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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Holidays with music, in person or not

Despite my avowed abhorrence of Christmas music, I enjoyed maestro Kurt Elling leading his hometown quintet in a holiday-themed performance at Chicago’s City Winery last Sunday.

Kurt Elling © Marc PoKempner

My entire evening — accompanied by best friends, and including the surprise discovery after the Winery show of a heartening young trumpeter at the Hungry Brain — was a reminder that hearing music in person with others is a key experience, even if the potential for spreading disease makes us stay home.

[What I’ve been listening to at home: Favorites of ’21]

A seasoned and complete performer at age 54, Elling is a canny and original vocalist with a unique approach and seemingly genuine persona. Singer-songwriter-bandleader-storyteller-character actor– well-tailored, a good mover, a model of sophisticated masculinity — he ought to be in movies! I felt lucky to hear Kurt charm a full house (150-200 attendees for an 8 pm second show, maybe 95% masked, seated at socially distanced four-tops), stirring his vocal resources and fellow music-makers’ skills into a flowing entertainment of thoughtful depth and inclusive warmth. True jazz.

Elling has carved a place for himself between bel canto balladeer and husky-throated songster. He’s able to sustain ringing high tones dramatically and also growl or cast an aside as if under his breath yet still remain audible and understandable). Most often he starts casually then ramps up to a swinging stance, like a smart pal with something valuable to say. Consider him in the lineage of regular (but talented!) guys like Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Gene Kelly, Chicago’s own Mel Tormé, Joe Williams, Oscar Brown Jr. and Nate “King” Cole. Guitarist-singer John Pizzarelli is another currently working in this vein (and I won’t rule out Patricia Barber, haven’t listened enough to say), but unlike any of them other than Cole during his piano combo days and maybe Barber — almost like Betty Carter, come to think of it — Kurt directs the energy of his group from within it. He sets up and, after making a

from left: Stu Minderman, Clark Sommer, Kurt Elling, Dana Hall, John McLean © Marc PoKempner

definitive statement, passes his musical ball to lyrical pianist Stu Minderman or unusually telegraphic guitarist John McLean as if by impulse rather than pre-arrangement, with bassist Clark Sommers solid, alert, flexible and pairing well with drummer Dana Hall’s assertive push. They cohere as an ensemble, so the music flows. This band was ending a two-week tour, yet everyone appeared to be fully engaged, refreshed by being onstage.

Their onstage teamwork, clear to see as well as hear, drew me into the holiday vibe. Never mind being a committed secularist, cynical about virgin births, uneasy about imposition of any public religious celebration on the entire body politic, believers or not — I realize this is America! As long as I’ve been alive Christmas has been an uncontrolled cultural behemoth, a day draped in a ancient, holy story actually advancing consumer capitalism. As a Jewish kid, I reasoned why fight it? Well, that manger stuff. And, uh, Hanukah. But ok, then, also Yule, Saturnalia, Festivus, Kwanza, Diwali. I’ve come to accept if not embrace all humanity’s collective reactions to the sun withdrawing, and hopes for its return.

Although Kurt Elling sang “We Three Kings” and with Hall worked the miracle of turning the odious “Little Drummer Boy” into a driving scat-drums duet, the focus of his message was not Jesus’s arrival but the world’s annual experience of rebirth, with a particular appeal to the clear-eyed spirit of children which, he assured us, we all still contain. No “Silent Night,” though he did enact a “T’was the night before Christmas” parody, and for an encore — yes, “The Christmas Song” (aka, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. . . ” words by Tormé, music by Robert Wells, née Levinson — and yes, Kurt mentioned that in his research for popular Christmas songshe’d been struck by how many were written by Jews, Communists and Jewish Communists. As his father was Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church, that seems like a nice ecumenical acknowledgement).

The other dependable confluence of so-called “holiday music” with music that has actually brings a smile to my wintry mind is saxophonist Mars Williams‘ inspired Ayler Christmas program, the Chicago manifestation, held again

at the Hungry Brain. Five recorded volumes of this project exist, so we can anytime we care to hear the ingenious inspiriting of carols and hoary Xmas staples with ecstatically freed improvisations by all-stars Williams has enlisted on his road trips with it — such as electronica cellist Helen Gillette in NOLA, bassist Luke Stewart in DC, trumpeter Jaimie Branch and trombonist Steve Swell in NYC. Here Mars featured his bandmates in Extraordinary Popular Delusions keyboardist Jim Baker, multi-instrumentalist Brian Sandstrom and drummer Steve Hunt as well as cornetist Josh Berman, guitarist-violinist Peter Maunu and others. I missed it.

BUT — after Elling my little party went to the Brain (like a dive bar, run by Berman and drummer Mike Reed, who were hanging out) where drummer Matt Wilson, known to be an acute talent scout,

Jamie Breiwick and Matt Wilson © Marc PoKempner

was backing up New Orleans-born trumpeter Jamie Breiwick, who we’d never heard of before. And was he fine! With the kind of melody-spinning ability I admire in Don Cherry, offering Sun Ra’s “Love in Outer Space” as a natural standard, in league with a complementary alto saxophonist and stalwart bassist, whose names I regret not taking. The music was so sweet, I had trouble leaving. I wouldn’t have known about him if I hadn’t been there. Might have checked out a recording, but. . .

Over the past 18 months I’ve gone out infrequently, only for what I’ve most wanted to attend. Herbie Hancock’s return to performance at Symphony Center; singer Josie Falbo, whose liner notes I wrote, at the Jazz Showcase; Joanie Pallatto‘s cabaret act at the Mercury Theater; trumpeter Orbert Davis’s Chicago Jazz Philharmonic; bassist Tatsu Aoki with AACM collaborators at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (both the latter outdoors). Seeing the musicians interact and audiences respond adds so much more value to the music, obviously, than observing from a remote location or listening to even the utmost audio equipment that music lovers usually don’t think it’s worth mentioning. But over this period of going without, after more than 50 years of taking in music where and when it happens as a habit, I appreciate the immediacy, context and company of live, in-person music now more than ever. Best for the new year, so partaking of live performance becomes commonplace again.

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.

Mardi Gras’ lewd Krewe, Marc Pokempner’s photos

Krewe du Vieux Carré puts on the most satirical and scatalogical of New Orlean’s pre-Mari Gras parades, says photo-journalist Marc PoKempner, whose images © here provide convincing evidence.

PoKempner writes: “Our dysfunctional evil-clown-in-chief figured prominently in this years’ Krewe du Vieux parade and the immediately following krewedelusion — an annual outpouring of satirical, political, scatological and outrageous imagery that can always be counted on to top the charts of the crude, lewd and rude. At once the most topical and most traditional (no tractors, handmade floats, throws and costumes) of processions, and the only large parade still allowed in the French Quarter, it epitomizes the participatory creativity that distinguishes New Orleans from . . . well, anywhere.”   

“Not incidentally,” he continues, “each sub Krewe was accompanied by its own band – only live music is allowed – and the brass bands were rockin’, fueled by the exuberant energy of the marchers and the wildly enthusiastic crowd. 

“I had foolishly avoided Mardi Gras for years after experiencing frat-boy gridlock in the Quarter early on – before discovering the community based downtown action,” says PoKempner.

Such spirited ridicule could become a regular feature of protest marches across the land, should they proliferate as the political season continues.

On the other hand, we needn’t dress up funny or roll out a float to VOTE.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Chicago free improv all-stars

Jim Baker, keys& synth; Brian Sandstrom, bass; Steve Hunt, drums; Ed Wilkerson, saxes, didgeridoo, oud, Mars Williams, reeds and toys — photo by Marc PoKempner

Keyboardist and synthesizer specialist Jim Baker has led the collective quartet Extraordinary Popular Delusions playing every Monday night in obscure Chicago venues for the past 13 years. My article on EPD, which features saxophonists Mars Williams and Edward Wilkerson Jr. (they switch off), multi-instrumentalist (bass, guitar, trumpet) Brian Sandstrom and percussionist/drummer Steve Hunt — all of whom have extensive creative music experience — was published today in the Chicago Reader — which I last wrote for in the 1980s.

Brian Sandstrom, bass and distorted guitar; Jim Baker, analog synth; Steve Hunt, drums.

Photos here by Marc PoKempner, from the free-form improv ensemble’s current regular gig, in the upstairs loft of the Beat Kitchen (they start around 9 pm, usually end by 11). No cover, no minimum (they put out a tip jazz), no limits — same as their interactive performance as part of painter Lewis Achenbach’s Jazz Occurrence at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, 6 pm. on January 24. See you there?

Luminous PoKempner pix of Sun Ra’s celestial music

Marshall Allen, ageless 94, leads the Sun Ra Arkestra

If you liked Black Panther, listen to the music that introduced and embodies Afro-Futurism. Photojournalist Marc PoKempner captured a bit of the celestial magic of the Sun Ra Arkestra (est. circa 1954) during its November touchdown in New Orleans’s Music Box Village. This picturesque venue is an assembly of little houses which MPoK says “each has some sound producing capability – bells, chimes, horns, drums.” (Above: Marshall Allen, Arkestra leader since 1995. All photos here Marc PoKempner copyright 2018).

Arkestra at the Music House Village. (This wide angle shot looks best in larger display. Either “un-pinch” or use “Command” and the + sign to open image, view HD details.)

Marc continues, “It’s next to the bridge on the upper side of the Industrial Canal, surrounded by a fence made of recycled corrugated metal.  Since last time I was there, they’ve added loads of interesting lighting, and smoke generators that add to the magical atmosphere – perfect for the Arkestra.”

Vincent Chance, who plays French horn in the Arkestra (and elsewhere), commented, “The concerts there were pretty amazing. The audience was knocked out by both shows, we played two days there and had two days before to familiarize ourselves with the instruments from their installations.” Preparation is good for liftoff!

Tara Middleton, Arkestra vocalist (successor to the great June Tyson)

Sun Ra was a visionary who gifted the Earth with his sensibility, forevermore. During winter holidays and times of social crisis — or really, whenever — traveling the spaceways with his sounds and messages in mind is recommended as an enhancement, inspiration, provocation and/or escape.

Tyler Mitchell bass; DM Hotep, guitar

John Szwed’s biography Space Is The Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra is recommended for further reading about the singular bandleader/composer/arranger/poet/entrepreneur/satirist/philosopher, named by his Earthling parents at birth Herman Poole Blount. I’ve written about him, including liner notes for the Complete Performance resulting from his meeting with John Cage, and a 1991 concert at Inter-Media-Arts. Still, my favorite of Sun Ra’s many albums is Secrets of the Sun. The Omniverse being one, start anywhere.

Hear it now.

Synth and-sushi bar, Chicago (future jazz, present tense)

K-rAd and his Euro-rack at Sushi Dokku; photo by Marc PoKempner

K-rAd freely improvised and spontaneously composed an original, pulsing, burbling, chiming, floating and ripping, multi-layered, deep and flowing funky-bassed, percussion-lively suite over about three hours last night (7/25/18), using his elaborate, sound-unbound Euro-rack synthesizer setup to stir, smooth and spice social interactions in a seemingly unlikely Chicago venue for such a thing.

Down an alley, through a back door (see the bright red arrow) down in a basement of Sushi Dokku in Chicago’s fashionable W. Randolph Street dining district, a small crowd of not-necessarily music-seeking patrons seemingly in their late 20s sat at booths or a horseshoe bar sipping sake, picking at small plates, chatting, flirting, a couple necking. They were clearly easy, maybe pleased and perhaps somehow moved by the electronic music, which filled the room actively, vividly. This wasn’t subtle Eno-esque ambiance, more like Terry Riley’s mirrors on Rainbow in Curved Air reflecting shards of guitar-keyboards from In A Silent Way with James Jamerson‘s loping Motown dance lines underneath and marimba, gongs, super-fast figures, anything else of sonic possibility liable to bubble up or flash forth any moment. Often yet not always there was a perky, steady beat and streaming sequencer figures but no other recurring structure to speak of, hence no expectations, and no guidelines (words, “melody,”  song form, defined harmonic field) for listeners to grab onto.

Attendees may not, however, have been trying to grab on or listening at all, so much as being in their own space, oblivious if still possibly influenced by their sonic surroundings. Put me in mind of the mythic days (before my time) when big, showy Hammond B-3 organs ruled at neighborhood corner taverns. As such, this solo synth show, orchestrally even more grandiose, felt like future jazz, present tense.

under Sushi Dokku, photo: Marc PoKempner

K-rAd aka Chris Grabowski is the expert soundman of the Green Mill, a jazz haven — his deft attentions have served not only an elite of U.S. musicians but also the Mill’s every-night, all year ’round audience. He understands the ebb and flow dynamic between performer and audience, but wasn’t doing anything specifically to shape his soundtrack beyond his own impulse/whim. “It nice to play here,” Grabowski said, “they seem to like it,” with a sweep of hand encompassing everyone in the joint, and he’s happy it’s a regular gig — he’s here every other months (“Someone else doing modular things on off-months, I think.”). It doesn’t advertise, though. K-rAd can most easily be found on Facebook, but is modest about upcoming appearances there, too. 

He kept an eye on the room while focusing mostly with his ears on the waveforms coursing, modulating, filtered and reverberating at his fingertips’ not very dramatic patch, button-push and dial (sorry I didn’t take an inventory of Grabowski’s equipment, which he mentioned took more than two years of acquisition and construction, but it may be proprietary information, anyway). The nearly palpable physicality of electronic music, as I heard it, made the air kind of tingly. (But then, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately obsessed with a Korg Minilogue). My pals and I split a shrimp tempura, a flight of assorted sakes and can of Kikusui Aged Funaguchi. Yes, I’d go back.

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Jazz community upends Englewood’s bad rep

The 18th annual free Englewood Jazz Festival in south side Hamilton Park last Saturday (9/16) affirmed the best of Chicago’s grassroots culture,

Dancing at Englewood Jazz Festival. Photos by Marc PoKempner, unless otherwise credited

promoting an opposite image of this challenged neighborhood as a dangerous place — unless one fears powerful, creative music that speaks as directly as dance rhythms to its family of listeners.

Produced on behalf of the Live the Spirit Residency by saxophonist Ernest Dawkins — current AACM Chicago chairperson, Park District music teacher and every-Sunday star at Norman’s Bistro, who led a terrific little big band (12 pieces, not 18) and jam

Wallace Roney, l; Emilio Modeste, tenor sax

session with singer Carolyn Fitzhugh — the fest also starred Chicago’s down-to-earth diva Dee Alexander with her ace group (pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassist Junius Paul, drummer Ernie Adams) and East Coast-based trumpeter Wallace Roney, whose three very young sidemen (his 13 year old nephew Kojo on drums; tenor saxophonist Emilio Modeste) proved up to his music’s hard, fast demands.

The afternoon-long program was emceed by WDCB‘s music director/morning show host Paul Abella and station manager Dan Bindert (Dee Alexander has a show now on ‘DCB, too). It drew some 1500 folks skewing late middle-aged, who sat on lawn chairs and blankets and a few rows of low bleachers. We drank bottled water and herb tea, bought barbeque, considered shea butter, t-shirts, costume

Ernest Dawkins conducts Live the Spirit Residency Big Band at 18th Englewood Jazz Festival

jewelry and baked goods from local vendors. About half a dozen uniformed police officers hung around, available and amiable, untroubled and untroubling. Dawkins gave them a shout out from the stage. The biggest problem was the vegan food never arrived. The Englewood Jazz Festival was a lark in the park.

Yet the Live the Spirit Residency Big Band’s soloists took it seriously, their music consistently tight and urgent. Trumpeter Pharez Whitted isn’t to be messed with — he was also playing that night as he had the night before at the Green Mill in pianist Willie Pickens‘ quintet, masterful on ditties like “Salt Peanuts” and “Giant Steps”. Here he was paired with trumpeter John Moore, whose open attack and muted sound, too,

Ernest Dawkins and Howard Mandel

reminded me of late, little-heralded Billy Brimfield, trumpet partner of late, deservedly-heralded saxophonist Fred Anderson. Decades ago, performing at a coffee house in Evanston, they introduced me into jazz’s serious nature.

Pianist Alexis Lombre thickened and detailed the ensemble’s blend (she’s going to appear solo and with her trio at the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s upcoming Gala — she’s emerged from the JIC’s Links program). Baritone saxophonist Dudley Owens called up phrases from the deep, his bandmates answering with contrapuntal riffs which Dawkins brought to focused climaxes. Tenor saxophonist Kenneth Lethridge burst out from the ensemble irrepressibly on a hot, bold arrangement of the evergreen “Summertime.”

A story teller called Shake-A-Leg spoke then, chillingly, of the first atom bomb’s charge — and the players went down front to propound on congas and barrel drums.

Ernest Dawkins and Mark Ruffin

They knew and summoned ancient, timeless rhythms. We could have been in New Orleans, Havana or Lagos — as everywhere, these beats stirred anyone alive to move. (My photojournalist pal Marc PoKempner adds he was quite disturbed that his so-called colleagues mobbed the troupe for shots, oblivious to blocking the audience’s views.)

Next, Maestro Dawkins presented Sirius/XM jazz director and producer Mark Ruffin and me with engraved plaques, hailing our “inspiration and many contributions to jazz in all its forms.” (trumpeter Orbert Davis, on the road, was also so honored). I’ve received Awards before and have helped present many, but was unusually touched.

Howard Mandel and the Spirit of Jazz Award; photo by Dennis McDonough

Mark and I are nearly Englewood home-boys. His parents ran a record store, where he worked as a kid, in an adjacent neighborhood. I grew up about 3 miles due east, absorbing the spirit of our city and nation’s music from the radio, tv, my parents’ records, my friends and sounds of the streets. Ruffin and I have known each other for decades — he credits me with giving him his first paying job in radio, producing a half-hour interview with needle drop of pianist Judy Roberts for Jazz Chicago, a series I co-produced with JoAnn Kawell circa 1979 under Jazz Institute auspices, aired on WBEZ.

He has since then racked up extensive experience in jazz radio, print journalism and presentation — he was an emcee of the Chicago Jazz Festival this year, and he’s produced Grammy-nominated albums. Orbert Davis, you should know, is the co-founder and director of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, with extensive educational and performance activities including collaborations with musicians in Cuba. I’m doing what I do — writing this blog, liner notes, articles, working on books, stoking the Jazz Journalists Association, hearing music, reading about it, fiddling with it, serving as a board member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

As Ernest Dawkins and the rest of the musicians know, and so do such as PoKempner,  Ms. Kawell, Hot House curator Marguerite Horberg,

information technologies innovator Ivan Handler, photogs Dennis McDonough and Kent Richmond, writer Davis Whiteis, among my friends who were attendance, and also the JIC board members there, some of them involved with the Hyde Park Jazz Society and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival Sept 23 & 24, as well as all the other good folk who turned out at Hamilton Park, the spirit of jazz is infectious, demanding and self-renewing. You catch it and it catches you; it carries you along, we’re happily swept away, and here we are: Englewood.

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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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Great new jazz photography: Sánta’s faces of Northsea Jazz Fest

Jon Faddis

The faces of jazz musicians Sánta István 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. JazzTimes magazine has published some of Sánta’s images from the Northsea Jazz Festival in early July — here are more, not included in that publication.

Malika Tirolien of Bokanté

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 Sánta 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, Sánta sneaks around that stuff or makes it disappear.

I’ve included his photos on this blog previously, and will again, as he has assigned himself an urgent quest to document his 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 Sánta 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. 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 Sánta, Dee Kalea, Lauren Deutsch and Marc PoKempner who keep this rare art alive and vital.

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Great new jazz photography: Marc PoKempner portfolio from New Orleans

Photos of musicians making music — visualizations stirred in the photographers by watching sounds manifest — are exciting, and as different in style as the photographers and musicians themselves. Marc PoKempner ‘s portfolio from New Orleans of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Cuban drummers at the Music Box Village, a non-profit community arts garden, is the first of a series of great new jazz photos I’ll post over the next few days.

Ronell Johnson (trombone), Branden Lewis (trumpet)

Alexey Marti (drum), Ronell Johnson (trombone), Shannon Powell (drum), Damas “Fanfan” Louis (drum), Tanio Hingle (bass drum), Kyle Roussel (melodica), Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (snare drum), Ben Jaffe (tuba)



Clint Maedgen (sax)

Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (snare drum), Kyle Roussel (percussion), Shannon Powell (drum), Damas “Fanfan” Louis (drum), Charlie Gabriel (sax), Ben Jaffe (tuba)

Ronell Johnson (trombone), Tanio Hingle (bass drum) Charlie Gabriel (sax), Kerry “Fatman” Hunter (snare drum) Ben Jaffe (tuba)

Check back for photos by Lauren Deutsch, Dee Kalea, Sánta István Csaba, Michael Jackson and we’ll see who else. . .

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

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

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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 listeners alight 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  on Monday, Dec. 12, or The Promontory in Hyde Park, where flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid and multi-instrumentalists Maia led ensembles in Voices Heard: Expressions of Visionary Black Women on Saturday, Dec. 10 — we bring the empathetic attentions that lend the moment’s sounds memorable significance, wherever those moments take place.

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Janis Lane-Ewart, AACM curator and Minneapolis radio personality, and singer Dee Alexander at Promontory for 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 and 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 of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the David and Reba Logan Center for the Arts 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.

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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  Tomeka Reid performed uproariously, using loops and other effects; the first ever AACM band of 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, and baritone saxophonist/digeridooist Mwata Bowden as an honorary male member. The group spun out a long collaborative take on a theme by Maia (who also plays harp).

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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 strong form on djembé,traps set and mbira, bassist Bankhead sensitive to each nuanced fluctuation of drum accents and volume, world-traveling Murray at home with his companions but also lifting their game with his own assertive energy.

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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 victory for all 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, transformed from accommodating if somewhat impersonal halls into clubhouses welcoming devotees. Whenever spirited artists entertain their followers in flexible performance spaces, the events and attendees leave their impressions, ghostly vibes that subtly attune the sites for whoever comes next and later.

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

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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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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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