[JPL] Scatting from clubs to larger concert venues By Howard ReichTribune arts critic

[Jazz Promo Services]

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JAZZ

Scatting from clubs to larger concert venues

        

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic

July 1, 2007

When two of Chicago's most celebrated jazz rooms find themselves homeless,
music lovers have a right to ask whether the local scene is imploding.

Last Monday's announcement that HotHouse would vacate its South Loop
premises by the end of the month meant audiences that value adventurous jazz
and world-music sets had suffered a major blow.

The bad news hit just months after the Jazz Showcase -- Chicago's
pre-eminent room for national jazz headliners -- was forced out of its
longtime home in River North, on Dec. 31.

Each club promises to return, with Jazz Showcase founder Joe Segal hoping to
re-emerge elsewhere this fall and HotHouse management now seeking "a
permanent home of our own," according to a statement.

But the temporary (we hope) misfortunes of HotHouse and Jazz Showcase say
less about the Chicago jazz landscape -- which remains among the most
fertile in the world -- than it does about the nature of jazz presentation
itself. For although jazz clubs come and go, a larger trend has changed the
way we listen to the music, which increasingly has been presented to
spectacular effect in concert halls, band shells, intimate auditoriums and
even park district field houses.

A music that achieved its first great glory more than a century ago in the
brothels and dope dens of New Orleans' Storyville vice district, in other
words, now flourishes as never before in plush venues such as Symphony
Center and the Chicago Cultural Center. It draws throngs to the lush acreage
of Millennium Park and the Ravinia Festival, in Highland Park. It lures
inspiringly diverse crowds even to acoustically challenged spots such as the
Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park (during the long-enduring Chicago Jazz
Festival).

That may sound like heresy to those who believe jazz ought to be confined to
the nightclubs in which it was born. But the inexorable rise of
concert-venue jazz doesn't necessarily mean the demise of the smoky jazz
club (though the smoke will be gone soon, if Gov. Rod Blagojevich makes good
on his promise to sign a law banning the fog from virtually all indoor
spaces, after Dec. 31).

Clear growth industry

Club shows and concert performances clearly can coexist, and they do in
Chicago and other major jazz cities. But it's concerts, not club dates, that
are the growth industry, and have been for years.

"It looks like it's headed in that direction, though there will always be
room for an intimate club," says Segal, who began presenting club sets in
Chicago in 1947.

"It seems as if things have shifted somewhat [toward concerts], but a club
gives you a different feeling," observes Dave Jemilo, owner of one of the
city's most famous jazz rooms, the Green Mill, in Uptown.

"It's as if we've discovered another side of jazz, where jazz functions in a
similar way to classical music," notes Orbert Davis, music director of the
Chicago Jazz Philharmonic (which plays Millennium Park on Aug. 27).

Jazz in a concert setting, adds Davis, "allows us to think, to reflect, to
consider the music in a different way." ...

"It's like the difference between eating a home-cooked meal [and] going out
to a restaurant."

And the number of "restaurants" has exploded. Though no industry
organization tabulates numbers for jazz concerts versus club shows, the
proliferation of non-club settings has been unmistakable.

The Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park has been offering a critically
acclaimed "Made in Chicago" jazz season since 2005. Orchestra Hall, in
Symphony Center, has been presenting a formal jazz series since 1994 (more
than doubling in size from its initial seasons to a 10-concert lineup today,
bulked up by additional jazz events throughout the year).

The Chicago Cultural Center, meanwhile, presents hundreds of performances
annually in its various auditoriums and cafes. And high-profile spots such
as the Auditorium Theatre, Museum of Contemporary Art, Old Town School of
Folk Music and Art Institute of Chicago have embraced the music. Even in
suburbia, this deeply urban music has played successfully in the newly
refurbished Skokie Theater, the elegant Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in
Evanston and the comparatively intimate McAninch Arts Center at College of
DuPage.

The numbers talk

More striking, still, are the audience numbers involved.

A single summertime season of "Made in Chicago" at Millennium Park, for
instance, plays to approximately 50,000 listeners, says executive director
Helen Doria. A Symphony Center jazz season hovers around 20,000
concertgoers, says director of programming Jim Fahey.

Add to the mix the tens of thousands who flock to the Chicago Jazz Festival
each Labor Day weekend in Grant Park; thousands more to Jazz in June at
Ravinia and the annual August jazz fest at the South Shore Cultural Center;
and still more who subscribe to concerts by Jon Faddis' Chicago Jazz
Ensemble and Jeff Lindberg's Chicago Jazz Orchestra, and the muscularity of
Chicago's concert-jazz scene is indisputable.

Clubs -- such as Andy's, Pops for Champagne, the Velvet Lounge and the Green
Mill -- also cater to thousands of listeners per year, but they no longer
dominate, as they did in the 1940s and '50s.

In that era, jazz clubs sprouted two or three to a block in some Chicago
neighborhoods, and in other big cities, as well. But changing musical tastes
and suburban sprawl changed that in the 1960s, when jazz clubs started to
shutter.

A few indestructible enterprises, such as Segal's Jazz Showcase, managed to
hang on, and in more recent times indispensable rooms such as the Velvet
Lounge and a revived Green Mill built new audiences for a perpetually
evolving music. Drop in either of those spots on a weekend night, and you'll
see young and old, black and white, locals and tourists crowding in to hear
freewheeling jazz improvisation.

But the larger boon to jazz in Chicago after the golden era of the '40s and
'50s was the proliferation of festivals and concerts -- both ticketed and
free -- that mushroomed in the late 1970s and thereafter. "A page was
turned," says Doria, the Millennium Park executive director. "The clubs
started featuring rock music, and jazz went into concert venues."

Pros and cons of free concerts

Perhaps no one did more to affect that change than Lois Weisberg,
commissioner of the city's Department of Cultural Affairs under Mayor
Richard M. Daley and a cultural advocate in previous administrations. By
steadily expanding free concerts in Grant Park and helping to transform the
old Chicago Public Library building into the bursting-with-music Chicago
Cultural Center, Weisberg put the city's muscle and money behind music.

"There's no other city in the country that does so much free music," says
Weisberg, noting that the city now spends about $2 million a year on various
music events, much of it jazz.

Furthermore, by joining forces with organizations such as the Chicago Jazz
Partnership -- a collection of blue-chip corporate foundations that
committed $1.5 million to Millennium Park's "Made in Chicago" jazz series
and other jazz events -- the city has leveraged additional resources to jazz
concert-going.

As the city's cultural programmers and various non-profit arts organizations
have gained expertise, they have staged events of increasing sophistication,
often outstripping the artistic capabilities of even the best jazz clubs. A
program such as the recent reconstruction of Charles Mingus' orchestral
"Epitaph" in Symphony Center, the launching of Davis' Chicago Jazz
Philharmonic at the Chicago Jazz Festival and the Auditorium Theatre and the
creation of new ensembles such as Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra and
Grazyna Auguscik's Orkestar Universale at Millennium Park only could have
been achieved in concert settings.

Nor has the jazz-concert phenomenon been unique to Chicago. New York
cultural forces raised $128 million to build the massive Jazz at Lincoln
Center complex, on Columbus Circle.

In Chicago, however, the combination of high-toned jazz series and a
plethora of free, citywide shows may -- or may not -- have taken a toll on
the club life. "I think the free stuff has been more detrimental than
anything," says Jazz Showcase founder Segal. "If people can see stuff for
free, why should they pay money for it?"

Lauren Deutsch, executive director of the non-profit Jazz Institute of
Chicago, which presents free events across the city, concedes the
possibility.

"Nobody has studied the impact of all these free concerts -- and we're a big
part of that," she says, pointing to the myriad events that the Jazz
Institute presents everywhere from Grant Park to park district field houses.

As Deutsch notes, the precise effect of this profusion of jazz concerts on
jazz clubs has not been thoroughly analyzed or understood. And inasmuch as
the concerts have harmed the clubs -- a point fervently disputed by city
presenters such as Weisberg and Orlove, who believe free concerts build jazz
audiences -- the art form may have suffered. For it was in the clubs that
the first generations of jazz giants learned the music, absorbing its
lessons from their elders on the bandstand.

"That very long tradition of wood-shedding at clubs has to continue,"
Deutsch says. "I think the music needs that sort of a system."

Equally important, nothing quite equals the experience of hearing -- and
seeing -- great musicians improvising in a small club, where the music tends
to be looser, freer and less predictable than on the concert stage. The
quintessential jazz performance always will unfold in clubs, where sparks
fly not only among the performers but between the musicians and the
listeners, who can watch the sweat gather on their heroes' faces.

Fifty thousand people never will hear Von Freeman blowing like crazy on
Tuesday nights at the New Apartment Lounge, on East 75th Street, but great
art is not measured in numbers. Nevertheless, the modern-day economics of
jazz have taken hold. In concert, "an artist can sit for an hour, an
hour-and-a-half, and make two to three times what they'd make in a club
playing for a whole week," Segal says.

Though presenters jealously guard the figures they pay, the biggest jazz
legends can command five or six figures for a single night's work, the fees
supported by steep ticket prices, large audiences and grants from
foundations and government agencies. Clubs, which typically charge from $5
to $25 in Chicago and rarely can squeeze more than 150 listeners into a
room, simply cannot compete.

For better or worse, however, it's clear which way the industry is headed: a
continued proliferation of concerts, and a struggle for all but a few of the
best jazz clubs to survive.

Not everyone thinks that's a bad idea.

"I say the more places for people to hear jazz, the better, whether in a
club or a concert," says Lorraine Gordon, longtime owner of the Village
Vanguard, New York's most storied club.

Not even the presence of the mighty Jazz at Lincoln Center organization
disturbs her, she says. "Jazz is beautiful in a big hall, and it's more
beautiful in a small hall," Gordon says.

"When they come here, to the Vanguard, they hear how jazz should really
sound."

- - -

Most promising jazz events happening this summer



Concerts

* Bill Dixon, 7:30 p.m. July 11, Roosevelt University's Ganz Hall, 430 S.
Michigan Ave.; $25; 773-816-2336.

* JazzCity Latin Jazz Festival, 7:30 p.m. July 13, Humboldt Park Boathouse,
1359 N. Sacramento Ave.; free; 312-427-1676.

* Great Black Music Ensemble, 6:30 p.m. July 26, Pritzker Pavilion in
Millennium Park; free; 312-742-1168.

* JazzFest Heritage Weekend, 1 to 7 p.m. Aug. 4-5, South Shore Cultural
Center, 71st Street and South Shore Drive; free; 773-734-2000.

* Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, 6:30 p.m. Aug. 27, Pritzker Pavilion in
Millennium Park; free; 312-742-1168.



Clubs

* Julian Priester Trio, 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Velvet Lounge, 67 E.
Cermak Rd.; $10-$20; 312-791-9050.

* George Freeman Quartet, 9 p.m. July 13 and 8 p.m. July 14, Green Mill Jazz
Club, 4802 N. Broadway; $10; 773-878-5552.

* Willie and Bethany Pickens, 7:30 p.m. July 8, New Checkerboard Lounge for
Blues 'n' Jazz, 5201 S. Harper Ct.; $10; 773-684-1472.

* Erik Friedlander, 10 p.m. July 26, Elastic, 2830 N. Milwaukee Ave., second
floor; ticket price to be announced; 773-772-3616.

* Ken Peplowski Quartet, 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. July 28 and 29, Andy's Jazz
Club, 11 E. Hubbard St.; $20; 312-642-6805.

-- Howard Reich

- - -

A brief history of concert jazz

1924: Paul Whiteman leads the world premiere of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody
in Blue" in New York's Aeolian Hall.

1938: Benny Goodman's orchestra brings swing to Carnegie Hall to spectacular
effect.

1943: Duke Ellington unveils his quasi-symphonic "Black, Brown and Beige" in
Carnegie Hall.

1944: Promoter Norman Granz launches the first Jazz at the Philharmonic
all-star concert in Los Angeles.

1945: Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie play Town Hall in New York
championing bebop.

1953 Bud Powell, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Gillespie and Parker play a
legendary concert in Toronto's Massey Hall.

1959: Thelonious Monk leads a tentet at Town Hall, resulting in a landmark
recording.

1962 Charles Mingus presides over an infamously disastrous Town Hall
concert.

1979: Chicago Jazz Festival makes its bow in Grant Park.

1989: A decade after Mingus' death, his "Epitaph" receives its belated world
premiere at Lincoln Center.

1994: Wynton Marsalis plays "In This House, On This Morning" at Quinn Chapel
AME Church in Chicago.

2007: Ramsey Lewis performs the world premiere of his ballet "To Know Her
..." at the Ravinia Festival.

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hreich at tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune