Our picks for:Thursday and Friday • Saturday • Sunday • The aftershows
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For the past few years most of the Jazz Fest’s marquee names have played on Saturday and Sunday—that is, the remaining Grant Park days—and that’s the case in 2012 as well. But the music on Thursday and Friday, hosted by the Cultural Center, Roosevelt University, and Millennium Park, is nothing to sneeze at—Friday at the Pritzker Pavilion, octogenarian drummer Roy Haynes leads a band that would be a major attraction on any stage and any day of the week. The sight lines and sound quality are much better at the Pritzker Pavilion than in Grant Park, and as you might expect, the indoor shows tend to be more intimate than the outdoor concerts.
This year’s artist in residence is reedist and composer Ken Vandermark, one of Chicago’s hardest-working musicians. In fact, he works so hard that he’s hardly ever home these days—his large role in the festival affords locals a rare chance to hear him in four different contexts, with national and international collaborators, in the space of three days. He’ll duet with Poughkeepsie horn man Joe McPhee and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, play with a new quartet called Made to Break with Austrian electronicist Christof Kurzmann, and lead his latest transcontinental large group, the Resonance Ensemble.
