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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Youssou N’Dour on stage & screen, PoKempner photos

Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner‘s images from the Chicago Jazz Fest, as featured in my previous post, and these from Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour’s rousing who two weeks earlier, exhibit how he’s dealing straightforwardly and creatively with the screen backing musicians at the Pritzker Pavilion of Millennium Park. Giving us eyefuls to enjoy.

Here’s what we can see — as PoKempner proves, without post-production; the double images are the videographers’ superimpositions — when visually-conscious, kinetic performing artists are video’d and magnified in near-real time, presumably so audiences far from the stage can better appreciate their costumes, moves, expressions and expression.

Dazzling effects, new visions when those moments are captured in the snap of a photograph, too.

The colors and rhythms of these image seem related, naturally, to those of the elegant, graceful, melliflous singer-composer-bandleader-politician’s lastest album, Africa Rekk.

His songs on it include “Goree” (for the island off Dakar from which slaves embarked to the Americas), “Be Careful,” “Exodus,” “Conquer the World,” “Food for All” and “Money, Money.” One can discern his messages simply from the way Youssou N’Dour and troupe looks, dancing, playing, singing. PoKempner’s photojournalism takes us there.

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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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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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