During the past decade, the South Side of Chicago inexorably has been re-emerging as a setting for important jazz performances, and the weekend’s Jaaz Fest ’99 underscored the point.
Though Chicago trumpeter Malachi Thompson has been staging this inimitable event for seven years, this time around he performed an additional service by introducing listeners to a splendid, midsized auditorium in the Museum of Science and Industry. With its intimate dimensions, vibrant acoustics and sleek, art deco design, the auditorium could — and should — emerge as a focal point for jazz performance. Even the long walk through the enormous museum to get to the auditorium is a pleasure, as visitors ogle all manner of trains, planes and automobiles en route to the music.
Thompson originally coined the term “jaaz” to distinguish the hard-core, hard-hitting music his festival presents from commercial genres that have been marketed as “jazz” (as in “smooth jazz,” “jazz lite,” “jazz-rock fusion,” etc.). Certainly the powerhouse triple-bill the festival offered Friday night made zero concessions to commerce, with uncompromising views of jazz tradition and experimentation.
Many Chicagoans have heard Thompson’s Africa Brass band in various jazz clubs, but to savor this large ensemble’s music in an auditorium is a different experience entirely. With its nearly symphonic array of brass, reeds and percussion, Africa Brass is equipped to address virtually every facet of jazz ensemble playing that grew out of the New Orleans brass bands of the turn of the century.
Through the course of the Africa Brass set, in fact, listeners could behold the evolution of jazz from early New Orleans marching bands to 1930s swing ensembles to 1960s avant-garde experimental groups and beyond. Thompson and his small army of musicians addressed each of these idioms with complete felicity to period style.
Thompson’s clarion trumpet stood at the forefront of much of the Africa Brass repertoire, to excellent effect. Though Thompson can toss off plenty of technical flash when so inclined, his greater purpose is to trace the progress of certain musical motifs and to provide a melodic focus amid a swirl of ensemble sound. By any measure, the Africa Brass set was a tour de force.
No doubt some listeners expected a bigger band than the one that took the stage as the AACM Large Ensemble. But even this somewhat reduced contingent had a great deal to recommend it.
For starters, any band that features Ann Ward’s slashing and dissonant chords on piano, Malachi Favors’ enormous sound on double bass and Vandy Harris’ high-register shrieks on tenor saxophone is going to make an impression. Add to the mix David Boykin’s high-energy solos on tenor and Niki Mitchell’s and Taalib Din Ziyad’s intricate work on various flutes, and you had more sound and ideas than the ear possibly could absorb.
Yet these players somehow improvised a counterpoint that contributed to the whole without diluting the effect of the individual. Moreover, the musicians defied traditional concepts of large-ensemble playing, emphasizing not muscular section work but a complex fabric of distinct lines. That all this sound was coherently organized within the context of a highly dissonant, avant-garde musical language made the feat particularly impressive.
The evening had begun with the Jazz Unlimited Orchestra, a band that acquires more sonic power and ensemble cohesion with each performance, including this one.
None of the evening’s muic-making, however, would have been possible without Thompson, whose efforts at creating new performance opportunities on the South Side continue to enrich musical Chicago.
