Music festivals are thick on the ground in Chicago these days, from summer behemoths like Taste of Chicago and Lollapalooza to niche events like the Neon Marshmallow Fest and the Umbrella Music Festival. Record labels have gotten in on the action too, celebrating milestone anniversaries by presiding over lineups drawn from their rosters past and present: Thrill Jockey, Touch and Go, Bloodshot.
“I loved the relaxed mood of everybody compared to New York. It has somehow a much more European feel, and a much less competitive lifestyle,” he says. “Chicago tends to be more and more an important center for this kind of music, with lots of connections to northern European countries like Sweden and Norway. It has one of the stronger scenes in the world today.”
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Costa started thinking early last year about setting up a festival here. For help he turned to jazz drummer and Pitchfork Music Festival organizer Mike Reed. “Pedro had the idea of doing this last September, when they were doing one in New York,” says Reed. “I told him that he’d be getting a late start and it was kind of the worst time to do it because there was already so much stuff happening already.” Reed suggested May, because it would be in advance of the busy summer season.
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9:30 PM Herculaneum No Chicago outfit embodies the connections between the city’s jazz and rock scenes like Herculaneum, led by drummer Dylan Ryan—whose other projects include Icy Demons, Bronze, and Michael Columbia. Saxophonist Dave McDonnell, Ryan’s bandmate in Michael Columbia, also cofounded Bablicon; flutist and reedist Nate Lepine has played for Cursive, Manishevitz, and Head of Femur, among others. But they’re not just farting around with jazz when they don’t have rock shows to play, and they prove it with their latest album, the superb Herculaneum III (Clean Feed). Ryan’s tunes have never been more elegant, and his resourceful arrangements make the band sound much larger than it is—which is saying something, since the current lineup is a sextet, rounded out by trombonist Nick Broste, trumpeter Patrick Newbery, and bassist Greg Danek. The four frontline players all make excellent use of their solo space—particularly the hot-blowing McDonnell, who’s something of a wild card, and Broste, who’s got a fat tone, a lyrical style, and a broad knowledge of the instrument’s history in jazz. But just as rewarding (and more impressive) is the dense ensemble writing, which not only helps propel the soloists but gives each piece a multifaceted richness, with different sections in the same tune drawing on traditions as disparate as postbop and contemporary classical. Herculaneum also plays Thu 5/13 at Quenchers and Fri 5/14 at Reckless Records on Milwaukee.
7:30 PM MI3 Founded in Boston, this veteran trio—pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, bassist Nate McBride, and drummer Curt Newton—hasn’t played too often since McBride moved to Chicago in late 2004. Their repertoire mixes material by the likes of Lennie Tristano, Andrew Hill, and Thelonious Monk with Karayorgis’s own knotty tunes, which bear the influence of those original thinkers; no matter what the song, MI3 approach it with clarity of purpose, a deep rapport, and a fierce streak of unpredictable individuality. On Free Advice (Clean Feed, 2007) their alert interplay rolls along atop jagged rhythms that occasionally manage to swing, and Karayorgis’s idea-packed but spacious improvisations bristle with geometric abstraction and melodic zigzags. Betwixt (Hatology, 2008) changed direction slightly, with Karayorgis switching to Fender Rhodes and the repertoire leaning more heavily on covers, this time by Monk, Sun Ra, Misha Mengelberg, Wayne Shorter, and others. I’m eager to hear what’s next.
