Lauren Deutsch

Introducing The Jazz Omnibus

I’m proud of my two published books (Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz and Future Jazz) and my unpublished ones, too; the two iterations of the encyclopedia of jazz and blues; I edited, and my collaborations with some musicians creating their own books — but right now I’m crazy enthusiastic about The Jazz Omnibus: 21st-Century Photos and Writings by Members of the Jazz Journalists Association,

published in e-book, softcover and hardbound formats by Cymbal Press, most readily available from you-know-where. So crazy I’ll brazenly go all advertisements-for-myself to promote it. Here’s the story :

Six-hundred pages of profiles, portraits, interviews, reviews, inquiries and analysis of music, all from the past 20 years by dozens of the people far and wide who make it their business to cover jazz in its multifarious, ever-permutating forms. Created by a team comprising editor David Adler, photo editor Patrick Hinely, copy chief Terri Hinte, me as editorial consultant and readers Fiona Ross and Martin Johnson,, with a dazzling cover photo by Lauren Deutsch (of Roscoe Mitchell, from her “Tangible Sound” series), and dedicated to the memory of JJA emeritus member Dan Morgenstern (1929-2024) The Jazz Omnibus strikes me — involvement admitted! — as unique and multi-dimensional.

It doesn’t claim to be a comprehensive history yet it provides a sweeping overview of the topics addressed by music journalists, with many different perspectives conveyed in words and pictures. It offer newcomers numerous entry points, introductions to emerging artists as well as in-depth discussions of icons. Connoisseurs will find plenty to argue about as well as some work they’ve probably never come across before.

What’s great about this anthology is the diversity of voices and viewpoints focused on the incredibly resilient creative expression we call jazz (acknowledging that some practitioners reject the term). There is been nothing quite like it in the jazz literature — most anthologies represent a single writer or photographer’s pieces. Here we’ve got Ted Panken, Paul de Barros, Suzanne Lorge, Nate Chinen, Ted Gioia, Willard Jenkins, Enid Farber, Bob Blumenthal, Bill Milkowski, James Hale, Larry Blumenfeld, Jordannah Elizabeth, Ashley Kahn, Luciano Rossetti — observers immersed in their subjects. DownBeat’s The Great Jazz Interviews is similarly valuable, as is The Oxford Companion to Jazz (I’m in that 2004 anthology, writing about jazz to and from Africa), but I daresay The Jazz Omnibus is more freewheeling and multi-faceted.

In its early gestation I thought of it as a descendent of two volumes I’d loved as a child: This is My Best and This is My Best Humor (now completely disappeared) both edited by Whit Burnett, founder of Story magazine (founded in 1931, ongoing). There’s also been Da Capo’s Best Music Writing series, but it was far from jazz-centrric and ended 13 years ago. Jazzmen, regarded as first jazz history book published in the U.S. (in 1939), also featured chapters contributed by nine writers. It’s gratifying to have The Jazz Omnibus join such a literary lineage.

The Omnibus is, of course, central to the mission of the JJA — which you may well not know, is a New York-registered non-profit of some 250 internationally-based writers, photographers, broadcasters and new media professionals, networking to sustain ourselves as independent disseminators of news and views of jazz (as on our website JJANews). I’ve been president since 1994. We incorporated in 2004. Even before then, we’d established annual Jazz Awards for altruistic and journalistic as well as musical accomplishments; these continue. We’re media-forward, running monthly “Seeing Jazz” photographers’ sessions archived on YouTube, producing the podcast The Buzz, having experimented

with multi-platform and virtual reality online events, staging a guerilla video campaign called eyeJazz. We run almost entirely from members’ dues, although creation of The Jazz Omnibus has been supported by Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, the Jazz Foundation of America, and the Verve Label Group (Verve, Impulse! and Blue Note Records). The JJA will benefit from royalties from the book’s sales.

In the early 1990s, when my friend and colleague Art Lange was JJA president, the organization produced two collections of members’ writings, mimeographed, Xeroxed and stapled, a la fanzines. These were just meant for us, the members. The Jazz Omnibus doesn’t claim to represent the totality of jazz, but it’s intended to be broadly accessible and appealing, Meant for everyone. As is “jazz.”

End of shameless self-promotion — for now. You got this far: Please see The Jazz Omnibus!

“Supermusician” Roscoe Mitchell’s paintings revealed!

Roscoe Mitchell — internationally renown composer, improviser, ensemble leader, winds and reeds virtuoso who has pioneered the use of “little instruments” and dramatic shifts of sonic scale in the course of becoming a “supermusician . . .someone who moves freely in music, but, of course, with a well established background behind . . .”* reveals his equal freedom in another medium in his first exhibition,

Roscoe Mitchell, 1/20/2023, photo Â© Lauren Deutsch

“Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963 -2022,” which opened Jan 20 (closing March 23) at the Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey.

A crowd of avant-gardists was in attendance at a dry but nonetheless spirited two-hour reception, impressed by the vibrancy of Mitchell’s nearly three dozen works, mostly on canvas, ranging in size from 4″ x 4″ to 4′ x 4′. Present and past members of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the collective Mitchell helped establish with Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Amina Claudine Myers, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill and others in mid ’60s) where there, such as Mwata Bowden, Junius Paul, Mike Reed (of Constellation, the Hungry Brain, Pitchfork, the Chicago Jazz Festival programming committee), Tomeka Reid and Kahil El Zabar — along with colleagues Angel Bat Dawid (clarinetist/pianist/vocalist of International Anthem’s The Oracle), cornetist Josh Berman, pianist-synthesist Jim Baker and drummer Michael Zerang.

Aaron Cohen (co-author of Gentleman of Jazz, Ramsey Lewis’ autobiography slated for May publication), author-educator Paul Steinbeck (Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM and Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago), Chicago Reader writer Bill Meyer, Hot House presenter-producer Marguerite Horberg, keeper-of-the-Fred-Anderson-flame Sharon Castlewitz and

Roscoe Mitchell with Angel Bat Dawid, photo Â© Lauren Deutsch

photographer Lauren Deutsch (also former executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago) as well as gallerists John Corbett (a prolific author, School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor, past Berlin Jazz Fest artistic director) and Jim Dempsey (formerly of SAIC and the Gene Siskel Film Center), stood listening raptly to Mitchell, amid tables and racks of gongs, hand percussion and horns, poerform with his Sound Ensemble — multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson and baritone Thomas Buckner — and flutist extraordinaire Robert Dick as a guest.

The music — freely improvised — was hushed, suspenseful, most attentive to timbres, tensions, contrasts, comparisons and interactions of sounds (Sound is the title of Roscoe Mitchell’s groundbreaking debut recording). It was not melodically or rhythmically driven, but haunting in its passage.

As mentioned on its website, “Creative music has always been a feature of the gallery’s activities. In addition to having its own record label, CvsD is proud to represent Peter BrÃ¶tzmann and the estate of Sun Ra.” Multidisciplinary and cross-displinary aspects of ‘creative music’ are, of course, principles that date to “Ellington, Armstrong, Matisse and Joyce” (cf. Jazz Modernism, by late Northwestern University professor Alfred Appel Jr.).

Mitchell, an NEA Jazz Master, United States Artists (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) awardee, and holder of many other honors, is a Chicago native, now 82. He remembers being entranced by crayons and drawing as a child. His first adult works in the exhibit, vivid and leaning into direct if crude technique, have appeared as album cover art, first in 1967 for Numbers 1 & 2, the debut recorded meeting of Mitchell with trumpeter Lester Bowie (under whose name it was released, due to contractual obligations), reedsman and poet Joseph Jarman and bassist Malachi Favors, all original members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Drummer Famadou Don MoyÃ© joined them in 1970, during the band’s sojourn in Paris.

But Mitchell deliberately suspended his painting practice in the early ’70s in order to concentrate more on music creation. The result is documented on nearly 100 albums with a vast array of collaborators and content — the most recent being The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris featuring the Art Ensemble co-led by MoyÃ© (the AEOC’s only other surviving founder) with newer enlistees — for instance, Moor Mother.

Upon retiring in 2016 from his position as Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, CA and returning to his Wisconsin home, where he had pandemic down-time, Mitchell picked up his brushes agin. The majority of the Corbett v. Dempsey show come from these extremely productive

past six years of practice, depicted in the gallery’s installation of several videos shot by Wendy Nelson, Mitchell’s wife.

Self-taught regarding visual art — though he says he’s looked at “everyone,” Mitchell’s current style demonstrates extraordinary concentration for detail, a fecund imagination, surprising juxtapositions of colors and geometric elements, connections to or suggestions of African art, masks, Chicago’s Hairy Who and COBRA groups, local street portraitist Lee Godie, Van Gogh and even Ivan Albright. There’s a playfulness, demonstrated for instance by several works that make sense any direction they’re hung. African-American themes that emerged from CvD’s recent Emilio Cruz exhibit and the Bob Thompson retrospective at University of Chicago’s Smart Museum (at which Corbett spoke) contextualize Mitchell’s painting, too.

It has not been unusual that AACM musicians or other exploratory instrumentalists have painted: Muhal, Wadada and Braxton all represented themselves visually, as has Ornette Coleman, Marion Brown, Miles Davis, Oliver Lake and oh yes, Pee Wee Russell. But the dry, incisive humor (several paintings can be hung any-side-up), habit of defining parameters then stress-testing them, commitment to and follow-through on unusual ideas, re-sizing of details and main themes, seems uniquely characteristic of this artist, this individual: Roscoe Mitchell.

*”I believe that the super musician…this is what I would like to be, you know. The super musician, as close as I can figure it out, is someone that moves freely in music. But, of course, that’s with a well established background behind you. The way I see it is everything is evolving. . . . So, the super musician has a big task in front of them because they have to know something about all the music that went down because we are approaching this age of spontaneous composition. And that’s what it is. Really good improvisation is spontaneous composition. The thing that you have to do is get yourself to the level where you can do it spontaneously. If you are sitting at home composing, you’ve got time. You can say, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll try it this way, or maybe I’ll try it that way.’ But you want to get yourself to the point to where you can make these decisions spontaneously.” — Roscoe Mitchell, “In Search of the Super Musician” by Jack Gold-Molina, January 8, 2004, AllAboutJazz.com.

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 ZÃ©non, 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.

Listening to Coltrane’s “Ascension,” and what I’ve done. . .

Yesterday’s Concert dropped a podcast in which I offer guidance in listening even to challenging jazz recordings such as John Coltrane’s ambitious, gnarly Ascension.

And semi-shameless self-promotion: Music Journalism Insider has published a comprehensive career interview with me.

For Todd L. Burns’ invaluable, subscription-supported newsletter/platform about music journalism, I lay out at his request the steps that got me to my present point — writer/editor/radio producer/president of the Jazz Journalists Association, board member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

On Lance Ingram’s well-edited and scripted podcast digging into music as it sounds, I try to demystify “free jazz,” the idea of musical genres and subgenres, and the challenges of music that doesn’t conform to conventions, but has a lot of truth to tell.

My best friend tells me she was impressed with my enthusiasm in the verbal interview, but I am indeed excited still by listening to music and thinking about what that activity means or can do for us. I believe listening is a subjective experience that none-the-less coincides with external reality.

And re my career rundown: I seem to have done a lot, although I thought I was just kinda hanging out. Frankly, I don’t know what I could have done if I hadn’t done what I did.

Howard Mandel at Latin Jazz Festival, Humboldt Park, Chicago, July 16 2022, photo Â© Lauren Deutsch

And I have every intention of keepin’ on — listening, writing and working with others who are interested in the same.

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

“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 10â€“12), the punk Riot Fest in Douglass Park (September 17â€“19) â€” and â€œMusic Lives Here,â€ 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 MoyÃ© Art Ensemble of Chicago Large Ensemble, Sept 2019, Pritzker Pavillion; photo Â©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 Â© Marc PoKempner

Spoken word artist Khari B, reeds player Kevin King Â© Marc PoKempner

Crowd with social distancing at Douglass (Frederick and Anna Park, Â© 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 expanded review & Deutsch photos

My DownBeat review of the 39th annualÂ Chicago Jazz Festival held over Labor Day weekend in and spilling out of Millennium Park, highlights the best I heard — including the speciallyÂ organizedÂ big band

The Chicago Jazz Festival Big Band, led by Jon Faddis, in Dizzy Gillespie’s Centennial Celebration, at Pritzker Pavilion of Millennium Park, 89/31/17 (all photos on this page copyright Lauren Deutsch)

led by trumpeter Jon Faddis, making big funÂ from his mentor Dizzy Gillespie‘s fresh-as-fire arrangements dating 60 to 70 years back. (Gotta wonder what a music fan raised on the past decades’ pop, country and rap but who never heard anything like this would make of the power of 16 players so synced in rhythm, tune and spirit, partying with sound).

Lauren Deutsch’s photos depict that set splendidly — (and thanks in large part to her work over the past 21 years as executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the fest retains its essential community DNA).

To expand: The huge screen backdrop is good for attendees in the grassy field and back rows of seats, but can dwarf those onstage. Faddis was able to make this presentation, lasting more than an hour, seem intimate and simultaneously made for tv (astute camera work from the City’s staffers helped).

Jon Faddis, eyes open

A large man in dark clothes, Jon was at ease talking with his horn under his arm, and equally so lifting it to pierce the limits of hearing at key points in the hard-driving, wildly colorful compositions from the era when swing bands went bebop over Afro-Cuban beats. Gillespie was a pioneer of drawing on Afro-Cuban, Caribbean and South American elements and on the flagwaver “Manteca” Faddis’ silvery upper register is so amazing we might forget what a swift and sensitively musical mind he has. But like Gillespie, that’s the real crux of his creativity, his high notes and wit, willingness to be silly and ability to spontaneously inspire a dozen or so virtuosi simply aspects of it. To me, Faddis’ best and most personal playing was his all-but-recklessly fast, nimble, nuanced, shapely, melodically developed solo on “Tanga,” based on one of Gillespie’s later career combo recordings.

Victor Garcia on flugelhorn, Jon Faddis admiring

One man’s solo doesn’t a set make. Faddis demonstrated generosity as well as geniality joshing withÂ Victor Garcia, an up’n’coming Chicagoan in the brass section, creating a running joke that had a handsome musical payoff, gaining Garcia extra attention for his flugelhorn feature. Â (More or perhaps less incidentally, the very first solo of this show, on “Night In Tunisia,” was performed by Audrey Morrison, Jazz Studies Director at the Music Institute of Chicago,Â a mature white woman.)

New Yorker Antonio Hart, a last minute sub for his mentor, saxophonist Jimmy Heath (91, he had a medical issue)

Alto saxophone Antonio Hart soloing on “Things to Come” by Dizzy Gillespie

was a standout, tearing through “Things to Come,” Gillespie’s warning from 1946, in alto sax language that took the freedoms claimed by of Charlie ParkerÂ through the changes wrought by such as Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler. Chicago tenor saxophonist Pat Mallinger of Sabretooth, the hardbitten, longtime midnight Saturday to 4 am Sunday attraction at the Green Mill, showed his stuff, as did trumpeter Pharez Whitted.

The rhythm section, however, was this orchestra’s solid core: Dr. Todd Coolman, understated but unwavering bassist and professor (former director) of jazz studies at Purchase College (SUNY), where Faddis also teaches; drummer Ignacio Berroa, who arrived in the US from his native Havana as a refugee/alien during the 1981 Mariel boatlift, was hired by Gillespie for his quartet and stayed until the trumpeter’s death in ’93, Â plus Chicago pianist Willie Pickens, at age 86 undiminished in ideas and agility.

Willie Pickens

Just days earlier I’d heard Pickens in command of entirely different repertoire, accompanying Gary Bartz. He sweeps stylistically from Bud Powell’s fast single note lines to the more spacious, all-octaves approach of McCoy Tyner, and his infectious momentum connected with the clavÃ© rhythm of “Manteca” irresistibly.

This all made for a thrilling first night for a jazz festival, and set a high bar for all the acts who followed.

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Great new jazz photography: SÃ¡nta’s faces of Northsea Jazz Fest

Jon Faddis

The faces of jazz musicians SÃ¡nta IstvÃ¡n Csaba hears, sees and snaps are indelibly expressive — like the memorable phrases, inspired improvisations and magical connections these players play, so meaningful to listeners in the moment, remembered or recorded.Â JazzTimes magazineÂ has published some of SÃ¡nta’s images from the Northsea Jazz Festival in early July — here are more, not included in that publication.

Malika Tirolien of BokantÃ©

Northsea, held in the Hague, is a multi-stage, non-stop, international showcase of bands on tour now. Having worked with him elsewhere, I can imagine SÃ¡nta not pushing but simply slipping through the crowds to get his closeups that serve as both portraits and candids, typically from an unimpeded perspective. Many music photographers complain about the microphones, cables and other on-stage detritus that detracts from the heart of the matter. Somehow, SÃ¡nta sneaks around that stuff or makes it disappear.

I’ve included his photosÂ on this blog previously, and will again, as he has assigned himself an urgent quest to document hisÂ heroes, frequently traveling substantial distances on a nickel (not a dime), getting very close after coming very far.

Ambrose Akinmusire

Just looking at the individuals SÃ¡nta portrays, one can get a sense of their sounds. Is Jon Faddis a joyous player? Absolutely — in the tradition of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. I haven’t heard Malika Tirolien but know from the set of her lips that her voice and delivery have an edge. Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s music, in my experience, has been, like his gaze, thoughtful and penetrating; as the photo shows, he’s youthful but has depths, too. As for Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, whose visage conveys age, yes, and perhaps experience: Even with his eyes closed and focus so clearly on what’s happening in his mind, we get that he’s not contemplating anything banal, instead absorbing information and perhaps transforming it into comprehension that’s profound.

I’ve always wondered how my photographer friends and colleagues take in the music while they are engaging their visual skills. When I’m listening with the intent of writing, I usually take notes, but they are reckless scribblings, not polished or thought-through — I get to do that later.Revision, it’s become ever clearer to me, offers great opportunity.

Enrico Rava

Photographers have no such grace period.Â They must capture their impression simultaneously with the gesture, laugh, grimace, asserted concentration or perhaps, yes, sound that inspires it. That’s why jazz photography — the documentation of a moment that could not be foreseen and will never come again — can be so great. Thanks to those including but not limited to SÃ¡nta, Dee Kalea, Lauren Deutsch and Marc PoKempner who keep this rare art alive and vital.

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Great new jazz photography #2: Lauren Deutsch’s Made in Chicago portfolio

Occidental Bros Dance Band International: Nathaniel Braddock, guitar; Makaya McCraven, drums, Joshua Ramos, bass, Greg Ward, alto sax.

“Made in Chicago” is true of the photography of Lauren Deutsch, and also the name of the four-day-long collaborative jazz festival she’s organized in Poznan, PolandÂ for the past 12 years as artistic director (formerly with Wojceich Juszcsak)Â on behalf of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. The theme of this year’s fest was “Freedom.”

The photos here of Chicago-based musicians (click to enlarge), in which Deutsch tries to capture the sound of the music through camera movement, were taken in May 2017.

Alto saxophonist Greg Ward

Singers Dee Alexander and Grazyna Auguscik, first time working together Â as Let Freedom Sing: Love and Freedom to the Ends of the Earth

Ben LaMar Gay, cornetist

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Patti Smith’s New Year’s Eve vow: “We must not behave!”

Patti Smith, Dec 31 2016, Park West Chicago. Photo by Lauren Deutsch.

Ushering in 2017 with Patti Smith and band at Chicago’s Park West New Year’s Eve was inspiriting for usÂ of a certain age and artsy disposition.

Grey-haired but loose and limber — funny, fierce, profane and poetically incantatory — Smith celebrated her 70th birthday in the city of her originÂ as if for all boomers and our progeny. At the Riviera Theatre on Dec. 30 she performedÂ the whole of Horses, her winning 1975 debut album; on theÂ 31st, backed by her four-man Nuggets, she offered a mixed bag including Debbie Reynold’s plaintive “Tammy,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright,” a Prince cover, vague comments that become stories that turned images into phrases conjuring her anthems “Gloria,” “Because the Night” and “People HaveÂ the Power,” Â and for a finaleÂ the Who’s “My Generation” — as a call to arms in the form ofÂ active humanitarianism united inÂ cultural bohemianism, a commitment to folk-rock-soul-art-literary-punk fun.

“2017 is the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love!” Smith exhortedÂ the full houseÂ of hipsters — perhaps a thirdÂ the 900 standing for three hours in a mosh pit, though most lookedÂ as well-aged as Smith and her longtime guitarman, Lenny Kaye. “Our generation had ideals! We were going to change the world with music, love, sex, drugs, understanding! This was our weapon — ” she hoisted a Fender — “and now we’ve got to be strong! We’ve got a voice! We’ve got to teach the young, they’re the future!” She wavedÂ at her daughter playing keyboards, and hugged a Japanese guitarist who’d come from Tokyo to sit in. “We mustÂ not behave!”

Patti Smith and her Nuggets at Park West, Chicago 12/21/17. Photo by Lauren Deutsch.

Extraordinarily for a New Year’s Eve party, in the middle of aÂ show which had the immediacy of something thrown together with and for friends, Smith broke into talking about peopleÂ less fortunate that those of us who’d gathered at some cost just for a good time. It was as if she made it easier to enjoy by acknowledged how fucked up things are, on so many levels.

She complained of not understanding why people who need blankets can’t be given them, people who need food or water aren’t provided for of course, and segued into her sympathiesÂ for Syrian refugees and others displaced by war.

This came off not asÂ aÂ self-righteous didactic political statement but straightforwardÂ personal expression and the crowd responded with a longÂ moment of quiet solemnity. Which Smith broke by mentioningÂ that she and the band were supposed to be revving up to a climactic midnight, soÂ the drummer resumed rocking, guitars chimed in, she sang with a throb and a catch in her voice, bass lines led in a bumptious way to spinning, glinting, swirling disco-ball lights and a cascade from the ceiling of colored balloons — “Happy New Year! Â Stay strong!”

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Jazz warms Chi spots: Hot House @ Alhambra Palace, AACM @ Promontory

There are good arguments for building venues justÂ for jazz.Â But speaking of arts communities in general: Most are moveable feasts, fluid, transient, at best inviting to newcomers to the table.

Kahil El’Zabar, Harrison Bankhead and David Murray at the Alhambra Palace, produced by HotHouse; photo by Marc PoKempner.

It’s demonstrable that when jazz players and listenersÂ alightÂ at all-purpose spaces such as Chicago’s Alhambra Palace, where Hot House produced the trio of saxophonist David Murray, bassist Harrison Bankhead and percussionist Kahil El’Zabar Â on Monday, Dec. 12, orÂ The PromontoryÂ in Hyde Park, where flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid and multi-instrumentalists Maia led ensemblesÂ inÂ Voices Heard: Expressions of Visionary Black Women on Saturday, Dec. 10 — we bring the empatheticÂ attentions that lendÂ the moment’s sounds memorable significance, wherever those moments take place.

janis-lane-ewart-hm-dee-alexander-voices-heard-lauren

Janis Lane-Ewart, AACM curator and Minneapolis radio personality, and singer Dee Alexander at Promontory forÂ Voices Heard (your blogger over Dee’s right shoulder). Photo by Lauren Deutsch.

Promontory, a 300-capacity room with copious table seating and bar space (plus in the summertime, an open-air veranda), features all sorts of events — local DJs and r&b groups, Latin dance nights, family holiday shows, homemade crafts fairs andÂ acts typically ranging from local rappers, djs and r&b stars to off-beat touring choices such as Average White Band. Voices Heard (produced by a coalition ofÂ the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the David and Reba Logan Center for the ArtsÂ and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), however, was a special two-day fest of talents too often and too long overlooked.

Mankwe Ndosi and Tomeka Reid, photo by Lauren Deutsch.

On Saturday, keyboardist and vocalist Amina Claudine Myers, one of the very first AACM members 50 years ago, improvised a warm, beguiling set with Mitchell. Vocalist Mankwe Ndosi and cellist Â Tomeka Reid performed uproariously, using loops andÂ other effects; the first ever AACM band ofÂ women, Samana, reunited with Maia emphatic on vibes; Mitchell on flute; Coco Elysses playing tympani and percussion; Shanta Nurullah on bass and mbira; singers Rita Warford, Africa Brown and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, andÂ baritone saxophonist/digeridooist Mwata Bowden as an honorary male member. The groupÂ spun out a long collaborative take on a theme by Maia (who also plays harp).

Hot House shows commence after the audience stands and joins hands. Photo by Marc PoKempner.

In both cases, the audiences comprised familiar coteries of friends and associates. This is nice for those of us who know each other, but suggests the challenge facing these musicians and presenters in attracting new listeners. In both cases the music, familiar or not, offered rewards.

At the Alhambra, a spacious facility with Arabian Nights decor in its main serving and meeting rooms, balcony and bars, El’Zabar was in particularly strongÂ form on djembÃ©,traps set and mbira, bassist Bankhead sensitive to each nuancedÂ fluctuation of drum accents and volume, world-traveling Murray at home with his companions but also lifting their game withÂ his own assertive energy.

Kahil El’Zabar, photo by Marc PoKempner.

At Promontory, the black women in creative music made their statement that music isn’t the performance province of only one sex, and of course it values elders as well as youngsters.

Every time that point is made it’s a victoryÂ for allÂ and a step towards attracting people who may have previously felt shut out; now they’re specifically acknowledged and invited in. Both these venues were, at least for the length of the concerts,Â transformed from accommodating if somewhat impersonal halls into clubhouses welcomingÂ devotees. WheneverÂ spirited artists entertain their followers in flexible performance spaces, the events and attendees leave theirÂ impressions, ghostly vibesÂ that subtly attune the sitesÂ for whoever comesÂ next and later.

Thanks as always to my good friends Lauren Deutsch and Marc PoKempner for their lustrous images.

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Chicago’s free summer music cornucopia – Deutsch, PoKempner photos

Latin Jazz dancers in Humboldt Park — photo by Lauren Deutsch.

With a 10th annualÂ Latin Jazz festival produced in the neighborhood Humboldt Park by the Jazz Institute of Chicago and dynamite downtown concerts with headliners such as Nigerian juju star King Sunny AdÃ© and Afro-Cuban progressive Eddie Palmieri put on by DCASE, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago’s free summer music programs are well underway.

Add the Museum of Contemporary Arts’ weekly Tuesdays on the Terrace shows, concededÂ that Chicago’s unparalleled Blues Fest is already over (as is Taste of Chicago, where bands including The Roots prevailed) but note that the classically-oriented Grant Park Music Festival continues whileÂ the very promising 38th annualÂ Chicago Jazz FestÂ looms to cap it all by Labor Day (we’ll also enjoyÂ an early autumnÂ Hyde Park Jazz Festival Sept 24th and 25th), and it’s hard to find a comparable wealth of beautiful sounds available to all comers, at least west of the Hudson River (NYC’s Summerstage highlights jazz this season, withÂ quite a worthy schedule).

John Santos at congas – photo by Lauren Deutsch

Less the Chicago presentations simply seem like wannabeÂ distractions from the localÂ plague of gun violence,Â ourÂ failed mayoralityÂ and (gladly) “lost opportunity” to squander lakefront on a movie director’s museum, I hasten to say the concerts are genuinely positive, citizenry-binding events.

While San Franciscan John Santos’ sextet, conguero Joe Rendon and Friends and Hector Silviera’s orquestra entertained on a stage set up in an open-air boat house, the surrounding, formerly dodgy Humboldt Park was bustling with family picnics and pickup-team games.

Hector Silviera – photo by Lauren Deutsch

Former (future?) mayoral candidate Chuy Garcia satÂ comfortablyÂ amid the crowd (also for Palmieri’s Salsa Orchestra atÂ Millennium Park), listening as a recognized, respected and unhassled member of the community.

That community in all its glorious if too often uneasy diversityÂ (approximately 1/3 African-American, 1/3 Hispanic background, 1/3 “non-Hispanic white”) has been well-represented at the Gehry bandshell of Pritzker Pavillion in Millennium Park.

Why is Chuy (at left) smiling? He digs the beat. Photo by Lauren Deutsch

There were perhaps 500 people at the Latin Jazz Fest at Humboldt on Saturday, July 16, but an estimated 10,000 (capacity crowd) attended the powerhouse Palmieri show on June 27 — people of every demographic dancing to the uncompromisingly dense, percussive and melodically improvised roar alone, in couples and/or fluid groups.

Ugochi at Millennium Park — photo by Marc PoKempner

Two weeks later, Ugochi and A.S.E — herÂ Afro Soul Ensemble — opening for Sunny AdÃ© and his Afro-Beats, aptly emboding Chicago’s breadth of influences and depths of talent. Born in Nigeria, Ugochi was raised on the South Side, and her relaxed yet keening vocalizations were likeÂ a junction of blues wailer Mama Estella Yancey with MalianÂ Oumou SangarÃ©. Cellist Tomeka Reed, an emergent leader of the Chicago branch of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) joined the A.S.E. for two or three songs, adding a subtle creative undercurrent to the band’s mid-tempo renditions of their leader’sÂ original material. Her lyrics were topical and inclusive (she introduced one as “three words my mother taught me thatÂ could save your life: ‘Don’t Mind Them'”). Judging by the crowd reaction, she won a lot of new fans.

Although there is a percentage of attendees at Millennium Park who just come because it’s a nice place to throw down a blanket, break out some refreshments and stare at the skyline as night falls, DCASE’s programming ensures aficionados also have a reason to come to these gigs. King Sunny AdÃ© probably drew on the basis of the fantastic tours he did in the 1980s — I heard him live three times in New York City, and will always (I hope) remember his concert at Roseland, where I discovered my body knew dance moves I’d never had tried before.

In Brooklyn three years ago AdÃ© and company delivered an eagerly anticipated but somewhat disappointing show — the ensemble appeared aged, heavy and weary — but in Chicago July 18 all parties onstage felt regenerated and ebullient. AdÃ© will be 70 in September, but retains the dimples, grace and infectious humor that recalls at moments Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, Cab Calloway, Louis Jordan and Chuck Berry. He sings rather complicated story-songs casually, usually with support from two sidemen who contribute pantomime to the narratives (incomprehensible unless one speaks a West African language). HeÂ strapped on his Fender guitar for only one song, adding an spicyÂ wham! to his figures. He moved from his hips, his knees, his ankles, precisely but self-deprecatingly.

Meanwhile, the Afro-Beats tore it up, a terrific though un-announced electric guitarist reeling off skeins of single note lines that suggested he was familiar with Buddy Guy as well as Jerry Garcia and Jeff Beck, an electric keyboards player who didn’tÂ offerÂ predictable runs when he could build surprising improvisations, and a traps drummer pounding rhythms that defined the tunes’ long themes and releases. The entirety was founded on urgent talking drum parts — those seated musicians started hot and never slowed down. Oh, there were two bodacious women dancers, too, shimmying in golden dresses.

In how many American cities does Sunny AdÃ©’sÂ audience, unbidden, sing along in Yoruba? How does an age-and-ethnicity-mixed mob of Chicagoans even know theÂ material of a group that hasn’t visited in decades, and gets scant-to-noÂ radio play? We can’t do muchÂ about intransigent Republican governor Rauner, hapless and unpopular Rahm Emanuel, hand-gun fueled gang wars taking a toll on innocent bystanders, but we can gather to hear music that brings everyone together and makes us happy.

Tomorrow (July 21): The Heritage Blues Orchestra, with my friend Junior Mack singing and playing guitar, and Toshi Reagon, free, starts at 6:30 pm. Thursday and Friday, July 22 and 23: Marin Alsop conducts the Grant Park Orchestra inÂ Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and violinist Regina Carter performs Duke Ellington’s orchestral works; next week (Tuesday, July 26),Â saxophonist Caroline Davis and pianist Rob Clearfields’s quartet at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 5:30 to 8 pm (free only to Illinois residents). More to come!

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