For fans of improvised music and forward-looking jazz, the annual Umbrella Music Festival has become the city’s marquee event. The fifth installment, which runs through Sunday, began Wednesday, November 3, with the first half of European Jazz Meets Chicago—a free mini-fest at the Cultural Center that mixes up top-shelf locals and eminent visitors from abroad. In its third year, nine European nations are participating, more than ever before (there were to be ten, but last week Lithuanian drummer Arkadijus Gotesmanas canceled due to illness), so for the first time the mini-fest is spread across two nights. Each of the festival’s three remaining concerts is held at one of the regular Umbrella Music venues: the Hideout, which hosts the Immediate Sound series on Wednesdays; Elastic, which hosts an improvised-music series on Thursdays; and the Hungry Brain, which hosts the Transmission series on Sundays.
Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630.
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6:30 PM Xavier Charles Trio It’s not always easy to be sure which Xavier Charles you’ll get when you show up to a concert. The Frenchman has often worked as a sound and installation artist, especially with the long-running group Silent Block, and he’s also well-known as a virtuoso clarinetist—in that capacity he’s been involved in several noisy electroacoustic projects and done quite a bit of transcendent free improvisation. Charles is especially fluent in his horn’s extreme upper register, and on the 2008 duo recording Difference Between the Two Clocks (Textile) he meticulously follows the wavering, levitating guitar feedback of Japanese experimental musician Otomo Yoshihide, creating gorgeous sustained harmonies. In acoustic projects like the excellent quartet Dans les Arbres or his trio with John Butcher and Axel Dörner, Charles demonstrates impressive sensitivity and intelligence whether enmeshed in the composite buzz of massed musicians or negotiating delicate give-and-take interactions. He’s been to Chicago before, backing Getatchew Mekuria as part of the expanded lineup of the Ex in summer 2008, but this is his first appearance under his own name; he’s joined by two locals, bassist Nate McBride and drummer Tim Daisy. Claudia Cassidy Theater
9:30 PM Joost Buis Ensemble Dutch trombonist Joost Buis, who also made his previous visit to Chicago with the expanded version of the Ex, leads an octet with one fellow Dutchman (saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra) and six locals (cornetist Josh Berman, reedists Keefe Jackson and Dave Rempis, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummers Mike Reed and Charles Rumback). On the superb recent album Zoomin (Data), cut with his tentet the Astronotes, Buis arranges his pithy original tunes with a looseness and sense of space that recalls Duke Ellington and complements the improvisational style of his excellent band—which is distinctly Dutch, teetering gracefully on the edge of chaos. Claudia Cassidy Theater
8:45 PM The Longrun Development of the Universe For the past decade German tubaist Carl Ludwig Hübsch has led this fascinating trio with German reedist Matthias Schubert and Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos, making the most of its unusual instrumentation—the group is capable of leaping from orchestral sophistication to absurd comedy in the blink of an eye. Hübsch is a serious motherfucker on his unwieldy horn, whether pumping out bass lines whose tone swings from rubbery to metallic or disgorging odd sound effects—flatulent splatters, startling high overtones, sibilant wheezes. The 2008 album The Universe Is a Disk (Leo) includes several abstract, minimalist pieces, some of which pay explicit homage to Karlheinz Stockhausen—uninflected long tones, tart squeaks, extreme overblowing, vocalic squiggles, unpitched breaths, and the metallic clatter of keys, valves, and mutes combine to create intersecting, overlapping, and constantly morphing masses of sound. But elsewhere the trio’s perverse humor is on full display. Most of the rest of the album consists of buoyant, madcap original songs that deftly intercut their fast-paced melodies with terse explosions of outsize extended technique or wacky group vocal shouts—it’s easy to hear the influence of Carl Stalling’s Looney Tunes scores.
9 PM Slow Cycle This local group consists of cornetist Josh Berman, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Nate McBride, and drummer Frank Rosaly.
Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, $15, 21+.
