This summer season was rife with wonderful activities, from the Grand Excursion to the Mississippi Valley Blues Fest to the Bix festival. But in my "saving the best for last" opinion, the festival that truly marks the end of season is the Chicago Jazz Festival, which this year honored one of the Quad Cities' own, Jimmie Jones, with an after-fest birthday party earlier this month.
You should know that Jones is not just the Quad Cities area's own personal treasure; a special honoree of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, he is much-loved and -revered in prestigious jazz circles. If ever you go to the Chicago Jazz Festival, you can ask any photographer you see: "Where's Jimmie?" Without hesitation they will tell you exactly where he can be found, happily snapping pictures and flowing with the riffs of the band. (His only requirement is that the bands not play fusion or "smooth junk," as he calls it.) More than 20 pit photographers from around the country signed his birthday card at this year's festival.
The Chicago Jazz Festival, the world's largest free jazz festival, featured four days of great jazz music, from Chicago's jazz professionals as well as some of the best musicians from around the country and the world.
This year's event featured an indoor ticketed concert Thursday, September 2, at Symphony Center, featuring double Grammy Award winner and Tony-winning actress Dee Dee Bridgewater along with a tribute to the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, one of the most acclaimed and innovative big bands in jazz history. The orchestra was led by original band member Jon Faddis and also included Cecil Bridgewater, Billy Harper, George Mraz, and Jerry Dodgion.
Voted as the Best Jazz Festival in the 2003 Readers Poll by Jazz Times magazine, this festival opened its three full days of free music on Friday, September 3. Music was available on three stages in Grant Park, a bucolic lakefront green space in the middle of a concrete jungle. Attendees are like kids in a candy store, because the festival is easy to navigate with its clever planning and punctual performances.
Each evening the main stage (the Petrillo bandshell) paid tribute to the centennial of the birth of one of three great jazz legends: Count Basie, Fats Waller, and Coleman Hawkins.
Basie's piano style is incorporated into many different disciplines of jazz and blues even today. Honoring Basie on Friday was the New Kansas City 7, featuring former Basie orchestra or octet mates Frank Foster, Clark Terry, Frank Wess, Buddy DeFranco, Benny Powell, Harold Jones, and Buddy Catlett, along with the man who took over at piano upon Basie's death, George Caldwell. Other treats on Friday included The Winard Harper Sextet, which incorporates African percussion into its intensely exciting sound, as well as The Latin Side of Miles, transforming themes from classic Davis performances such as Kind of Blue and the haunting melodies of Sketches of Spain with Latin sensibilities.
Saturday evening saw a tribute to Colman Hawkins - most recognized for his tenor sax and a professional even before he attended a Chicago high school - by the Bennie Wallace Coleman Hawkins Project with arrangements by Anthony Wilson. Also, the annual "Jammin' at the Petrillo" included James Moody, Jon Faddis, Von Freeman, Art Hoyle, and the Ron Perillo Trio. Jazz trumpeter extraordinaire Orbert Davis closed out the evening with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic.
On Sunday, Butch Thompson paid "Tribute to Fats Waller at 100," completing the celebration of great jazz artists born in 1904. Pianist, singer, and composer Waller packed his brief 20-year professional career - which ended with his death at 39 - with performances at Carnegie Hall, hit recordings, and Broadway scores, including his biggest song, "Ain't Misbehavin'." Thompson, who has earned a worldwide reputation as a master of ragtime, stride, and classic jazz piano, led a six-piece orchestra in tribute to Waller. Also not to be missed was the flat-out blowing by a "no sellouts" avant-garde group led by colossal tenor man Fred Anderson.
There was also much to see and hear as the Jazz & Heritage Family stage opened with Chicago's High School Honors Jazz Band, and later "Jammin' with Kids." In addition this stage provided workshops, interviews, discussions, and the history of jazz sessions. The Jazz on Jackson stage featured a mix of hot Chicago and world jazz. Here we were able to catch Mississippi Valley Blues Society (MVBS) artist-in-residence Erwin Helfer's offering: "Homage to Art Hodes & Pete Johnson." The festival concluded with a set from Toshiko Akiyoshi performing with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra.
But the festival couldn't really end until many of the regulars paid tribute to the birthday of "Da Mayor" of the Chicago Jazz Festival, Jimmie Jones. Jones, the Quad Cities own music maven, was honored at the after-fest jam session at his friend Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge on 22nd and Indiana. The long line of people waiting to enter was reminiscent of Studio 54 or the Green Onion. When we got in, the overflowing gathering of artists and friends represented a stirring tribute to this most vociferous promoter of, in his words, "the only true American cultural contribution to the world ... African-American music." Noted flutist Nicole Mitchell presented Jones with a birthday cake as the packed house sang "Happy Birthday." We all know Jimmie to be long-winded, but blowing out 80 candles ... ?
The second jam set featuring the young turks of avant garde began with Langston Hughes' poem "Daybreak in Alabama," which performer Shellie Moore Guy dedicated to Jimmie. Later, another area artist, Mississippi Valley Blues Society artist-in-residence Semenya McCord, serenaded him, singing John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." Noted Chicago harmonica player Billy Branch, also an MVBS artist-in-residence, integrated his sound into the freedom of the music and dedicated his incredible solos to Jimmie. By that time, the place was going crazy, and the audience showed their love for both the music and Da Mayor.
It was fitting that Jimmie was honored in this straight-ahead, hard-driving, take-no-prisoners temple of avant-garde jazz, because the style of music reflects the creative, diligent, and generous nature of one of the finest ambassadors and historians of the art form we have ever met: Jimmie Jones.
And can you believe it? Jimmie Jones, the eternal photographer of the music, forgot to take a picture of his own birthday cake and record the true end of the 26th Annual Chicago Jazz Festival.
You should know that Jones is not just the Quad Cities area's own personal treasure; a special honoree of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, he is much-loved and -revered in prestigious jazz circles. If ever you go to the Chicago Jazz Festival, you can ask any photographer you see: "Where's Jimmie?" Without hesitation they will tell you exactly where he can be found, happily snapping pictures and flowing with the riffs of the band. (His only requirement is that the bands not play fusion or "smooth junk," as he calls it.) More than 20 pit photographers from around the country signed his birthday card at this year's festival.
The Chicago Jazz Festival, the world's largest free jazz festival, featured four days of great jazz music, from Chicago's jazz professionals as well as some of the best musicians from around the country and the world.
This year's event featured an indoor ticketed concert Thursday, September 2, at Symphony Center, featuring double Grammy Award winner and Tony-winning actress Dee Dee Bridgewater along with a tribute to the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, one of the most acclaimed and innovative big bands in jazz history. The orchestra was led by original band member Jon Faddis and also included Cecil Bridgewater, Billy Harper, George Mraz, and Jerry Dodgion.
Voted as the Best Jazz Festival in the 2003 Readers Poll by Jazz Times magazine, this festival opened its three full days of free music on Friday, September 3. Music was available on three stages in Grant Park, a bucolic lakefront green space in the middle of a concrete jungle. Attendees are like kids in a candy store, because the festival is easy to navigate with its clever planning and punctual performances.
Each evening the main stage (the Petrillo bandshell) paid tribute to the centennial of the birth of one of three great jazz legends: Count Basie, Fats Waller, and Coleman Hawkins.
Basie's piano style is incorporated into many different disciplines of jazz and blues even today. Honoring Basie on Friday was the New Kansas City 7, featuring former Basie orchestra or octet mates Frank Foster, Clark Terry, Frank Wess, Buddy DeFranco, Benny Powell, Harold Jones, and Buddy Catlett, along with the man who took over at piano upon Basie's death, George Caldwell. Other treats on Friday included The Winard Harper Sextet, which incorporates African percussion into its intensely exciting sound, as well as The Latin Side of Miles, transforming themes from classic Davis performances such as Kind of Blue and the haunting melodies of Sketches of Spain with Latin sensibilities.
Saturday evening saw a tribute to Colman Hawkins - most recognized for his tenor sax and a professional even before he attended a Chicago high school - by the Bennie Wallace Coleman Hawkins Project with arrangements by Anthony Wilson. Also, the annual "Jammin' at the Petrillo" included James Moody, Jon Faddis, Von Freeman, Art Hoyle, and the Ron Perillo Trio. Jazz trumpeter extraordinaire Orbert Davis closed out the evening with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic.
On Sunday, Butch Thompson paid "Tribute to Fats Waller at 100," completing the celebration of great jazz artists born in 1904. Pianist, singer, and composer Waller packed his brief 20-year professional career - which ended with his death at 39 - with performances at Carnegie Hall, hit recordings, and Broadway scores, including his biggest song, "Ain't Misbehavin'." Thompson, who has earned a worldwide reputation as a master of ragtime, stride, and classic jazz piano, led a six-piece orchestra in tribute to Waller. Also not to be missed was the flat-out blowing by a "no sellouts" avant-garde group led by colossal tenor man Fred Anderson.
There was also much to see and hear as the Jazz & Heritage Family stage opened with Chicago's High School Honors Jazz Band, and later "Jammin' with Kids." In addition this stage provided workshops, interviews, discussions, and the history of jazz sessions. The Jazz on Jackson stage featured a mix of hot Chicago and world jazz. Here we were able to catch Mississippi Valley Blues Society (MVBS) artist-in-residence Erwin Helfer's offering: "Homage to Art Hodes & Pete Johnson." The festival concluded with a set from Toshiko Akiyoshi performing with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra.
But the festival couldn't really end until many of the regulars paid tribute to the birthday of "Da Mayor" of the Chicago Jazz Festival, Jimmie Jones. Jones, the Quad Cities own music maven, was honored at the after-fest jam session at his friend Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge on 22nd and Indiana. The long line of people waiting to enter was reminiscent of Studio 54 or the Green Onion. When we got in, the overflowing gathering of artists and friends represented a stirring tribute to this most vociferous promoter of, in his words, "the only true American cultural contribution to the world ... African-American music." Noted flutist Nicole Mitchell presented Jones with a birthday cake as the packed house sang "Happy Birthday." We all know Jimmie to be long-winded, but blowing out 80 candles ... ?
The second jam set featuring the young turks of avant garde began with Langston Hughes' poem "Daybreak in Alabama," which performer Shellie Moore Guy dedicated to Jimmie. Later, another area artist, Mississippi Valley Blues Society artist-in-residence Semenya McCord, serenaded him, singing John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." Noted Chicago harmonica player Billy Branch, also an MVBS artist-in-residence, integrated his sound into the freedom of the music and dedicated his incredible solos to Jimmie. By that time, the place was going crazy, and the audience showed their love for both the music and Da Mayor.
It was fitting that Jimmie was honored in this straight-ahead, hard-driving, take-no-prisoners temple of avant-garde jazz, because the style of music reflects the creative, diligent, and generous nature of one of the finest ambassadors and historians of the art form we have ever met: Jimmie Jones.
And can you believe it? Jimmie Jones, the eternal photographer of the music, forgot to take a picture of his own birthday cake and record the true end of the 26th Annual Chicago Jazz Festival.
