In December the City Council approved a budget that shrank the annual Chicago Jazz Festival from three days to two. The festival had already lost its fourth day in 2009—though the absence of the usual Thursday kickoff concerts was softened by the presence of an unaffiliated jazz show that night in Millennium Park—and the Jazz Institute of Chicago, which programs the event, fought hard to head off a further reduction. In the fall, after the cut was proposed, it sent a letter arguing for a three-day festival to every member of the City Council and to the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, then urged citizens to oppose the move by contacting their aldermen. Not only was the fest a popular and important cultural event, the institute said, but “through attracting high-level sponsorship and exceeding its vendor revenue projections it is also an activity that generates much needed revenue for our city.” All to no avail.
As always, all the music is free. Thursday’s program is mostly at Pritzker Pavilion (Randolph and Michigan), with an early-evening set in Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall (430 S. Michigan, seventh floor). Friday’s daytime shows are spread across the Randolph Cafe, the Claudia Cassidy Theater, and Preston Bradley Hall, all in the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington), and there’s music at Pritzker beginning at 4 PM. Saturday and Sunday’s events all take place in Grant Park. Afternoon sets are at the Jazz on Jackson stage (on Jackson near Lake Shore Drive), the Jazz & Heritage Stage (south of Jackson near Columbus), and the Young Jazz Lions Stage (east of the Heritage stage and south of the Jackson stage), which is back for a second year to showcase ensembles from area high schools and colleges. The Petrillo Music Shell, which hosts each evening’s headliners, is at Columbus and Jackson—and after the music ends at the lakefront, there’s more on offer around town every night—see sidebar for details. —PM
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1:05 PM Jodie Christian Quintet Chicago pianist Jodie Christian has returned after a protracted illness for a regular stint at Katerina’s on Irving Park. He’s long been a bridge builder, working in mainstream contexts in the 50s and 60s and later on with the city’s leading experimentalists—including members of the AACM, which he helped found—but never choosing camps. A rich, imaginative soloist and supportive accompanist, Christian has a florid streak that he tempers with an exhaustive understanding of momentum and well-placed moments of tension. His granite-solid quintet includes a fellow elder statesman, drummer William “Bugs” Cochran—an alumnus of several early incarnations of Sun Ra’s Arkestra—and tenor saxophonist John Brumbach, a fabulous straight-ahead player whose extensive discography includes sessions with Parliament-Funkadelic and the Gap Band. —JC
2:10 PM The Miyumi Project Big Band When bassist Tatsu Aoki first moved to Chicago in 1977, he gravitated to the radical, wide-ranging music of the AACM. With the Miyumi Project, he’s reconciled those sounds with traditional Japanese music. The project, which fluctuates in size from gig to gig, will appear today as a big band with strings, four stouthearted saxophonists, and fearlessly swinging drummer Dushun Mosley—who’ll get some extra firepower from the Japanese American Service Committee’s home-grown Tsukasa Taiko drumming troupe. They’ll debut Trans-Rooted, the third installment in Aoki’s series of large-scale works about cultural heritage and exile. —BM
Randolph Cafe
1:45 PM AACM Experimental Ensemble It’s been 45 years since a group of young jazz adventurers, determined to carve out a space to play what they wanted to play in the face of dwindling artistic and economic opportunities, formed the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, the 13-piece AACM Experimental Ensemble uses exotic percussion, bristling reeds, and theatrical vocals that encompass the centuries-long sweep of African American music from its imagined prehistory to its imagined future. —BM
4 PM Lincoln Park High School Jazz Ensemble and Noteworthy: CPS Jazz Band Teachers
