Seven years ago, drummer Mike Reed and cornetist Josh Berman launched a weekly jazz series at the Hungry Brain, a cozy little bar on Belmont Avenue. That was nothing new—since the mid-90s members of the local jazz community had been setting up weekly gigs at all kinds of places that weren’t jazz clubs per se. But Reed was thinking bigger. Not only did he register the duo as a not-for-profit, Emerging Improvisers, with the idea of securing grants down the road, he began investing his own money into the series.
Reed says lots of people are surprised that some avant jazzbo is driving the country’s premiere indie-rock festival, but he’s says he’s used to being the guy who likes what he’s not supposed to. “I got into hip-hop in high school,” he says, “but I might’ve been walking in the mall wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.”
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The following year, when Reed was five, John Lennon was murdered. As their mother explained to Reed and his older brother, Donnell, who Lennon had been, she played them her Beatles records. Before long the brothers wanted to make music of their own. After seeing Buddy Rich perform on The Muppet Show, Reed had his heart set on the drums, but his parents preferred that both boys take up the guitar. Reed obliged, but when he offered up the money he’d received from relatives for his eighth grade graduation, his parents relented, chipping in the balance toward a kit.
He took some lessons and learned some rudiments, but in high school his enthusiasm waxed and waned. He’d venture into the city to see live jazz with his brother, but he wasn’t practicing much. “When you’re a teenager, your interests shift—drums one week, football the next week,” he says. When he headed off to college, he left his drums behind.
By 2001 Reed was familiar with most expressions of the local improvised music scene, which was still centered on the the Wednesday-night series programmed by Vandermark and John Corbett at the Empty Bottle. But like many younger musicians on the scene then, he had trouble landing a show there.
Reed and Berman joined forces with Vandermark, jazz fan-turned-booker Mitch Cocanig, and saxophonist Dave Rempis, who had booked a jazz series at 3030, to form Umbrella Music, securing one night a week at the Hideout, which hadn’t previously hosted much jazz, and another at Elastic, which the 3030 folks had opened in the space above Friendship Chinese restaurant in Logan Square. That fall they presented the first Umbrella Music festival, using all three venues as well as the Velvet Lounge and the Chicago Cultural Center to stage a showcase for the reinvigorated improvised music community. “The scene is very clearly better,” says Rempis. “Attendance improved, but the biggest thing was seeing the cross-fertilization, having people who might’ve only gone to one venue learn about the others and start checking those out too.”
Taking a cue from England’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals, “curated” each year by a different well-known band, they sought another partner to lend the fest some instant credibility. “I knew about Pitchfork—although I didn’t realize how popular it was—and they seemed like an obvious choice,” Reed says. So in late 2004 they e-mailed the site’s brass with a proposal.
