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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

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.

MCA-Chicago’s Terrace concerts, acing outdoor presentation

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Hear in Now: Tomeka Reid, Sylvia Bolognesi, Mazz Swift. Photo by Marc PoKempner

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art has aced outdoor music presentations with its Tuesdays on the Terrace series, most recently featuring the string trio Hear In Now performing strong yet sensitive chamber jazz. Drawing a thoroughly diversified crowd to enjoy fresh, creative music in open space on a summer afternoon for free (food and beverages extra) shouldn’t be difficult, but it’s the kind of programming New York’s Museum of Modern Art tried off and on for decades, seldom conquering the format’s challenges.

Cellist Tomeka Reid, violinist Mazz Swift and bassist Sylvia Bolognesi held rapt an audience sitting in folding chairs directly in front of their tented stage, another block of seating on the far side of a stairways in use throughout the two sets, 5:30 to 8 pm, and people at tables on a level above the musicians. Another coterie of attendees was spread across grass on the street level of the MCA’s “backyard” — sound was decently amplified into that space, but no one seemed constrained from socializing, and their conversations did not bleed up into the main music area.

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Kerry James Marshall’s “Untitled (Painter),” 2009

People were also invited to enter the Museum itself, especially to view the powerful retrospective of Kerry James Marshall’s paintings — explosive, subversive and celebratory visions of black America. All together, the outdoors music and indoors exhibitions provided a welcoming ambiance for visitors old, young and in-between, black and white and other.

Marshall’s visions could easily be taken as counterparts of Hear in Now’s music. The painter and the players are all masterful (the retrospective is titled “Mastry”) and multi-layered. Ms.s Reid, Swift and Bolognesi plucked and bowed transparent but dense and busily detailed narratives — that is, pieces that seemed to go somewhere, purposefully. Each of the women plays precisely, virtuosically and with guts. They took chances, seeming to revel in surprising each other, never smug and indeed nearly giddy with pleasure in their collaboration. All three contributed framework compositions upon which to expand, Swift sometimes singing along with her fiery arco work. A version of one of H.T. (Harry) Burleigh’s spiritual-inspired songs was singularly affecting. Their concentration and satisfaction transmitted directly to their listeners — players and witnesses seemed united in one experience, always the goal of performances.

However, the achievement of that goal by institutions offering serious music out-of-doors must not be taken for granted. MOMA started presenting its Summergarden series of concerts in its sculpture garden in the 1960s — a wonderful Milt Jackson-James Moody album was recorded live there in ’65, the same year Sonny Rollins led an all-star band in the garden through There Will Never Be Another You. Rollins returned to record The Solo Album in 1985.  In the ’90s I went to Summergarden performances by John Cage, Butch Morris and Henry Threadgill’s ensembles, among others, but

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Joel Sachs conducts at MOMA’s Summergarden, 2015. Photo by Scott Rudd.

MOMA’s amplification system did not deliver evenly throughout the walled space, traffic commotion on adjacent 54th St. was typically disruptive,there was often a stiffness in the presentation and an abiding sense that MOMA was concerned its free offerings might be too popular, the sculpture garden not big enough to handle all comers and those attendees potentially unruly, too. Perhaps these problems were solved for the four Sunday night Summergarden concerts MOMA produced this year.

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MCA rear view, grass and terrace. Stage is usually set up on the upper level, at left – Lawndale News (no copyright infringement intended)

The MCA’s physical situation has some advantages, not least of them being its terrace’s distance above busy Chicago Avenue running along side. Traffic noises still threaten — Hear in Now at one point dealt confidently with an ambulance siren cutting through the air by continuing to press its group sound, enfolding the whine.

I can’t say how this works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) which has won ASCAP/Chamber Music America awards for its adventurous programming, but one thing is clear: People love the musical and social opportunities these museums provide. Local artists and citizens from anywhere meet at these cool places for happy occasions. Applause for the musicians and the presenting institutions, too.

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Announcing eyeJAZZ.tv & Happy 45th b’day AACM

eyeJAZZ.tv, a wave of guerrilla video music-news clips being initiated by the Jazz Journalists Association, has posted its first example — my brief production from last week’s 45th birthday concert of the AACM featuring composer-saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, flutist and AACM chair Nicole Mitchell (no relation) and saxophonist Ari Brown, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

[Read more…]

AACM at 45: “Creative Musicians” span generations, U.S., globe

The AACM — Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — continues after 45 years to encourage highly original, edgy and exciting artists — as I detail in my new City Arts column. Examples in New York City: reedist/composer Henry Threadgill’s Zooid performs tonight and tomorrow at Roulette; trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s 22-piece Silver Orchestra and the duo of keyboardist-singer Amina Claudine Myers and drummer Reggie Nicholson are the bill for the AACM-New York”s concluding concert of its fall 2010 season on November 19 at The Community Church of New York; NEA Jazz Master Muhal Richard Abrams, the pianist, composer and improviser who co-founded the organization 45 years ago and has guided it ever since celebrates his 80th birthday by collaborating with two very different small ensembles at Roulette on December 2. 

And in Chicago, an AACM 45th anniversary festival is going on with trombonist-computer composer George E. Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Ernest Dawkins, Douglas Ewart, Mike Reed, Phil Cohran and many others concertizing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and conducting open master classes. Hail to creative musicians everywhere!

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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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