{"id":2924,"date":"2021-08-29T18:18:01","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T22:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=2924"},"modified":"2021-09-06T17:37:29","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T21:37:29","slug":"city-of-chicago-music-promoter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2021\/08\/city-of-chicago-music-promoter.html","title":{"rendered":"City of Chicago, music promoter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lollapalooza 2021 had some 385,000 attendees (without significant Covid-19 outbreak<\/a>, 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<\/a> commissioner Mark Kelly<\/a>, launching the month-long Chicago in Tune<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mark Kelly, photos \u00c2\u00a9 Lauren Deutsch<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“festival” at a reception August 19. Here’s the still-evolving event calendar<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chicago, Kelly asserted, has never officially or adequately embraced and supported (he didn’t say it — but allow me: or exploited<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So in an unusual effort<\/a> 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<\/a> as well as population) U.S. metropolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Included are the ARC Music Festival<\/a> in Union Park (September 4 & 5), Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago<\/a> in Union Park (September 10\u00e2\u20ac\u201c12), the punk Riot Fest<\/a> in Douglass Park (September 17\u00e2\u20ac\u201c19) \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Music Lives Here,<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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>, a necessary adaptation of Chicago’s former multi-days fests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, for all the glories of sounds come from Oz-on-the-Lake in just the last 100 years<\/a>, say, including its eminence in commercial endeavors like music publishing<\/a>, jingle production<\/a> and harp manufacture<\/a> and establishment of prestigious institutions including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra<\/a> and Lyric Opera<\/a>, 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<\/a>) to loudly, systematically advance the cause of local music either throughout or beyond the city’s limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are feisty independent labels such as Aerophonic<\/a>, Alligator<\/a>, BluJazz<\/a>, Delmark<\/a>, International Anthem<\/a>, Southport<\/a>, and The Sirens<\/a> (of course with dislocations across the music industry, they, too have struggled). We have worthy non-profits — the Jazz Institute of Chicago<\/a>, Chicago Jazz Philharmonic<\/a>, South Side Jazz Coalition<\/a>, AACM<\/a>, Hyde Park Jazz Society<\/a>, Hyde Park Jazz Festival<\/a> (2021 program live\/in-person Sept 25-26), Elastic Arts<\/a>, Experimental Sound Studio<\/a> and Hot House<\/a> among them — and dedicated performance locales including the Jazz Showcase<\/a>, the Green Mill<\/a>, Fulton Street Collective<\/a>, Constellation<\/a> and the Hungry Brain<\/a>, Rosa’s Lounge<\/a>, Kingston Mines<\/a>, Buddy Guy’s Legends<\/a>, Andy’s<\/a>, Winter’s<\/a>, Promontory<\/a>, Space<\/a>, Fitzgerald’s<\/a>, Epiphany,<\/a> City Winery<\/a>, concert halls such as Symphony Center<\/a> and the Harris Theater<\/a>, special series programmed at the Museum of Contemporary Art<\/a>, Du Sable Museum<\/a>, Navy Pier<\/a> and the Shedd Aquarium<\/a>. For decades we’ve had immersive multi-stage, week or weekend-long free of charge festivals celebrating Chicago jazz<\/a>, blues<\/a>, house<\/a> and gospel<\/a> in downtown’s Grant and Millennium parks, continuing if pared down next weekend on the Frank Gehry-designed stage of Pritzker Pavillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Roscoe Mitchell-Famadou Don Moy\u00c3\u00a9 Art Ensemble of Chicago Large Ensemble, Sept 2019, Pritzker Pavillion; photo \u00c2\u00a9Marc PoKempner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This year’s reduced iterations of those fests amount to three hoursfor each genre<\/a> on one of four days<\/a> Sept 3 to 6. Jazz night Sept. 4 (programmed with the Jazz Institute<\/a>, 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<\/a>, scheduled for mid-day Sept 4, organized by Delmark Records<\/a> to showcase several of its artists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner<\/a> attended one Chicago In Tune show last Friday: Saxophonist Ernest Dawkins<\/a> 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<\/a>‘s readings of Douglass’s oratory <\/a>powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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from left: Alexis Lombre, Ernest Dawkins, Steve Berry, Junius Paul, Corey Wilkes \u00c2\u00a9 Marc PoKempner<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Spoken word artist Khari B, reeds player Kevin King \u00c2\u00a9 Marc PoKempner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Crowd with social distancing at Douglass (Frederick and Anna Park, \u00c2\u00a9 Marc PoKempner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So much more is yet to come, including a homecoming concert on Sept. 2 at Symphony Center by the great Herbie Hancock,<\/a> 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<\/a>, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and face of International Jazz Day<\/a>. I’ve adored his music since the mid ’60s– from his Maiden Voyage<\/a><\/em> through the ’60s with Miles<\/a> et al to his experimental, exploratory Mwandishi albums<\/a> like Sextant<\/em>, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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