Chicago's emerging jazz musicians...

[Lazaro Vega]

Chicago's emerging jazz musicians bow to the past to tell their own stories

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/musi...-jazz04.article

February 4, 2007

BY JOHN LITWEILER

Ever since Louis Armstrong first dazzled South Side crowds in the 1920s, outstanding, original musicians have grown to artistic maturity in the fertile soil of Chicago's jazz community. Today, a remarkable new crop of players is sprouting up from the underground here in the 21st century.

But right away, I should warn you: They swing, but they play free jazz. That is, they improvise freely (oh, no!), outside chord changes (shocking!), and sometimes they're even arhythmic or atonal (the horror!). Sometimes their music is fierce, with exhilarated honks and explosions. More often, it's intense, very tight group explorations, often lyrical or abstract or even charming.

Since they're the free-jazz weeds in Chicago's mainstream-jazz garden, we'll call them the Wild Onions.

They're bold, often vivid players who have their own stories to tell and their own ways to tell them. Most of them are not among our most visible players, for they seldom play in the fashionable parts of town. While you can hear them often at the famous Velvet Lounge, and sometimes in the Loop (at Gallery 37, for instance), they're usually heard at well-hidden spots scattered around the North Side. True, a few Wild Onions -- for instance, trumpeter Corey Wilkes, multi-saxist Dave Rempis, and drummers Isaiah Spencer and Mike Reed -- are already noted musicians because they've been absorbed into long-established bands. The rest, including some of the best, are only beginning to become well known.

"I haven't seen such a healthy, cooperative, stimulating scene since the early AACM. The communal, creative aspect is really working," says longtime critic Larry Kart, author of Jazz in Search of Itself.

Certainly Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, founded on the South Side in 1965, set a precedent for this new generation's cooperative works. Moreover, these younger artists are using the expressive innovations of the first AACM composers and improvisers to discover their own voices.

Most of all, close listening and responsiveness -- musicians used to call it "quick ears" -- often result in what Kart calls "genuine compositional thinking," a feeling for creating structured music together that recalls some of the first AACM ensembles.

Chicago: city on the edge

A bit of history is in order. While later AACM generations created colorful fusions of new freedoms with mainstream traditions or African influences, the radical, roaring excitement of this music was reinvented during the 1980s and '90s by North Siders like Ken Vandermark and especially Hal Russell's N-R-G Ensemble. Less renowned but calmer, the 1990s music of Rob Mazurek's and Guillermo Gregorio's groups were immediate stylistic precedents for these 21st-century developments.

"Chicago has always been on the edge of something that's new. This city can't help but rub off on you," says Mike Reed, originally an "inside" drummer who first ventured "outside," with crisp, urgent accenting, early in this century. "I began playing with [AACM saxman] David Boykin. His composing is very detailed, and its demands were what made me play free."

In 2001, Reed enlisted Josh Berman to help present weekly Sunday-night sets at an inconspicuous Belmont Avenue bar, The Hungry Brain: "I wanted to bring people together. Initially we just asked our friends to come out. After six months, people just came. It's important that we're still there every week."

"At one time it was hard to get a gig," says Berman. "We were just figuring our stuff out, and one gig every three months is not going to make you into a good player. The Hungry Brain kind of solidified the scene."

Berman has blossomed into a beautifully melodic artist with fine, subtle rhythmic poise. It's especially pertinent that he names swing cornetists Bobby Hackett, Ruby Braff and Rex Stewart among his influences. "What opened it up for me was learning all these really old tunes and how they work, and relating it to this new music."

Learning from history

Wild Onions tend to know their musical ancestry, including not only free jazz, but also bop, swing and early jazz.

Berman is on two Delmark CDs with tenor saxman Keefe Jackson, another artist with an especially fine sense of spacing and accenting phrases, as he develops lines that curve and dip above the rhythms. He's another who cites swing saxophonists and the first AACM generation among his major influences. Jackson played jazz, klezmer and Latin music in Arkansas and Maine and "I visited Chicago before I moved here in 2001. It seemed like it would be easy to meet other musicians and get something going."

The scene expanded. Dave Rempis appeared, playing saxophones, especially alto, with eager, breathless intensity like that of the AACM's Anthony Braxton. Already, since 1998, Rempis had been noted for his playing in the Vandermark Five. Matt Bauder, on tenor sax, began exploring Braxton's more minimalist ideas. Women began to emerge, including alto saxist Matana Roberts and trumpeter Jaime Branch. Roberts is a daring melodic and dramatic artist who mingles history, autobiography and music in her grand, ongoing "Mississippi Moonchile" multimedia concerts. Yet another saxophonist, Aram Shelton, plays alto with a singing sound and a wonderful way of developing juicy phrases into full-blown solos. Like most of the others, Shelton composes his own music.

They were joined by superb new rhythm section players. To name a few, Jason Roebke, Anton Hatwich and Jason Ajemian proved to be powerful bassists, while drummers Tim Daisy and the complex Frank Rosaly motivate ensembles with their interplay. Jason Adasiewicz adds ringing sounds and melodic sparkle to several groups with his vibes. This list of Wild Onions is far from comprehensive. And a number of older free musicians play with these younger folks, while new people keep popping up like weeds.

In clubland

Where do they all play? Senior saxman Ken Vandermark began presenting them weekly at a well-hidden Bucktown bar, The Hideout, and Dave Rempis began presenting them at Elastic, a second-floor performance space above a Chinese restaurant north of Logan Square. A few nights each week, they're at the Velvet Lounge, owned by the major saxophonist Fred Anderson: "Fred's club is a very strong model for what we're trying to do," says Rempis.

Since so many players appeared regularly at Elastic, The Hideout and the Brain, last year the producers formed the Umbrella Music cooperative, to coordinate events.

Underground jazz is an international community, too. Inevitably, some, like saxophonists Aram Shelton, Matana Roberts and Matt Bauder, eventually left Chicago to study or seek their fortunes. But they return often to perform with their pals. Meanwhile, those pals make occasional tours of the U.S. and Europe, and recordings are beginning to appear on the 482 Music, Okka-Disk and Delmark labels.

Adasiewicz articulates what many of the others say about this city's 21st century new music scene: "What's keeping me here is more than the free jazz scene. I've always loved the city. I don't want to leave Chicago. I have everybody I want to play with right here. We hang out together, we like to see each other play. It's a family, it's totally a family."

John Litweiler is a Chicago jazz critic and author.

Where to hear the new sounds

10 p.m. Wednesdays: The Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, (773) 227-4433.

10 p.m. Thursdays: Elastic, 2830 N. Milwaukee, (773) 772-3616, above the Friendship Chinese Restaurant.

10 p.m. Sundays: The Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, (773) 935-2118.

See schedules for these three places at umbrellamusic.org. In the spring, Umbrella Music also will produce twice-monthly concerts at Gallery 37, at 66 E. Randolph, (773) 744-8295.

Also, the Velvet Lounge, at 67 E. Cermak, (312) 791-9050, offers new jazz six nights a week, including Isaiah Spencer's jam sessions at 9 p.m. Sundays. See the schedule at velvetlounge.net.

Edited February 6, 2007 by Lazaro Vega

[.:.impossible]

Sounds like a positive vibe blowing through Chicago! Sounds like people are having fun. I've still never been, but my brother was up there last weekend finishing up in a studio and went to hear Ted Sirota's Jazz Rebels one night. Back in December, they went to hear a different band every night. It just sounds like a healthy scene. I love the thought of it.