Chicago Jazz Festival
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The lineup for the second night of the jazz festival looked promising. Opening the evening would be the Chicago-based George Freeman Quartet, a bop-rooted group featuring the leader’s biting and lyrical electrical guitar sounds and his better-known brother Von, a towering tenor saxophonist, on piano. They’d be followed by another local group, singer Jackie Allen and her trio (piano, bass, and drums), who move nimbly between jazz and cabaret styles. Next would be the exuberantly swaggering blues, bop, and ballads of veteran alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson. After that would come the more reserved and refined sounds of the Ellis Marsalis Trio, led by the pianist-educator who fathered two of the biggest stars on today’s jazz scene, with guest artist Nicholas Payton, a highly touted young trumpeter from New Orleans. And capping off the evening would be the cutting-edge sounds of Henry Threadgill Very Very Circus Plus, featuring the Chicago-bred leader’s wailing alto saxophone, his highly structured and densely textured compositions, and his penchant for idiosyncratic instrumental combinations–here (in addition to his saxophone and flutes) French horn, drums, two electric guitars, and two tubas as well as a guest accordionist and singer. What seemed promising on paper, though, didn’t live up to its potential. But that had less to do with the musicians than with the festival itself.
Problems of this sort recurred in one form or another throughout the night. When Allen sang a finger-snapping medium-tempo “Ella’s Blues,” the drums, instead of supplying buoyancy and drive, contributed only a clattery splat-splat-splat. When Marsalis offered a spare reading of “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” the bass, instead of providing a harmonic anchor, was so muddy that one pitch was virtually indistinguishable from the next. And in Threadgill’s set one sonic problem seemed to follow another: the tubas were generally murky, the guitars at times inaudible, the drums often small and skittery, and Threadgill’s saxophone frequently exaggerated.
These problems demonstrated what can happen when an art form is taken out of its natural habitat. Imagine a film festival in a large outdoor venue: colors would be washed out, images indistinct, and the intensity of sitting in a dark theater lost. Or consider an outdoor drama festival in which only the plays’ first acts were performed and only some of the actors could be heard.
