A city’s jazz scene is best measured not by an annual festival — though Sonny Rollins free at the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago’s Millennium Park on Thursday night was a fine thing. The real signs of Chicago’s jazz depth and diversity are evident in the unique “club tour” (aka pub crawl), which the Jazz Institute of Chicago cleverly designs to introduce listeners to local musicians playing small venues way outside the downtown Loop.<\/p>\n
\nOn last Wednesday night, open-air busses ferry fans who’d paid one small fee to north, central and south side taverns where jazz is performed by local musicians who\u00c2\u00a0sing and play without much thought of\u00c2\u00a0being paid or advancing their careers.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tourists mixed with regulars, innocents with aficionados at Andy’s restaurant (just off north State Street), at the fabled Green Mill (a ’20s Capone speakeasy in the northside Uptown neighborhood), at Buddy Guy’s Loop-located Legends Club (though Buddy’s guitarist brother Phil Guy died just days ago), at the Velvet Lounge (the AACM headquarters near Chicago’s Chinatown) and eight other venues spread city-wide. People everywhere were talking to each other about favorite son Barack Obama.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n