5 Picks To Click For The 2013 Chicago Jazz Festival
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 28, 2013 7:45PM
Drummer-percussionist Hamid Drake is this year's Jazz Fest artist in residence.
Labor Day in Chicago typically means the end of summer is near and one of the surest signs of that is the Chicago Jazz Festival. This year the moves to Millennium Park from Aug. 29 through Sept. 1 with one of the more loaded lineups in recent memory, focusing on hard bop and Chicago-style improvised jazz.
One major reason for that renewed commitment is the presence of Hamid Drake, this year’s artist in residence. The popular and respected drummer and percussionist cut his teeth as one of the late saxophonist Fred Anderson’s most trusted collaborators and Drake’s annual winter solstice concerts with fellow percussionist Michael Zerang remain a staple of the end-of-year holiday season. This year Drake performs an original composition, “Reggaeology,” with his group Bindu at Prizker Pavilion Sept. 1 at 6:10 p.m. Drake’s Chicago Trio featuring saxophonist Ernest “Khabeer” Dawkins and powerhouse bassist Harrison Bankhead perform at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall (430 S. Michigan Ave.) 5 p.m. Thursday.
Drake’s residence at the festival is only one of five acts we highly recommend catching this weekend. Here are our other four picks to click.
Made in Chicago: World Class Jazz
Aug. 29, Pritzker Pavilion, 6:30 p.m.
Iconic drummer Jack DeJohnette sits in with a host of legendary Chicago musicians including bassist Larry Gray, pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams, and reedists Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill. Gray is a longtime sideman for Ramsey Lewis while Abrams, Mitchell and Threadgill are all charter members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). This show has the potential to set the early high bar for the rest of the festival.
Wadada Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers
Aug. 30., Pritzker Pavilion, 7:40 p.m.
The firebrand avant garde trumpeter and composer will bring to life this composition inspired by watershed moments of the Civil Rights movement from the Niagara Falls Congress of 1905 to Martin Luther King’s final speech in Memphis in 1968 with the help of WLS’s Golden Quartet and Pacifica Red Coral with video artist Jesse Gilbert. Smith’s playing rages from hi shrieks to low simmering runs and he plays the silence between notes as well as anyone in the genre.
Chévere de Chicago
Aug. 31, Jazz and Heritage Pavilion (North Promenade), 3:30 p.m.
Harmonica player and pianist Howard Levy (best known as one of Bela Fleck’s Flecktones) leads this ensemble that plays a mélange of jazz, funk, blues and Latin musical styles. The band rarely plays outside of Green Mill so this is an ideal chance to catch one of Chicago’s most underheralded acts in an outdoor setting.
Fareed Haque and Tony Monaco
Sept. 1, Jazz and Heritage Pavilion, 2 p.m.
Haque, one of the more visible jazz guitarist on the local scene, has a resume that features work with Sting, Dave Holland and Medeski, Martin & Wood. For this set he’ll be teaming up with the Columbus, Ohio-based Monaco, one of the strongest Hammond B3 organists in jazz. Monaco is an inspiring story: he suffered nerve damage in his shoulders as a result of neuralgic Amyotrophy, a disease closely related to polio, at age 15, and didn’t pursue a musical career until he turned 35.
View the complete Chicago Jazz Festival lineup here.