milwaukee) are all playing the Jazz Fest. Each one has an audible identity, developed because one of the things that distinguishes saxophonists in jazz and adjacent creative music that they have something to say. They’re serious and use their horns to amplify their messages.

Chicago is a sax city. Although Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane weren’t born here, they all passed through, leaving a mark. Sonny Rollins had an important residence here. But dig this roll call of Chicago saxophonists, in no particular order:

Saxophonists at a 1988 reunion of students of the late Capt. Walter Dyett, Chicago public high school band director: from left, Clifford Jordan, John Gilmore, Johnny Griffin, E. Parker MacDougal, Eddie Harris, Ed Petersen, Von Freeman, Jimmy Ellis
photo by Lauren Deutsch

Franz Jackson, Bud Freeman, Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Eddie Harris, John Gilmore, Eddie Shaw, Clifford Jordan, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Fred Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Douglas Ewart, John Klemmer, Edward Wilkerson, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Light Henry Huff, Don Myrick, Gene Dinwiddie, Steve Coleman, E. Parker McDougal, Pat Mallinger, Sharel Cassity, Diane Ellis, Jimmy Ellis, Clark Dean, Joe Daley, Art Porter Jr., Eddie Johnson, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Sonny Cox, Ira Sullivan, Pat Patrick, Ed House, Chris Madsen, J.T. Brown, Skinny Williams, John Brumbach, Vandy Harris, Edwin Daugherty, Mike Smith, Ari Brown, Boyce (Brother Mathew) Brown, Juli Wood, Eric Schneider, Frank Catalano, Roy McGrath, Dave Rempis, Mars Williams, Shawn Maxwell, Keefe Jackson, Chris Greene, Cameron Pfiffner, Mark Colby, Ken Vandermark, Fred Jackson Jr., Gene Barge, A.C. Reed, Mai Sugimoto, Hal Russel, Jeff Vega, Hal Ra Ru, and of course Von Freeman

The Freemans, from left: Bruz, Von, Chico, George; photo by Lauren Deutsch

— to whom the Fest opening suite, “Vonology” is dedicated by his advocate and protege guitarist Mike Allemana (recent collaborator with saxophonist Chico Freeman in a community celebration of Freeman family, including 95 year old uncle George).

Current elders of the saxophone who deserve reference include first and foremost Mr. Rollins (ret’d), Wayne Shorter (ret’d), Charles Lloyd, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Marshall Allen, Houston Person, and Charles McPherson. They purr, yowl, preach and persuade, a lot like they’re talking to you. They blow so you’ll listen.

City of Chicago, music promoter

Lollapalooza 2021 had some 385,000 attendees (without significant Covid-19 outbreak, fortunately) but featured little of host Chicago’s indigenous talent or styles. And that’s just wrong, declared Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events commissioner Mark Kelly, launching the month-long Chicago in Tune

Mark Kelly, photos © Lauren Deutsch

“festival” at a reception August 19. Here’s the still-evolving event calendar of hundreds of local music performances — of every conceivable genre, free and ticketed, outside or in, most requiring vax proof and/or masks — running on through Sept 19, in every city neighborhood.

Chicago, Kelly asserted, has never officially or adequately embraced and supported (he didn’t say it — but allow me: or exploited for publicity’s sake) its homegrown music communities comprising artists and audiences of boogie, blues, jazz, gospel, r&b, house, hip-hop, rap, folk, rock, Mexican mariachi, Polish polka band, Latin jam sessions, singer-songwriter performance, contemporary composers, virtuosic instrumentalists and improvisational ensembles.

At his direction DCASE had planned 2020 as “The Year of Chicago Music” and responded to Covid-19 shutdowns by extending that initiative into ’21. Yet the shutdowns continued, and the matter of sustaining or improving the lot of Chicago music writ large was for Kelly, a one-time jazz drummer retiring from his position in October, becoming more urgent.

So in an unusual effort to broadly stimulate the existing musical ecosystem (not incidentally, a potential tourist draw) and project our brand in the class of New York, New Orleans, Nashville, Austin, Detroit while also productively de-centralizing it — his department in the administration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot has coordinated partial-to-full underwriting and promotion of grants to artists and shows in dozens of venues and public spaces across this third-biggest (by area as well as population) U.S. metropolis.

Included are the ARC Music Festival in Union Park (September 4 & 5), Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago in Union Park (September 10–12), the punk Riot Fest in Douglass Park (September 17–19) — and “Music Lives Here,” a public art initiative installing graphic markers at 50 musically noteworthy sites. The City’s own production centerpiece: over Labor Day weekend an evening each, free of charge in Millennium Park, for jazz, blues, house and gospel, a necessary adaptation of Chicago’s former multi-days fests.

As a native and as a music journalist, I subscribe to the notion that Chicago has a unique and highly significant place in the past and ongoing development of American if not indeed world-wide music. The case for this is well known, so I won’t detail it here.*

However, for all the glories of sounds come from Oz-on-the-Lake in just the last 100 years, say, including its eminence in commercial endeavors like music publishing, jingle production and harp manufacture and establishment of prestigious institutions including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera, in the aftermath of the late 1960s consolidation and relocation of major record labels to Los Angeles and New York City few sizable business structures have emerged (pace JAM Productions) to loudly, systematically advance the cause of local music either throughout or beyond the city’s limits.

There are feisty independent labels such as Aerophonic, Alligator, BluJazz, Delmark, International Anthem, Southport, and The Sirens (of course with dislocations across the music industry, they, too have struggled). We have worthy non-profits — the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, South Side Jazz Coalition, AACM, Hyde Park Jazz Society, Hyde Park Jazz Festival (2021 program live/in-person Sept 25-26), Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio and Hot House among them — and dedicated performance locales including the Jazz Showcase, the Green Mill, Fulton Street Collective, Constellation and the Hungry Brain, Rosa’s Lounge, Kingston Mines, Buddy Guy’s Legends, Andy’s, Winter’s, Promontory, Space, Fitzgerald’s, Epiphany, City Winery, concert halls such as Symphony Center and the Harris Theater, special series programmed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Du Sable Museum, Navy Pier and the Shedd Aquarium. For decades we’ve had immersive multi-stage, week or weekend-long free of charge festivals celebrating Chicago jazz, blues, house and gospel in downtown’s Grant and Millennium parks, continuing if pared down next weekend on the Frank Gehry-designed stage of Pritzker Pavillion.

Roscoe Mitchell-Famadou Don Moyé Art Ensemble of Chicago Large Ensemble, Sept 2019, Pritzker Pavillion; photo ©Marc PoKempner

This year’s reduced iterations of those fests amount to three hoursfor each genre on one of four days Sept 3 to 6. Jazz night Sept. 4 (programmed with the Jazz Institute, the board of which I sit on) features our righteous elder statesman saxophonist Ari Brown, trumpeter Marquis Hill and vocalist Lizz Wright with their bands. Among ancillary events catching my eye, produced independently of the City but underwritten in some measure with tax dollars, is the Rockwell Blues and Jazz Street Stroll, scheduled for mid-day Sept 4, organized by Delmark Records to showcase several of its artists.

Municipal endorsement and underwriting for both profit- and not-for profit spaces nurturing creativity seems to me a very good thing at this moment. Infusing Chicago with music, hearing for ourselves what we have, enjoying it as much together as is safe and wise, letting each other and the world at large know what this place, in all its variety, sounds like at this time — I find those worthy goals. We’re facing a Covid-19 surge with indoor masked mandates imposed again (including for kids about to re-enter the schools) and continued gun violence, among other ills. Music won’t fix those problems, but may help us live with them.

Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner attended one Chicago In Tune show last Friday: Saxophonist Ernest Dawkins leading the Live the Spirit Residency Tentet in “Redefining Frederick Douglass,” at Douglass (Frederick and Anna) Park. He reported the crowd was small but ardent, the music intense and Khari B‘s readings of Douglass’s oratory powerful.

from left: Alexis Lombre, Ernest Dawkins, Steve Berry, Junius Paul, Corey Wilkes © Marc PoKempner
Spoken word artist Khari B, reeds player Kevin King © Marc PoKempner
Crowd with social distancing at Douglass (Frederick and Anna Park, © Marc PoKempner

So much more is yet to come, including a homecoming concert on Sept. 2 at Symphony Center by the great Herbie Hancock, age 80, pianist/composer/Grammy winner, “creative chair” for jazz of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, namesake of the formerly-known-as-Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and face of International Jazz Day. I’ve adored his music since the mid ’60s– from his Maiden Voyage through the ’60s with Miles et al to his experimental, exploratory Mwandishi albums like Sextant,

hip-scratch-funk-nuts “Rockit,” tributes Gershwin’s World and River: The Joni Letters. I won’t miss it.

But best about this all is that Mark Kelly said Chicago In Tune would not be a one-off, but only the beginning of the City’s turn to identifying music as key to our culture for our own benefit. Considering the Chicago-steeped legacies of an enormous and highly diversified creative contingent (my can’t-help-it-must-cite list is below, merely a scratch at what’s happening or happening here), it’s high time.

*Quick list, off the top of my head, roughly chronological, by no means comprehensive, focused on the deceased and hugely influential Chicago-born or associated music makers: Jelly Roll Morton, Johnny and Baby Dodds, Louis Armstrong, Lil Hardin, Earl Hines, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Alberta Hunter, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Thomas A. (aka “Georgia Tom,” when he developed proto-rock “hokum” with Tampa Red) Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Mezz Mezzrow, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, Jimmy and Mama Estelle Yancy, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy John Lee Williamson, Mahalia Jackson, Milt Hinton, Art Hodes, Dinah Washington, Nat “King” Cole, Eddie South, Steve Allen, Mel Torme, Capt. Walter Dyett, Johnny Griffin, Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Hound Dog Taylor, Magic Sam, Koko Taylor, Big Walter Horton, Cary Bell, Carmen McRae, Wilbur Ware, Richard Davis, Ralph Shapey, Shulamit Ran, the Staples Singers, Ahmad Jamal, Eddie Harris, Malachi Favors, Andrew Hill, Wilbur Campbell, Barrett Deems, William Russo, Sir Georg Solti, Sun Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Phil Cohran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Anderson, Jodie Christian, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins, Ann Ward and other distinguished members of the AACM, Ira Sullivan, Nicky Hill, Oscar Brown Jr., Lee Konitz, Hal Russell, Willie Pickens, Geraldine de Haas, the Chi-Lites, Jerry Butler, Curtis Mayfield, Earth Wind & Fire, the Freemans (Von, George, Bruzz, and living Chico), John Prine, Steve Goodman — sorry, going on and on but as a native son, I can’t help it — Gene Chandler, the Shadows of Knight, the Buckinghams, the Flock, Minnie Ripperton, and among the living: Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy, Wilco, Tortoise, Kanye West, Liz Phair, Common, Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, Orbert Davis, Julian Priester, Rufus Reid, Amina Claudine Myers, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Thurman Barker, Wadada Leo Smith, Douglas Ewart, Mwata Bowden, Ari Brown, Steve Coleman, Foday Musa Suso, Adam Rudolph, Hamid Drake, Robert Irving III, Thaddeus Tukes, Joel Ross, Ben LaMar Gay, Makaya McCraven, Isaiah Collier, Michael Zerang, Billy Branch, Lurrie Bell, Jimmy Johnson, Dee Alexander, Kurt Elling, Miguel de la Cerna, Ernie Adams, Dana Hall, Avreeayl Ra, Bobby Broom, Nicole Mitchell, Erwin Helfer, Myra Melford, Jim Baker, Edward Wilkerson Jr., Mars Williams, Brian Sandstrom, Steve Hunt, Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Savoir Faire, Pat Mallinger, Cameron Pfiffner, Paul Wertico, Tomeka Reid, Mike Reed, Margaret Murphy Webb, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Amir ElSaffar, Brad Goode, Mike Allemana, Nick Mazzarella, Maggie Brown, Fareed Haque, Howard Levy, K-Rad, Greg Ward, Joanie Pallatto and Sparrow, George Fludis, Erin McDougald, Josie Falbo, Zvonimir Tot, Tatsu Aoki, Chris Foreman, Geoff Bradfield, Matt Ullery, Josh Abrams, Josh Berman, Augusta Reed Thomas, Rachel Barton Pine, Victor Garcia, Katie Ernst, Kahil El Zabar, Ernest Dawkins, Rajiv Halim and a zillion others.

Chicago Jazz fest images, echoes

Roscoe Mitchell onscreen, presiding over The Art Ensemble of Chicago,
Pritzker Pavillion Millennium Park Chicago, 8/30/19
photo (c) Marc PoKempner

The 41st annual Chicago Jazz Festival has come and gone, as I reported for DownBeat.com in quick turnaround. I stand by my lead that the music was epic — cf. Marc PoKempner‘s beautiful image of the Art Ensemble of Chicago at Pritzker Pavillion, facing east towards Mecca just before their African percussion-driven orchestral set.

And epochal, yes: the Art Ensemble is 50 years old, as discussed in my radio piece for NPR’s Here and Now). Such longevity is remarkable for any jazz or improvisational unit but the more so as the AEC in its current incarnation is resolutely looking ahead, with younger players (Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid and Christina Wheeler among them) taking the responsibilities of fallen members (co-founders Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors and Joseph Jarman now all deceased).

There was grumbling re the AEC set as having abandoned favorite themes and leaning towards surviving founder Roscoe Mitchell’s involvement with Western classical compositional and vocal traditions. I say hooey.

Of old repertoire “Dreaming of the Masters” ended the performance, and “Chi-Congo” was a charged percussion episode, organized by longtime AEC drummer Famadou Don Moyé. There was little-instrument play, as introduced into jazz by the Art Ensemble, and so a broad dynamic range. Roscoe Mitchell focused on bells as well as his sopranino saxophone, blowing uninterrupted streams of notes. Two excellent trumpeters, Hugh Ragin and Fred Berry, supplanted by trombonist Dick Griffin, stood in for Lester Bowie; three bassists (Junius Paul, Jaribu Shahid and Sylvia Bolognese) were required to fill the pulsating role Malachi Favors originated.

AEC in action: from left, Roscoe Mitchell, Dick Griffin, Dudu Koate, Jaribu Shahid, Baba Attiba, Dee Alexander, Famadou Don Moyé. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch.

I admit, however, that my DownBeat report underplays the immense contribution of local musicians to the popular and aesthetic value of the Chicago Jazz Fest. It’s understandable the jazz-mag-of-record concentrates on nationally touring acts comprising well-known artists, but in fact this festival has its greatest impact immediately and down-the-road by presenting players from the extraordinarily energized current scene.

Several — including singer Dee Alexander, saxophonists Geoff Bradfield, Ari Brown, Rajiv Halim, Greg Ward and John Wojciechowski, trumpeters Russ Johnson, Rob Mazurek and Pharez Whitted, guitarist Mike Allemana, pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassists Clark Sommers and Anton Hatwich, drummers Dana Hall, Avreeayl Ra, Mike Reed and Charles Rumback — showed up in more than one group, demonstrating flexibilities and abilities to attend to specific materials.

Reed’s obscurely named Jazz Institute of Chicago 50th Anniversary band actually brought together composers represented in his newly published Chicago “real book,” The City Was Yellow. (I wrote some artists’ bios for this volume, whose profits go to Jazz Institute of Chicago music education activities, but the greater value is the lead sheets of some 50 tunes written between 1980 and 2010). But that was only one of several deliberate celebrations of Chicago’s jazz past folded into its present.

Robert DeNiro as Al Capone, under the Chicago Cultural Center’s Tiffany dome

To walk into the Chicago Cultural Center (setting for key scenes in Brian dePalma’s The Untouchables), for instance, on a Thursday morning to the sound of trumpets is to be swept back 100 years, to the arrival of first generation New Orleans jazzmen eager to expand their audience. To hear the Fat Babies play classic jazz, as they do every Tuesday night at Al Capone’s long ago speakeasy the Green Mill, is to catch an old style imbued with new life. When Ernest Dawkins leads current members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in a tribute to the Art Ensemble’s late Jarman, drummer Alvin Fielder and Saalik Ziyad, who died unexpectedly, very young, the conjunction of time is crystalized.

When guitarist George Freeman, 92, jokes with harmonica master Billy Branch, 67, with an enthusiastic contingent of Southport Records principals behind them, the continuity of distinctly Chicago music is manifest. When players in their 20s such as vibist Joel Ross, the Collier brothers (saxophonist Isaiah, bassist Micah and drummer Jeremiah) and drummer Isaiah Spencer, or a bit older like pianist Richard Johnson, saxophonists Sharel Cassity and Juli Woods, multi-instrumentalist Ben Lamar Gay, trumpeter Jaimie Branch, etc. take over the stage, tomorrow’s arrived.

The fact that a jazz festival happened 10 days ago doesn’t mean it’s over. People are still living with the reverberations. Those fading sounds have something to say about what comes next. In fact, thanks to WDCB-FM and WFMT’s connection to a global radio network, recordings live from the 41st Chicago Jazz Festival of Freddy Cole, bassist Christian McBride’s New Jawn, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago will be heard, in coming months, throughout the world.

Labor Day jazz fests, starting with Chicago’s

Twilight, Millennium Park bandshell lawn; photo by Marc PoKempner

The 40th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, four days free to all of unfettered, usually joyous music held in beautiful downtown Millennium Park,  started last night with stars of of the local scene celebrating  “Legends and Lions”. Add “Ancient to the Future” to set the tone for a weekend of exciting, civically-supported music here — and similar outpourings of jazz and blues — America’s vernacular musics — are offered throughout the U.S. this Labor Day weekend.

A quick search turns up music fests in the next days from Augusta, Georgia (Labor Day Jazz Weekend – Candlelight For A Cause (August 31 – September 2, 2018) to Stevens Point, Wisconsin (the Riverfront Jazz Festival, Sept 1 and 2), from JasAspenSnowMass and the Vail Jazz Party (Aug 30 – Sept 3) to Pensacola, Florida’s Gold Coast Summer Fest – Jazz Edition.

I’ve blogged about Labor Day jazz blowouts before, and most I previously cited still exist. The Bedford, Texas Blues and Barbeque Festival is happening, for instance, as is the Big Muddy Blues Festival on three stages over two days at Laclede’s Landing near St. Louis’ Gateway Arch. The Grand Hotel of Mackinac Island continues its Labor Day Jazz Weekend promotion. The DC Blues Society’s 29th annual Blues Fest is in a new venue, the Wunder Garten, on Labor Day itself.

There have been a few suspensions (Memphis) or transformations (Tanglewood in the Berkshires discontinued its festival, but Sept 1 will present the Wynton Marsalis Quartet featuring Ellis Marsalis, his father). New York City’s estimable, two-neighborhood Charlie Parker Jazz Festival was last weekend — but New York City, like Chicago and some other cities can fairly be said to always be jazz festing, so there are good options there or in New Orleans, L.A., Seattle, Portland OR, Austin, Nashville . . .

Orbert Davis – Gary/Chicago Crusader

In Chicago the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events kicked it’s support up a notch for the 40th festival, which has traditionally been curated by a committee of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. DCASE improved the run-up to this year’s main events by offering financial support to venues that last week offered shows free-of-cover.* DCASE commissioner Mark Kelly also added Wednesday night to the previously scheduled four-day fest, having Orbert Davis of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic organize a calvalcade program of trumpeters (Art Hoyle, Bobby Lewis), vibists (Stu Katz, Joel Ross, Thadeus Tooks), saxophonists (Ari Brown, Pat Mallinger), pianists (Bethany Pickens) and singers (Kurt Elling, Tammy McCann) hailing past heroes such as Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Von Freeman and Fred Anderson, Willie Pickens and Eddie Jefferson.

The Detroit International Jazz Festival, Chicago’s rival, likewise highlights its jazz history and connections –  Alice McLeod Coltrane’s works performed by her saxophonist son Ravi; turns by saxphonist Tia Fuller, violinist Regina Carter in a 25th anniversary reconvening of the women’s quartet StraightAhead, fusion bassist Ralphe Armstrong, a Curtis Fuller-dedicated jam session, Joan Belgrave singing, a band representing Detroit-based record company Mack Avenue (and also out-of-towners: Esperanza Spalding, Teri Lynne Carrington, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Omar Sosa, Eddie Daniels, Pat Martino and so on).

Not to say Chicago is without “special guests” from elsewhere: singer Dianne Reeves, pianist Kenny Barron, orchestra leader Darcy James Argue, pianist Barry Harris with alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and fund saxist Maceo Parker are among the imports. Even so, headliners including Elling and Ramsey Lewis and the tribute to Muhal Richard Abrams are Chi-centric. Which is just fine, as the current talent is comparable to any based anywhere.

*I caught solo pianist Craig Taborn at Constellation; French horn player Vincent Chancey’s quartet with bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Mike Reed at the Hungry Brain (Reed runs both the Brain and Constellation; he booked a “Dog Days” series across the two, which are a block distant from each other). At the Green Mill, Jeff Lindberg’s Chicago Jazz Orchestra played the finale of it’s summer Mondays, and Patricia Barber’s regular stand was full but as usual. At the Jazz Art Record Collective, alto saxist Greg Ward and trumpeter Russ Johnson played the front line of Miles Davis’ high-energy Live/Evil with appropriate fire, while keyboardist Rob Clearfield, guitarist Matt Gold, bassist Matt Ulery, percussionist Quin Kirchner,  drummer Makaya McCraven all surprised me — Arthur Wright sketching throughout, Harvey Tillis taking photos. .  ).

Hear some jazz and blues! BBQ and kiss summer goodbye.

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Jazz on Millennium Park’s big screen – PoKempner photos

How’s that for brass? Jon Faddis presents the trumpeters of the Chicago Jazz Festival Big Band (from left: Chuck Parrish, Pharez Whitted, Tito Carrillo, Victor Garcia)

A 40-by-22½-foot LED screen is a dominating feature of the stage in the Pritzker Pavilion of Chicago’s Millennium Park, difficult to ignore though many try. Photographer Marc PoKempner does the opposite in his shots from the 39th annual Chicago Jazz Festival: he uses what he (and everybody else) sees to create striking images, in the best tradition of artists in his medium.

Guitarist George Freeman (age 90) with fellow guitarist Mike Allemana, organist Pete Benson, drummer Mike Schlick

 

A smaller but not less intense screen at the Claudia Cassidy Theater of the Chicago Cultural Center, where drummer Ignacio Berroa led a band of students demonstrating points in his talk on “The Evolution of Afro-Cuban Jazz.”

 

Boom Tic Boom, demonstrating the welcome trend of gender-diversified ensembles: bassist Todd Sickafoose, pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, leader and drummer Allison Miller, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg.

 

Kirk Knuffke magnified, visible in detail to the crowd in the grassy field. The sound is amplified — why not the sight?

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Jazz/Improv Chicago: Wide-ranging talents, free fests, PoKempner pix

Chicago’s jazz/improvised music scene contains multitudes, last week ranging from the wild yet earnest Liberation Music Collective to veteran piano sophisticate Michael Weiss in trio, as two of Marc PoKempner‘s photos document (and more of his vision, focused on links between local music and politics — Obama included — is on exhibit titled “Harold’s Got the Blues” for the next month at the restaurant Wishbone).

The Liberation Music Collective, a young ensemble led by bassist-vocalist-lyricist Hannah Fidler and trumpeter-conductor Matt Riggen, celebrated the release of its new album Rebel Portraiture in performance at the Jazz Record Art Collective which runs a terrific series at a loft called the Fulton Street Collective. The music, like PoKempner’s photomontage, had outsized elements — songs and raps about martyred freedom fighters, set and offset by strong solos and big band climaxes in the manner of Gil Evans or maybe David Baker (several LMC members have studied at University of Indiana in Bloomington, where Baker launched one of the first college jazz programs).

Weiss, perhaps best known from his years accompanying Chicago-born tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin but with scads of other credits and works under his own name, is deeply in the tradition defined by revered elders such as Barry Harris, derived from breakthroughs of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. Leading a trio with bassist Jake Vinsel and drummer George Fludas at Andy’s Jazz Club and Restaurant, Weiss played several original songs as well as “Green Dolphin Street,” but the repertoire was less memorable than his fleet right hand runs, intricate voicings and harmonic explorations in which complex incidents followed fast upon each

other. Not to be simplistic, but Weiss, age 59, is all about his instrument, and what he can do with those hands.

That’s not all I heard in the past several days — Danish alto saxophonist Laura Toxvaerd, visiting the city briefly, threw out horn conventions to improvise sonically with a trio at Elastic Arts. Saxophonist Gary Bartz was at the Jazz Showcase, playing it relatively straight, with local great pianist Willie Pickens in a combustable quartet; bluesy, sardonic yet hopeful vocalist/songwriter/pianist Ben Sidran led his four-piece group at the Green Mill, and of course a lot went on that I missed entirely.

What matters more is what’s coming up: the Chicago Jazz Festival starts with a Club Tour during which trolleys convey ticket-holders to venues all over town on Wednesday night, and then four days of free performances by artists ranging from Roscoe Mitchell to Sheila Jordan to Jason Moran to Dr. Lonnie Smith to Mary Halvorson in Millennium Park. Then there’s the Englewood Jazz Festival all day Sept. 16 — I’m honored to have been chosen to receive a Spirit of Jazz Award there! — and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival  (I’ll present flutist Nicole Mitchell with a Jazz Journalists Association Award at her Bamako-Chicago Sound System performance Sept. 23). Wonderful lineups at all these free (did I mention free?) events. Not to be missed, so I’ll be there — probably with my buddy Marc PoKempner, working together as we have for years.

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African roots, Middle Eastern extensions in Hyde Park Jazz Fest

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Randy Weston in Rockefeller Chapel, photo by Marc PoKempner

Pianist Randy Weston, a magisterial musician at age 90 inspired by jazz traditions and its African basics, and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, who has devoted himself to incorporating the Middle East’s modal, microtonal maqam legacy into compositions for jazz improvisation by members of his Two Rivers Ensemble, were highlights of last weekend’s 10th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Both acts brought influences from afar back home.

The two-day fest in the neighborhood soon to host Barack Obama’s presidential library focused on local performers familiar to Chicago’s south side audiences — such as pianist Willie Pickens, alto saxist Greg Ward and singer Dee Alexander — performing on outdoor stages at the ends of a four-block long stretch of the Midway Plaisance (essentially, 59th St) girding the University of Chicago campus. I was busy at the nearby Logan Center the premiere of “Chicago’s Record Man: A Conversation with Bob Koester,”commissioned by the HPJF I co-directed with Matt Mehlan (who was out video-shooting other acts). There were also sets scattered around in venues as far off as the Little Black Pearl art and design center on 47th St., almost two miles away, the DuSable Museum (where trumpeter Orbert Davis’ Sextet had listeners to overflowing for a tribute to the late Freddie Hubbard), and other University facilities.

At 11 pm on a blissfully temperate fall Saturday night, Rockefeller Chapel, a studiously non-denominational example of “Collegiate Gothic” architecture with a 200 foot high tower, matched the grandeur of Weston’s rumbling bass motifs and sparkling right hand melodic variations. Although the vast hall’s acoustics tend to minimize if not blur piano notes, Weston knew how to play it: sparely, with selective emphasis, taking time to let pitches ring and fade. His music flows like a slow but steady river, and staples of his repertoire including “Blue Moses,” “Little Niles,” “Berkshire Blues” and “African Sunrise” (commissioned in 1984 by the Chicago Jazz Festival for Weston to perform with an orchestra including Dizzy Gillespie) seemed ageless, ancient and enduring.

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Two Rivers Ensemble, from left: Tareq Abboushi, Zafer Tawil, Ole Mathisen, Amir ElSaffar, Nasheet Waits, Carlo DeRosa; photo by Marc PoKempner

Several hours earlier a few hundred people came in from the sunny afternoon to the Logan Center performance hall to hear ElSaffar and his Two River Ensemble. A Chicago native who grew up seriously studying Western European classical and American vernacular music, ElSaffar, now 39, began researching his Iraqi ethnic heritage in 2002, spending two years abroad to learn maqam vocal techniques and santur (hammered dulcimer) that are now central to his compositions and concept.

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Nasheet Waits, Amir ElSaffar at santur, Carlo DeRosa; photo by Marc PoKempner

What he’s accomplished is remarkable. He’s affected a genuine absorption and adoption by his sextet members of Arab practices about harmony, ornamentation, intonation and rhythmic cycles in high contrast to American music’s familiar conventions. Simultaneously he’s managed to open those Middle Eastern elements to the expressive freedoms of spontaneous and often urgent improvisation.

In practice what this meant was ElSaffar and tenor saxophonist Ole Mathisen played tight, repetitive, minorish riffs in near-unison over the synchronized string and sometimes hand drum parts of Zafer Tawil and Tareq Abboushi, while Nasheet Waits drove the entire band from his traps, modulating volume nicely, and Carlo DeRosa supplied virtuosic bass lines.

On occasion ElSaffar sat at his santur, striking ping-like tones. At their concert climax Mathisen was wailing with all the fiercely garrulous grit of an Old Testament prophet, while ElSaffar flailed with delicate strikers at the wire of his small, trapezoidal instrument. It was difficult to hear the hammered dulcimer’s sound — ElSaffar said he couldn’t hear it onstage — but the entire band’s fervor, grounded and moving on interlocking rhythms, was palatable. The Two Rivers Ensemble offered unusually new music and the seasoned Hyde Park Jazz Festival audience, ready for something more that simply pleasant background swing, stayed with the adventure, by the end gratified with risks and rewards, just as jazz intends.

 
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Chi jazz fest 2016, details in photos and words

My DownBeat overview of the 38th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, comprehensive as I could make it, didn’t go into depth on any of the couple dozen performances I heard from Sept 1 through 4 in downtown

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Bassist Tatsu Aoki’s Myumi Project with pianist Jon Jang, cellist Jaime Kempkers, tenor saxophonists Ed Wilkerson and Francis Wong, baritone saxist Mwata Bowden, Tsukasa Taiko with soloist Kioto. Photo montage by Marc PoKempner.

Millennium Park and the Cultural Center. So here, with imagery by my photojournalist colleagues and friends Marc PoKempner and Michael Jackson (whose photo of drummer Dave King of the Bad Plus graced that DownBeat review) are some previously unreported details.

  • Tatsu Aoki‘s Miyumi Project continues to evolve as the Tsukasa Taiko Legacy troupe with soloist Kioto leans ever-closer into the rhythms of his jazz-oriented ensemble — driven by traps drummer Avreeayl Ra and hand-percussionist Coco Elysses. On this date Aoki’s Bay Area Asian Improv colleagues Jon Jang (piano) and Francis Wong (tenor sax) — who performed a stunning mouthpiece-only solo — joined Jaime Kempkers, cello; Edward Wilkerson, tenor sax; Mwata Bowden, baritone sax, for no-holds-barred give-and-take.
  • Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, with the late founder’s bass chair filled by his one-time student Scott Colley, performed new arrangements by conductor Carla Bley that managed to be simultaneously free for roaring and transparently structured, genuinely patriotic and suffused with sad/defiant critical expression. Trumpeter Michael Rodriguez was probing on most of the brass solos, but his section-mate Seneca Black crowned “American the Beautiful” with a gleaming high note.

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    from left: Curtis Fowlkes, Vincent Chancey, Joe Daley in Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Carla Bley. Photo by Marc PoKempner

    Tenor saxophonists Tony Malaby and Chris Cheek presented a contrast of solo styles — the former voluble and gruff, the latter selective and bell-toned. Bley was understated when conducting, and deliberate at the piano; her charts applied high and low voices artfully, for clarity. Alto saxist Loren Stillman, guitarist Steve Cardenas, drummer Matt Wilson should not go unmentioned; trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, french horn player Vincent Chancey and tuba player Joe Daley supplied colorful depths.

  • Ornette Coleman’s 1971 album Science Fiction is one of my all time favorites, as related in Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz. The Bad Plus with guests Tim Berne (alto sax), Ron Miles (trumpet) and Sam Newsome (soprano sax) did a mitzvah bringing to life Coleman’s seldom-attempted compositions “Law Years,” “Civilization Day,” “Street Woman,” as well as two originally sung by Asha Puthli, “All My Life” and “What Reason Could I Give.” Those two unusual ballads are gorgeous, were capably sung by Bad Plus bassist Reid Anderson (who does not usually sing in performance), and pianist

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    from left: Ethan Iverson, Sam Newsome, Ron Miles, Tim Berne, Reid Miles, Dave King. Photo by Michael Jackson, who despairs of the image’s size.

    Ethan Iverson performed an awesome episode on “Reason,” stating the melodic theme slowly with his left hand while with his right, independent of his bass rhythm, he touched on high notes as if lighting stars.

  • Cameron Pfiffner and five other Chicago-identified reedists in his occasional group

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    Cameron Pfiffner in Preston Bradley Hall of the Chicago Cultural Center, Howard Mandel listening — photo by Marc PoKempner

    Adolph’S AX blew without amplification, walking through the crowd under the Tiffany dome at Chicago’s Cultural Center, to explore the glorious room’s acoustic properties. Although it may look otherwise from my expression, I was intrigued, not displeased.

  • Africa and Maggie Brown, daughters of the late singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr., sang their father’s lyrics with delightful high spirits and a casual back-and-forth as if they were in a private home or cabaret.

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    from left, Maggie and Africa Brown, photo by Marc PoKempner


 

 

 

 

  • Tenor saxophonist Benny Golson chose not to play some of his best known compositions — no “Killer Joe,” no “Along Came Betty,” no “I Remember Clifford.”

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Benny Golson, with Buster Williams; photo by Marc PoKempner.

But accompanied by pianist Mike LeDonne, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Carl Allen, Golson did essay a perfectly lovely version of his song “Whisper Not.” He claimed the title had no specific meaning, that he’d chosen the words at random. Hard to believe, but he wouldn’t lie. And if Duke Ellington’s theme song “Take the ‘A’ Train” is Golson’s usual set-ender, at age 87 he’s got his reasons and they deserve respectful consideration.

  •  I’m still trying to figure out how I liked the music of Christian Scott a Tunde Adjuah. He’s a powerhouse on trumpets and bold onstage, which shook things up. His “Stretch music” label is supposed to encompass jazz and other genres, though of course I heard it as jazz beyond “jazz” —

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    Christian Scott a Tunde Adjuah, in front of the Pritzker Pavillion’s giant video screen. Photo by Marc PoKempner

    an attempt to get at the real excitement in the art form’s essence that is too frequently forgotten amid the accretion of history, tradition, convention, rote performance, tired blood, call it what you will. It seems obviously a descendent of Miles’ post-Bitches Brew, but more than just that. Flutist Elena Pinderhughes provided a cool contrast to overtly physical Adjuah; pianist Lawrence Fields played one affecting solo on Rhodes piano. The leader’s street style and bountiful energy makes him seem outsized.

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Scofield and Lovano, photo by Marc PoKempner

  • Guitarist John Scofield and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, on their final date of a Stateside tour, kicked out the jams like comfortably rambunctious best old friends. Bill Stewart drummed, Ben Street played bass, Joe and Sco’s tunes served to get them into and out of the blowing, during which all four seemed connected at the hip (by the hip?).
  • Candido Camero, conguero, capped the festival with Latin jazz all-stars. Conga drums (Sammy Figueroa filling

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    Candido Camero, 95. Photo by Michael Jackson

    in behind Candido) and  clavé are integral to any 21st century fest comprehensive representation of present-day Western Hemisphere music. We got that from a master.

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A Great Migration suite from trumpeter Orbert Davis: Audio interview

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Orbert Davis – Shilke Music

Orbert Davis — trumpeter, composer and leader of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, has been
commissioned by the Jazz Institute of Chicago to write and perform a suite about the Great Migration for the 38th annual free Chicago Jazz Festival. “Soul Migration,” for octet, will be heard Sept 1 at 8 pm in Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavillion.

With the composition in progress, Orbert spoke about it with me at his home studio, demonstrating with some synthesized samples and even improvising a theme. Thanks to Collin Ashmead-Bobbit for recording the interview, excerpted here.

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CareFusion drops jazz fest sponsorships

CareFusion, a global corp. specializing in hospital equipment, has ended its two-year sponsorship of George Wein’s New York Jazz Festival and Newport Jazz Festival, and the Chicago Jazz Festival, a day after reporting the retirement of its Chairman and CEO David L. Schlotterbeck, and the first quarter financials of its 2010 fiscal year. 

The company announced steep revenue losses and plans to cut 5% of its workforce last August; in October, CareFusion recalled 17,000 Alaris PC infusion units, cited by the FDA as a product the use of which has “a reasonable probability” of causing “serious adverse health consequences or death.” But a publicist cautioned against linking these happenstances, and enthused about what she called CareFusion’s jazz-related marketing campaign.

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Little known great jazz in Chicago’s neighborhoods

The Jazz Institute of Chicago‘s annual club tour is an urban presentation innovation and a treat, revealing an unheralded depth of local audiences, entrepreneurs and artists. On Wednesday night, Dudley Owens blew tenor sax with the largest sound I’ve heard maybe ever, in combo with an older pianist (sorry I didn’t get his name) who played as no one ever told him he couldn’t, turning the keyboard inside-out. They completely refreshed the Billie Holiday standard “All of Me” at a friendly, funky hangout called City Life Cocktail Lounge on East 83rd  Street, while a shakedancer flirted outrageously with regulars at the horseshoe-shaped bar and jazz fest fans who’d paid a flat fee to be bused around to 13 venues, sampling the city’s diversity. Chi-town’s jazz scene may be short on fame and fortune but is rich with grit and gusto and a loyal, born ‘n’ bred following.

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Best American city for jazz? Chicago

I’m a Chicago homie — long removed but never really gone — so don’t expect objectivity, but a recent visit proved my native metropolis is #1 in America and maybe everywhere for its active, creative, meaningful, almost-economically-viable, neighborhood-rooted, exploratory and world class jazz. I say this even as my dearly adopted New York City kickstarts as freshly energized a fall season as any I recall.

Jazz is the lifeblood of Chicago in a way it ain’t in NYC, at least not right now. Jazz-soul-blues is Chicago’s street music. Chicago’s citizens — not just its visitors — seem to consider jazz this music their personal due. It’s what you hear at O’Hare going in and out of town.

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