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For its 30th birthday last year the Chicago Jazz Festival threw one hell of a party, opening with Sonny Rollins, closing with Ornette Coleman, and presenting commissioned work along the way from four undisputed heavyweights—pianist Vijay Iyer, trumpeter Dave Douglas, bandleader Gerald Wilson, and trombonist T.S. Galloway. After such a spectacular blowout—and especially given the brutal economic crisis—I wasn’t expecting to be impressed by this year’s incarnation. But the 2009 lineup is nothing to sneeze at—though none of the artists are legends on par with Rollins or Coleman, the Jazz Institute of Chicago has assembled an impressive slate of talent that broadens the traditional aesthetic scope of the festival. And even though the official schedule is only three days long this year, there’s an unaffiliated Thursday-night jazz show in Millennium Park that might as well be part of the fest—clarinetist Buddy DeFranco will join the Chicago Jazz Ensemble for a tribute to Benny Goodman at the Pritzker Pavilion.
I’ve always appreciated the JIC’s hard-core devotion to straight-up jazz, but I’m also happy to see its programming reflect the changes in the music over the past decade. Nods in that direction on this year’s bill include bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding, a rising star who hybridizes jazz and R & B; the Chicago Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble and Cuban polymath Gonzalo Rubalcaba, who’ll provide two very different iterations of Afro-Caribbean music; and folk-jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux, who sounds a bit like a more mannered Norah Jones.
