Garland Room, Chicago Cultural Center
What Is This Thing Called “Jazz”?12:30 PM & 3:15 PM The Jazz Institute presents drummer Paul Wertico, bassist Larry Gray, and multi-instrumentalist David Cain in a program called “The Rhythm Method II,” an insider’s view of the intricacies of jazz performance. The Garland Room is on the Cultural Center’s first floor, on the Washington Street side.
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Hamid Drake Quartet with Kidd Jordan, William Parker, and Cooper-Moore1:10 PM Imagine someone who, through the sheer force of positive energy and cultural productivity, could lift up an entire city. Hamid Drake is probably as close as we will ever get. A generous and sincere soul, a massive rhythm maker, and an integrative musician who’s created his own way of playing trap kit—he treats it as a sort of vastly expanded hand drum—Drake has been powering various groups in and out of Chicago for the past 30 years. This set is an indirect homage to late, great tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, who hosted an annual afterfest at his Velvet Lounge, where Drake and voluble Crescent City saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan were regular attractions. In this quartet, Drake and Jordan partner with bassist William Parker, a long-term teammate, as well as Parker’s New York comrade Cooper-Moore, who plays piano and homemade instruments. —John Corbett
Satoko Fujii’s Orchestra Chicago 3:30 PM Pianist Satoko Fujii, who maintains residences in Berlin and Tokyo, is a fluent free improviser who can command the stage without assistance. But when she plays in big-band settings, she often reins in her playing in order to set up sturdy frameworks that draw out the improvisational potential of her collaborators. For this performance, she’s composed a new suite for jazz orchestra—the lineup consists of her working quartet, KAZE (drummer Peter Orins and trumpeters Christian Pruvost and Natsuki Tamura, the latter of whom is also Fujii’s husband), surrounded by an all-star crew of Chicagoans (and one former Chicagoan) that includes reedists Dave Rempis, Ernest Dawkins, and Keefe Jackson, trombonist Jeb Bishop, trumpeter Corey Wilkes, bassist Kent Kessler, guitarist John McLean, and percussionist Michael Zerang. KAZE’s excellent new CD, Tornado (Circum-Libra), performs a balancing act between bold, turbulent statements and hushed explorations of extended technique; if Fujii can coax a similar dynamic out of this orchestra, it could make for one of the festival’s best sets. —Bill Meyer
Kenwood Academy High School Jazz Ensemble3:45 PM
Gregory Porter6:10 PM I’m hardly the biggest fan of vocal jazz, but with his forthcoming third album, Liquid Spirit (his Blue Note debut), Gregory Porter has made a believer out of me. Restrained and soulful, he trusts in his warm baritone to get the job done without bombast or grandstanding, and his rare extroverted flourishes tend to borrow from the soul and gospel that permeate his music. Though he doesn’t avoid standards—the album closes with a lovely reading of “I Fall in Love Too Easily”—he wrote most of the tunes on the new record himself. A few of the ballads leave me cold, but Porter clearly understands the intersection of groove and melody; at his best he reminds me of Bill Withers in his hard-hitting mode. He does a killer version of the Abbey Lincoln-Max Roach tune “Lonesome Lover,” and he nails the Ramsey Lewis staple “The ‘In’ Crowd.” Porter’s working band, which backs him here, consists of pianist Chip Crawford, bassist Aaron James, drummer Emanuel Harrold, and saxophonist Yosuke Sato. —Peter Margasak
