Like any music fest, the Chicago Jazz Festival is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure that you listen to. It’s even more multifarious than most—not only does it take over Millennium Park for four days, it also books events at the Cultural Center and Maxwell Street Market and a series of neighborhood concerts (copresented with local promoters) that begins the week before.

There’s no best way through the fest, of course. My recommendation? Hit the homegrown acts. I’ve put together a sort of Jazz Festival jukebox featuring six records that dropped (or will drop) in 2022, all by Chicago-based artists appearing at the fest. My selections are hardly exhaustive, but they still convey the breadth and variety of this year’s bookings. Think of this as an appetizer for the ears.

Chicago Jazz FestivalThu 9/1, 11 AM-9 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, and Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Fri 9/2-Sat 9/3, 11:30 AM-9 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Sun 9/4, 11 AM-9 PM, Maxwell Street Market, 800 S. Desplaines, and Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; free, all ages

In order of festival appearance: 

Mike Allemana, Vonology (Ears & Eyes)

It’s a tall order to sum up Von Freeman: a once-in-a-generation tenor saxophone talent, a mentor to countless musicians, a paradigm of Chicago-over-everything obstinacy. (He famously turned down an invitation to join Miles Davis’s band so he could stay in his hometown.) But guitarist Mike Allemana, who played with Freeman for nearly 15 years in his final quartet, is the right guy to give it a shot.

Allemana’s album-length suite Vonology goes beyond mere tribute, instead aiming to evoke something more essential about the late saxophonist. The music is influenced by Freeman’s abiding interest in astrology, and Allemana went so far as to analyze Freeman’s birth chart and assign musical modes to its elements. The way Freeman embodied his own sun sign inspired two movements: “The Mediator” derives its melodies and its lopsided groove from Allemana’s interpretation of Von’s chart, and “Libra Channeling” features a brambly and expansive tenor saxophone solo by Geof Bradfield. The piece closes as it opens, with a sunburst-like chorus of vocalists from Allemana’s Come Sunday gospel project. This August 11 was the tenth anniversary of Freeman’s death, but Vonology declares that his spirit has gone nowhere.

Mike Allemana and his ensemble perform Vonology on Thu 9/1 at 6:30 PM at Pritzker Pavilion.

The five tracks on Vonology feature a total of 16 musicians.

Roya Naldi, This Madness (Rivermont)

The term “historically informed performance” (HIP for short) usually refers to Western classical musicians adopting defunct performance practices or instrumentation, determined by consulting primary sources. But why restrict it to that genre? Roya Naldi sings century-old jazz with the directness and sparing vibrato of a 1920s chanteuse—she and her band sound like an old 78 with the static cleaned up. The arrangements on Naldi’s new EP, This Madness, belong in a cramped speakeasy, not a large dance hall—her pocket-size acoustic ensemble has a muted, velvety sound, with a delightfully tinny upright piano and wide-wobbling winds. That “ensemble” is really just two members of the Chicago Cellar Boys, the swing-era specialists in residence at the Green Mill on Tuesdays: banjoist Jimmy Barrett and multi-instrumentalist Andy Schumm, who covers piano, tenor sax, clarinet, and cornet. 

This Madness is a postscript to Naldi’s full-length debut, A Night in June (2020). Its four songs represent a delectable slice of her repertoire, including the foxtrotting “He’s the Hottest Man in Town” and the ballad “You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love),” first recorded in 1931 by its co-composer, baritone Russ Columbo. Naldi’s delivery on the latter sometimes out-suaves Columbo’s in its apparent effortlessness, more a nonchalant shrug than a wink. 

Roya Naldi performs Fri 9/2 at noon on the Harris Theater rooftop (entrance at 205 E. Randolph). 

This Madness includes four of Roya Naldi’s favorite songs from the jazz age.The LowDown Brass Band Credit: Alan Maniacek

LowDown Brass Band, LowDown Nights (self-released)

As a brass band with a genre-defying spin, LowDown are a close cousin of the Rebirth and Dirty Dozen brass bands from New Orleans. The distinctive second-line sound seeps into LowDown too, but in combination with local referents. LowDown’s sound calls back to the muscular horn sections of Earth, Wind & Fire and Chicago, and their ebullient stylings—not least the smoothly delivered bars of MC and front man Anthony “Billa Camp” Evora—evoke hip-hop projects such as the Social Experiment and Sidewalk Chalk. To quote the liner notes to LowDown’s self-titled 2008 debut, “It’s the New Orleans hump with a Chi-town bump.”

LowDown Nights is one of two albums the band recorded during the pandemic shutdown, along with last year’s The Reel Sessions, and it’s fast-paced, high-energy fun from start to finish. That’s good news for fans who wear their dancing shoes to the Chicago Jazz Festival, since LowDown’s set will likely have something for everyone. The bilingual “Ranura de la Noche” rides on tango rhythms, “Be the One Tonight” announces itself with a groove reminiscent of early house music, and “We Dem Boys” is thick, syncopated funk held down by Lance Loiselle’s sousaphone. 

The LowDown Brass Band perform Fri 9/2 at 3 PM on the Harris Theater rooftop (entrance at 205 E. Randolph). 

More than half the tracks on LowDown Nights use remote recordings made during the pandemic.

Ethan Philion onstage at the Green Mill with members of his Mingus tribute project Credit: Isabel Firpo

Ethan Philion, Meditations on Mingus (Sunnyside) 

Charles Mingus would’ve turned 100 this year, and tributes are pouring in around the globe. Chicago bassist Ethan Philion homes in on Mingus’s compositional legacy, focusing on material where Mingus spoke truth to power and confronted injustice. To execute his arrangements, Philion enlists a star-powered ten-piece that includes drummer Dana Hall, trumpeter Victor Garcia, pianist Alexis Lombre, and saxophonist Geof Bradfield. (Garcia and Bradfield also appear on Mike Allemana’s Vonology.) 

For the most part, Philion faithfully follows each work’s blueprint, building it up with muscular vamps, lush textures, and virtuosic soloing from his large-format band. He also leans into Mingus’s offbeat grit, which is plentiful in the mercurial “Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America” and an increasingly frenetic version of “Meditations for a Pair of Wirecutters.” (The latter tune, the first of the set that Philion arranged, gave the project its name.) Mingus composed “Prayer for Passive Resistance” as a showcase for an alto saxophonist, and it assumes the same role in Philion’s version—Rajiv Halim stumps energetically throughout the track. 

Meditations on Mingus perform Philion’s arrangements on Fri 9/2 at 4:15 PM at Pritzker Pavilion.

Mingus wrote the first piece in this collection in response to inhumane imprisonment in the south.

Christy Bennett’s Fumée Credit: Sandy Babusci

Fumée, Good Morning Heartache: The Music of Irene Higginbotham (self-released)

Irene Higginbotham (1918–1988) could keep up with Tin Pan Alley’s most prolific songwriters, and her tunes were performed and popularized by the likes of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Nat King Cole. Her most famous song is “Good Morning Heartache,” one of several she composed for Billie Holiday. Holiday first recorded it in 1946, and it roared belatedly onto the charts after Diana Ross portrayed her in the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues.

Higginbotham advocated extensively for the intellectual property rights of Black songwriters. However, despite many high-profile recordings of her songs, she posthumously fell victim to the broken system she organized against. To work around restrictive agreements with publishers and performing-rights agencies, Higginbotham published material under many names (most commonly “Glenn Gibson,” which sounded not just male but also white). This had the tragic side effect of relegating her to the margins of jazz history. 

Fumée bandleader and vocalist Christy Bennett searched the archives at the Library of Congress, whose copyright records document Higginbotham’s song submissions, and at Brigham Young University, which somehow ended up with a trove of her work. Due in October, Fumée’s Good Morning Heartache: The Music of Irene Higginbothammight be the first album-length tribute to the songwriter. It renders her work with Fumée’s distinctive instrumentation, drumless and inflected with Eastern European sounds: though the group’s personnel varies, mandolin (Don Stiernberg), accordion (Don Stille), and bass (Christian Dillingham or Ethan Philion) hold down the rhythms onstage and on the album.

Fumée performs Sat 9/3 at 11:30 AM at the Von Freeman Pavilion (North Promenade).

Nothing from Good Morning Heartache is streaming yet, but Fumée have been playing some of its material for years.Gustavo Cortiñas (center) with the band on his new album: from left, Emily Kuhn, Katie Ernst, Meghan Stagl, and Erik Skov Credit: Courtesy the artists

Gustavo Cortiñas, Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos (Desafío Candente) 

For a few fleeting minutes in 2019, children on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border shared seesaws. Bubblegum pink and slim enough to fit through the slots in the border fence separating El Paso and Juárez, they were designed by two California professors who later won an award for their design.

That moment is captured, not without some cynicism, in the illustration on the cover of Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos, which drummer Gustavo Cortiñas releases this week as a follow-up to last year’s Desafío Candente. The latter is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime achievement that an artist often needs years to complete, then years to recover from—it’s as lush as an untroubled forest yet just as searing as its inspiration, Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 anti-imperialist book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. 

Miraculously, Saludos Afectuosos manages to be just as staggering. Cortiñas tries his hand at songwriting (in both English and Spanish) and proves himself just as savvy a lyricist as a composer. It helps that he has a secret weapon in Meghan Stagl, doing double duty on piano and bilingual vocals and sounding weightless on both. “You rode the beast and migrated north,” she sings over desolate synths in “Emigraste”; that image, with everything it implies, is still darkening the air when the band picks up with a buoyant 6/8 groove. This technique is more or less a constant on Saludos Afectuosos: the tension between gutting lyrics and breezy delivery. It feels true to our twisted reality, just like those garish pink seesaws.

Gustavo Cortiñas celebrates the release of Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos on Sun 9/4 at 1:30 PM on the Harris Theater rooftop (entrance at 205 E. Randolph).

The Bandcamp page for the new Gustavo Cortiñas album says that it “gives life through music to words that attempt to build bridges and understanding in times of borders and ignorance.”

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The Jazz Institute of Chicago’s bookings for this year’s Jazz Festival reaffirm the organization’s commitment to presenting a variety of music by local, national, and international acts. Everything on the bill is worthwhile, but these are the sets at the top of my list.

Chicago Jazz FestivalThu 9/1, 11 AM-9 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, and Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Fri 9/2-Sat 9/3, 11:30 AM-9 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Sun 9/4, 11 AM-9 PM, Maxwell Street Market, 800 S. Desplaines, and Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; free, all ages

Henry Threadgill Credit: Michael Jackson

Henry Threadgill Zooid

Thu 9/1, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

Alto saxophonist, flute player, and Pulitzer-winning composer Henry Threadgill has been based primarily in New York City since 1970, but he was born in Chicago in 1944. During his musical development, he took in everything our city could provide: in addition to being an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), he played in blues, R&B, and polka bands as well as church ensembles. These experiences primed him to survey the broad landscape of music and judiciously select the best bits from everything he studied. His early ensembles, Air and the Henry Threadgill Sextett, were paragons of advanced small-group interaction and creative arrangement. More recently, he’s composed mainly for unusually configured large bands, and in May 2022 he staged a multimedia event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that included projections of images from his forthcoming book of COVID-era photography. 

For this concert, Threadgill will appear with Zooid, his main performance vehicle of the past 20 years or so. The quintet, which also includes guitarist Liberty Ellman, tuba and trombone player Jose Davila, cellist Christopher Hoffman, and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee, uses intensively rehearsed investigations of harmonic interval series, rather than scales or chords, as the foundation of its rich, constantly shifting group improvisations. Zooid will perform selections from Threadgill’s 2019 piece Pathways, which he wrote in response to the revitalization of Lake Erie.

A documentary short on the collaboration of Zooid and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble to develop Pathways

Henry Threadgill Zooid released this album in 2021.

JD Allen Credit: Michael Jackson

JD Allen

Fri 9/2, 5:25 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

JD Allen’s voice on the tenor saxophone combines adroit phrasing with a full tone across all the instrument’s registers. During the pandemic, he moved from New York to Cincinnati, and he spent his lockdown time developing the material for his first unaccompanied solo album, Queen City (Savant). The record demonstrates his dogged commitment to tunefulness: he plays originals and Great American Songbook material (“Just a Gigolo,” “These Foolish Things”), and no matter where his improvising takes him, his pithy extrapolations always stay in touch with the melody. As a bandleader, Allen often favors stripped-down settings, and at the Jazz Festival he’ll bring a trio with bassist Tyrone Allen and drummer Kayvon Gordon. Allen also plays Thursday, September 1, at Constellation.

JD Allen released this trio album (with a different lineup than performs at the Jazz Fest) in 2011.

Bill Frisell Credit: Monica Frisell

Bill Frisell

Fri 9/2, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

It takes about three seconds to recognize Bill Frisell. Countless guitarists have been influenced by his command of outboard effects and his attunement to harmonic subtleties, but his warm, glassy tone and sinuous phrasing defy imitation. In a career that’s spanned more than four decades, he’s pursued an epically inclusive aesthetic, making deep dives into Beatles and surf-rock tunes, Buster Keaton movies, the sounds of Nashville and West Africa, the jump-cut methodology of John Zorn, and the cartoons of Jim Woodring. But no matter how far his pursuits have taken him from jazz convention, he’s stayed committed to drawing out the harmonic and emotional potential of every tune he tackles. Frisell is also a generous accompanist, even when he leads a band. He’ll play here with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, the combo that he leads on his latest album, Valentine (Blue Note).

The title track of Bill Frisell’s 2020 album, ValentineAtomic: Håvard Wiik, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Hans Hulbækmo, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Magnus Broo Credit: Courtesy the artist

Atomic

Sat 9/3, 3 PM, Von Freeman Pavilion

If the members of Atomic weren’t musicians, they might be high-wire artists—they’re that good at keeping their balance under pressure. The Scandinavian quintet expertly realize the nuanced, dynamic compositions of pianist Håvard Wiik and reeds player Fredrik Ljungkvist, which owe as much to contemporary classical music as they do to postbop jazz, but they also relish exhilarating, no-holds-barred improvisation. The group—rounded out by drummer Hans Hulbækmo, trumpeter Magnus Broo, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten—have carried on for 22 years, even though their members (originally from Norway and Sweden) are now dispersed as widely as Germany and the United States. But all good things come to an end, and Atomic will disband at the end of their current U.S. tour. They’re also playing at Constellation on Friday, September 2, which makes this festival set their final Chicago appearance.

The most recent Atomic album, released in 2018

William Parker Quintet

Sat 9/3, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

William Parker turned 70 this year, and he can already look back on a lifetime of extraordinary accomplishments as a bassist, composer, improviser, sideman, bandleader, organizer, and author. But who’s looking back? Parker is still immensely productive. His releases in the past two years include a ten-disc collection of music that spotlights women’s voices, a mind-melting live set recorded at CBGB in 2002 with Peter Brötzman and Milford Graves, more than a dozen appearances as a sideman or coleader, and a pair of new trio recordings—one quietly ritualistic, the other a fearless dive into scorching jazz-rock. Parker often uses small groups to explore the continuum that connects mid-20th-century modern jazz and freer idioms; the quintet he’ll lead tonight features three of his enduring comrades—alto saxophonist Rob Brown, pianist Cooper-Moore, and drummer Hamid Drake—and one newer associate, soul-stirring tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis.

This 2019 William Parker album features four of the players in this quintet—everyone but James Brandon Lewis.

Geof Bradfield, Dana Hall, and Ben Goldberg Credit: Courtesy the artist

Geof Bradfield, Ben Goldberg, and Dana Hall

Sun 9/4, 1:50 PM, Von Freeman Pavilion

On the last day of any festival, it’s easy to sleep in and show up late. But if you do that this weekend, you’ll miss the simultaneously adventurous and ingratiating music of this marvelous cross-country trio. Drummer Dana Hall and reedist Geof Bradfield, who plays bass clarinet and tenor and soprano saxophones, are from Chicago; Ben Goldberg, who plays B-flat and contra-alto clarinets, is based in San Francisco. On their 2020 album General Semantics (Delmark), the absence of a bass or chordal instrument gives the music a wide-open quality—on the pithy original “345,” that airiness makes it easy to appreciate the trio’s precision maneuvers and tricky syncopation. Bradfield, Goldberg, and Hall fly easily through the music’s history, from the New Orleans-steeped polyphony of “Last Important Heartbreak of the Year” to a strikingly graceful interpretation of Cecil Taylor’s “Air.” Bradfield and Goldberg also play Saturday, September 3, at Constellation.

Geof Bradfield, Ben Goldberg, and Dana Hall released this trio album in 2020.

Kris Davis Credit: Michael Jackson

Kris Davis Diatom Ribbons

Sun 9/4, 6:25 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

It’s hard to think of a more audacious reinvention than the one Kris Davis undertook on the 2019 album Diatom Ribbons (Pyroclastic). The Canadian-born pianist, who’s been based in New York for two decades, had already established herself as a bracingly rigorous, exceptionally lucid instrumentalist and composer, both as a bandleader and as a collaborator with the likes of Craig Taborn, Rob Mazurek, and Hafez Modirzadeh. But over the ten tracks of Diatom Ribbons, she creates a vast new palette for herself by drawing on a wider range of musical communities than ever before. She incorporates Val Jeanty’s poetry-wise turntablism, Terri Lynne Carrington’s organically morphing drum grooves, the dueling guitars of Marc Ribot and Nels Cline, and the languorous vocals of Esperanza Spalding (among other things) into a celebration of limitless possibility. For this appearance she’ll perform in a stripped-down quartet with Jeanty, Carrington, and bassist Trevor Dunn, who also appears on Diatom Ribbons—a lineup I’d expect to drill down into the project’s rhythmic core. Davis also plays Saturday, September 3, at Constellation.

Kris Davis’s Diatom Ribbons features a complement of ten musicians.

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For several years now, the heart of the Chicago Jazz Festival has been in Millennium Park. This year the four days of the fest also include programming at the Cultural Center (from 11 AM till 5:15 PM on Thursday, September 1) and a lunchtime show at the Maxwell Street Market on Sunday, September 4. Around the city, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and local music organizations have jointly booked more than a dozen neighborhood concerts from Tuesday, August 23, through Wednesday, August 31. 

Of course, the local venues that routinely host jazz aren’t about to stop during the jazziest weekend of the year—in fact, many of them put in extra effort to attract concertgoers in a festival mood. Below I’ve listed the best of those shows. If you stick it out till the last note at Pritzker Pavilion, you’ll get to some of these pretty late—but not too late to enjoy some top-shelf music.

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I love Dracula. I’ve loved him ever since a Saturday afternoon in the late 70s or early 80s when I saw Bela Lugosi portray him on TV as part of Creature Double Feature. Max Schreck, Christopher Lee, and many other actors have only deepened my appreciation for the immortal bloodsucker. I always root for him and I’m always sad when he’s destroyed. Any new production of Bram Stoker’s book has a high bar to clear and a lot of baggage to haul. 

Orson Welles’ DraculaThrough 9/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, glassappletheatre.com, $25 ($15 students, seniors, industry, and military/veterans)

Brian McKnight has added an extra challenge in adapting Orson Welles’s 1938 radio play to the stage for Glass Apple Theatre. The magic of audio drama is that the listener imagines the action with only voices to guide them. There’s nothing wrong with McKnight’s cast. Their costumes look period-accurate to late-19th century Europe, and the shape of an Art Deco radio against the back wall of the stage—with video projections of stormy seas and brooding Transylvanian landscape coming through the sound mesh—is a nice touch. But the characters are stuck statically behind four lecterns, reciting text, then exiting stage left or right. They can’t touch because they represent only voices. Here, unlike in the movies, Dracula is almost a bit part. He’s just a guy glowering in a handsome burgundy suit. He doesn’t bite or fly but stalks offstage meekly when his lines are finished.

I spent minutes at a time listening with my eyes closed, and that was a mildly enjoyable way to take in what comes off as a dated Gothic tale. It would have worked much better coming out of the speakers of my stereo at home. But even then, none of the menace, erotic tension, or mystery of so many other iterations I know would have been there. I was perfectly happy with this Dracula turning to dust; he didn’t have much life to lose.

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The titular girlfriend in the local premiere of the two-person musical (book by Todd Almond, music and lyrics by Matthew Sweet) kicking off PrideArts’s 2022-23 season never appears. Referred to only fleetingly, she is nevertheless both presence and absence throughout the story of two young gay men who fall in love after their high school graduation in Alliance, Nebraska, in the summer of 1993. 

Girlfriend Through 9/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway, 773-857-0222, pridearts.org, $35 ($30 students and seniors)

Will (Joe Lewis), directionless and only beginning to come to terms with his sexuality, is given a mixtape—that ultimate symbol of affection and commitment back in the 90s—by Mike (Peter Stielstra), an athlete with both a domineering father and a girlfriend who conveniently lives out of town. Beginning with a tense date at the drive-in, Will becomes closer with the tightly wound Mike just as the clock begins ticking toward Mike’s departure for college at the end of the summer.Folks escaping stultifying small-town life has become a trope for contemporary gay storytelling, but Almond’s script and Sweet’s songs foreground Mike and Will’s emotional growth more than dwelling on the homophobia around them; the latter feel like music that 90s teens would be into. Nevertheless, the two characters are very aware of being constantly watched. At one point, Will breaks the fourth wall to accusingly ask the audience, “What are you looking at?” Lewis and Stielstra are excellent, harnessing both Will and Mike’s New Relationship Energy and burgeoning self-awareness. The house band under the direction of Robert Ollis and stage direction by Jay Españo expertly capture the frenetic excitement of young love.

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Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

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Like any music fest, the Chicago Jazz Festival is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure that you listen to. It’s even more multifarious than most—not only does it take over Millennium Park for four days, it also books events at the Cultural Center and Maxwell Street Market and a series of neighborhood concerts (copresented with local promoters) that begins the week before.

There’s no best way through the fest, of course. My recommendation? Hit the homegrown acts. I’ve put together a sort of Jazz Festival jukebox featuring six records that dropped (or will drop) in 2022, all by Chicago-based artists appearing at the fest. My selections are hardly exhaustive, but they still convey the breadth and variety of this year’s bookings. Think of this as an appetizer for the ears.

Chicago Jazz FestivalThu 9/1, 11 AM-9 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, and Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Fri 9/2-Sat 9/3, 11:30 AM-9 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Sun 9/4, 11 AM-9 PM, Maxwell Street Market, 800 S. Desplaines, and Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; free, all ages

In order of festival appearance: 

Mike Allemana, Vonology (Ears & Eyes)

It’s a tall order to sum up Von Freeman: a once-in-a-generation tenor saxophone talent, a mentor to countless musicians, a paradigm of Chicago-over-everything obstinacy. (He famously turned down an invitation to join Miles Davis’s band so he could stay in his hometown.) But guitarist Mike Allemana, who played with Freeman for nearly 15 years in his final quartet, is the right guy to give it a shot.

Allemana’s album-length suite Vonology goes beyond mere tribute, instead aiming to evoke something more essential about the late saxophonist. The music is influenced by Freeman’s abiding interest in astrology, and Allemana went so far as to analyze Freeman’s birth chart and assign musical modes to its elements. The way Freeman embodied his own sun sign inspired two movements: “The Mediator” derives its melodies and its lopsided groove from Allemana’s interpretation of Von’s chart, and “Libra Channeling” features a brambly and expansive tenor saxophone solo by Geof Bradfield. The piece closes as it opens, with a sunburst-like chorus of vocalists from Allemana’s Come Sunday gospel project. This August 11 was the tenth anniversary of Freeman’s death, but Vonology declares that his spirit has gone nowhere.

Mike Allemana and his ensemble perform Vonology on Thu 9/1 at 6:30 PM at Pritzker Pavilion.

The five tracks on Vonology feature a total of 16 musicians.

Roya Naldi, This Madness (Rivermont)

The term “historically informed performance” (HIP for short) usually refers to Western classical musicians adopting defunct performance practices or instrumentation, determined by consulting primary sources. But why restrict it to that genre? Roya Naldi sings century-old jazz with the directness and sparing vibrato of a 1920s chanteuse—she and her band sound like an old 78 with the static cleaned up. The arrangements on Naldi’s new EP, This Madness, belong in a cramped speakeasy, not a large dance hall—her pocket-size acoustic ensemble has a muted, velvety sound, with a delightfully tinny upright piano and wide-wobbling winds. That “ensemble” is really just two members of the Chicago Cellar Boys, the swing-era specialists in residence at the Green Mill on Tuesdays: banjoist Jimmy Barrett and multi-instrumentalist Andy Schumm, who covers piano, tenor sax, clarinet, and cornet. 

This Madness is a postscript to Naldi’s full-length debut, A Night in June (2020). Its four songs represent a delectable slice of her repertoire, including the foxtrotting “He’s the Hottest Man in Town” and the ballad “You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love),” first recorded in 1931 by its co-composer, baritone Russ Columbo. Naldi’s delivery on the latter sometimes out-suaves Columbo’s in its apparent effortlessness, more a nonchalant shrug than a wink. 

Roya Naldi performs Fri 9/2 at noon on the Harris Theater rooftop (entrance at 205 E. Randolph). 

This Madness includes four of Roya Naldi’s favorite songs from the jazz age.The LowDown Brass Band Credit: Alan Maniacek

LowDown Brass Band, LowDown Nights (self-released)

As a brass band with a genre-defying spin, LowDown are a close cousin of the Rebirth and Dirty Dozen brass bands from New Orleans. The distinctive second-line sound seeps into LowDown too, but in combination with local referents. LowDown’s sound calls back to the muscular horn sections of Earth, Wind & Fire and Chicago, and their ebullient stylings—not least the smoothly delivered bars of MC and front man Anthony “Billa Camp” Evora—evoke hip-hop projects such as the Social Experiment and Sidewalk Chalk. To quote the liner notes to LowDown’s self-titled 2008 debut, “It’s the New Orleans hump with a Chi-town bump.”

LowDown Nights is one of two albums the band recorded during the pandemic shutdown, along with last year’s The Reel Sessions, and it’s fast-paced, high-energy fun from start to finish. That’s good news for fans who wear their dancing shoes to the Chicago Jazz Festival, since LowDown’s set will likely have something for everyone. The bilingual “Ranura de la Noche” rides on tango rhythms, “Be the One Tonight” announces itself with a groove reminiscent of early house music, and “We Dem Boys” is thick, syncopated funk held down by Lance Loiselle’s sousaphone. 

The LowDown Brass Band perform Fri 9/2 at 3 PM on the Harris Theater rooftop (entrance at 205 E. Randolph). 

More than half the tracks on LowDown Nights use remote recordings made during the pandemic.

Ethan Philion onstage at the Green Mill with members of his Mingus tribute project Credit: Isabel Firpo

Ethan Philion, Meditations on Mingus (Sunnyside) 

Charles Mingus would’ve turned 100 this year, and tributes are pouring in around the globe. Chicago bassist Ethan Philion homes in on Mingus’s compositional legacy, focusing on material where Mingus spoke truth to power and confronted injustice. To execute his arrangements, Philion enlists a star-powered ten-piece that includes drummer Dana Hall, trumpeter Victor Garcia, pianist Alexis Lombre, and saxophonist Geof Bradfield. (Garcia and Bradfield also appear on Mike Allemana’s Vonology.) 

For the most part, Philion faithfully follows each work’s blueprint, building it up with muscular vamps, lush textures, and virtuosic soloing from his large-format band. He also leans into Mingus’s offbeat grit, which is plentiful in the mercurial “Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America” and an increasingly frenetic version of “Meditations for a Pair of Wirecutters.” (The latter tune, the first of the set that Philion arranged, gave the project its name.) Mingus composed “Prayer for Passive Resistance” as a showcase for an alto saxophonist, and it assumes the same role in Philion’s version—Rajiv Halim stumps energetically throughout the track. 

Meditations on Mingus perform Philion’s arrangements on Fri 9/2 at 4:15 PM at Pritzker Pavilion.

Mingus wrote the first piece in this collection in response to inhumane imprisonment in the south.

Christy Bennett’s Fumée Credit: Sandy Babusci

Fumée, Good Morning Heartache: The Music of Irene Higginbotham (self-released)

Irene Higginbotham (1918–1988) could keep up with Tin Pan Alley’s most prolific songwriters, and her tunes were performed and popularized by the likes of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Nat King Cole. Her most famous song is “Good Morning Heartache,” one of several she composed for Billie Holiday. Holiday first recorded it in 1946, and it roared belatedly onto the charts after Diana Ross portrayed her in the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues.

Higginbotham advocated extensively for the intellectual property rights of Black songwriters. However, despite many high-profile recordings of her songs, she posthumously fell victim to the broken system she organized against. To work around restrictive agreements with publishers and performing-rights agencies, Higginbotham published material under many names (most commonly “Glenn Gibson,” which sounded not just male but also white). This had the tragic side effect of relegating her to the margins of jazz history. 

Fumée bandleader and vocalist Christy Bennett searched the archives at the Library of Congress, whose copyright records document Higginbotham’s song submissions, and at Brigham Young University, which somehow ended up with a trove of her work. Due in October, Fumée’s Good Morning Heartache: The Music of Irene Higginbothammight be the first album-length tribute to the songwriter. It renders her work with Fumée’s distinctive instrumentation, drumless and inflected with Eastern European sounds: though the group’s personnel varies, mandolin (Don Stiernberg), accordion (Don Stille), and bass (Christian Dillingham or Ethan Philion) hold down the rhythms onstage and on the album.

Fumée performs Sat 9/3 at 11:30 AM at the Von Freeman Pavilion (North Promenade).

Nothing from Good Morning Heartache is streaming yet, but Fumée have been playing some of its material for years.Gustavo Cortiñas (center) with the band on his new album: from left, Emily Kuhn, Katie Ernst, Meghan Stagl, and Erik Skov Credit: Courtesy the artists

Gustavo Cortiñas, Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos (Desafío Candente) 

For a few fleeting minutes in 2019, children on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border shared seesaws. Bubblegum pink and slim enough to fit through the slots in the border fence separating El Paso and Juárez, they were designed by two California professors who later won an award for their design.

That moment is captured, not without some cynicism, in the illustration on the cover of Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos, which drummer Gustavo Cortiñas releases this week as a follow-up to last year’s Desafío Candente. The latter is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime achievement that an artist often needs years to complete, then years to recover from—it’s as lush as an untroubled forest yet just as searing as its inspiration, Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 anti-imperialist book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. 

Miraculously, Saludos Afectuosos manages to be just as staggering. Cortiñas tries his hand at songwriting (in both English and Spanish) and proves himself just as savvy a lyricist as a composer. It helps that he has a secret weapon in Meghan Stagl, doing double duty on piano and bilingual vocals and sounding weightless on both. “You rode the beast and migrated north,” she sings over desolate synths in “Emigraste”; that image, with everything it implies, is still darkening the air when the band picks up with a buoyant 6/8 groove. This technique is more or less a constant on Saludos Afectuosos: the tension between gutting lyrics and breezy delivery. It feels true to our twisted reality, just like those garish pink seesaws.

Gustavo Cortiñas celebrates the release of Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos on Sun 9/4 at 1:30 PM on the Harris Theater rooftop (entrance at 205 E. Randolph).

The Bandcamp page for the new Gustavo Cortiñas album says that it “gives life through music to words that attempt to build bridges and understanding in times of borders and ignorance.”

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The Jazz Institute of Chicago’s bookings for this year’s Jazz Festival reaffirm the organization’s commitment to presenting a variety of music by local, national, and international acts. Everything on the bill is worthwhile, but these are the sets at the top of my list.

Chicago Jazz FestivalThu 9/1, 11 AM-9 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, and Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Fri 9/2-Sat 9/3, 11:30 AM-9 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; Sun 9/4, 11 AM-9 PM, Maxwell Street Market, 800 S. Desplaines, and Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph; free, all ages

Henry Threadgill Credit: Michael Jackson

Henry Threadgill Zooid

Thu 9/1, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

Alto saxophonist, flute player, and Pulitzer-winning composer Henry Threadgill has been based primarily in New York City since 1970, but he was born in Chicago in 1944. During his musical development, he took in everything our city could provide: in addition to being an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), he played in blues, R&B, and polka bands as well as church ensembles. These experiences primed him to survey the broad landscape of music and judiciously select the best bits from everything he studied. His early ensembles, Air and the Henry Threadgill Sextett, were paragons of advanced small-group interaction and creative arrangement. More recently, he’s composed mainly for unusually configured large bands, and in May 2022 he staged a multimedia event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that included projections of images from his forthcoming book of COVID-era photography. 

For this concert, Threadgill will appear with Zooid, his main performance vehicle of the past 20 years or so. The quintet, which also includes guitarist Liberty Ellman, tuba and trombone player Jose Davila, cellist Christopher Hoffman, and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee, uses intensively rehearsed investigations of harmonic interval series, rather than scales or chords, as the foundation of its rich, constantly shifting group improvisations. Zooid will perform selections from Threadgill’s 2019 piece Pathways, which he wrote in response to the revitalization of Lake Erie.

A documentary short on the collaboration of Zooid and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble to develop Pathways

Henry Threadgill Zooid released this album in 2021.

JD Allen Credit: Michael Jackson

JD Allen

Fri 9/2, 5:25 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

JD Allen’s voice on the tenor saxophone combines adroit phrasing with a full tone across all the instrument’s registers. During the pandemic, he moved from New York to Cincinnati, and he spent his lockdown time developing the material for his first unaccompanied solo album, Queen City (Savant). The record demonstrates his dogged commitment to tunefulness: he plays originals and Great American Songbook material (“Just a Gigolo,” “These Foolish Things”), and no matter where his improvising takes him, his pithy extrapolations always stay in touch with the melody. As a bandleader, Allen often favors stripped-down settings, and at the Jazz Festival he’ll bring a trio with bassist Tyrone Allen and drummer Kayvon Gordon. Allen also plays Thursday, September 1, at Constellation.

JD Allen released this trio album (with a different lineup than performs at the Jazz Fest) in 2011.

Bill Frisell Credit: Monica Frisell

Bill Frisell

Fri 9/2, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

It takes about three seconds to recognize Bill Frisell. Countless guitarists have been influenced by his command of outboard effects and his attunement to harmonic subtleties, but his warm, glassy tone and sinuous phrasing defy imitation. In a career that’s spanned more than four decades, he’s pursued an epically inclusive aesthetic, making deep dives into Beatles and surf-rock tunes, Buster Keaton movies, the sounds of Nashville and West Africa, the jump-cut methodology of John Zorn, and the cartoons of Jim Woodring. But no matter how far his pursuits have taken him from jazz convention, he’s stayed committed to drawing out the harmonic and emotional potential of every tune he tackles. Frisell is also a generous accompanist, even when he leads a band. He’ll play here with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, the combo that he leads on his latest album, Valentine (Blue Note).

The title track of Bill Frisell’s 2020 album, ValentineAtomic: Håvard Wiik, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Hans Hulbækmo, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Magnus Broo Credit: Courtesy the artist

Atomic

Sat 9/3, 3 PM, Von Freeman Pavilion

If the members of Atomic weren’t musicians, they might be high-wire artists—they’re that good at keeping their balance under pressure. The Scandinavian quintet expertly realize the nuanced, dynamic compositions of pianist Håvard Wiik and reeds player Fredrik Ljungkvist, which owe as much to contemporary classical music as they do to postbop jazz, but they also relish exhilarating, no-holds-barred improvisation. The group—rounded out by drummer Hans Hulbækmo, trumpeter Magnus Broo, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten—have carried on for 22 years, even though their members (originally from Norway and Sweden) are now dispersed as widely as Germany and the United States. But all good things come to an end, and Atomic will disband at the end of their current U.S. tour. They’re also playing at Constellation on Friday, September 2, which makes this festival set their final Chicago appearance.

The most recent Atomic album, released in 2018

William Parker Quintet

Sat 9/3, 7:45 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

William Parker turned 70 this year, and he can already look back on a lifetime of extraordinary accomplishments as a bassist, composer, improviser, sideman, bandleader, organizer, and author. But who’s looking back? Parker is still immensely productive. His releases in the past two years include a ten-disc collection of music that spotlights women’s voices, a mind-melting live set recorded at CBGB in 2002 with Peter Brötzman and Milford Graves, more than a dozen appearances as a sideman or coleader, and a pair of new trio recordings—one quietly ritualistic, the other a fearless dive into scorching jazz-rock. Parker often uses small groups to explore the continuum that connects mid-20th-century modern jazz and freer idioms; the quintet he’ll lead tonight features three of his enduring comrades—alto saxophonist Rob Brown, pianist Cooper-Moore, and drummer Hamid Drake—and one newer associate, soul-stirring tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis.

This 2019 William Parker album features four of the players in this quintet—everyone but James Brandon Lewis.

Geof Bradfield, Dana Hall, and Ben Goldberg Credit: Courtesy the artist

Geof Bradfield, Ben Goldberg, and Dana Hall

Sun 9/4, 1:50 PM, Von Freeman Pavilion

On the last day of any festival, it’s easy to sleep in and show up late. But if you do that this weekend, you’ll miss the simultaneously adventurous and ingratiating music of this marvelous cross-country trio. Drummer Dana Hall and reedist Geof Bradfield, who plays bass clarinet and tenor and soprano saxophones, are from Chicago; Ben Goldberg, who plays B-flat and contra-alto clarinets, is based in San Francisco. On their 2020 album General Semantics (Delmark), the absence of a bass or chordal instrument gives the music a wide-open quality—on the pithy original “345,” that airiness makes it easy to appreciate the trio’s precision maneuvers and tricky syncopation. Bradfield, Goldberg, and Hall fly easily through the music’s history, from the New Orleans-steeped polyphony of “Last Important Heartbreak of the Year” to a strikingly graceful interpretation of Cecil Taylor’s “Air.” Bradfield and Goldberg also play Saturday, September 3, at Constellation.

Geof Bradfield, Ben Goldberg, and Dana Hall released this trio album in 2020.

Kris Davis Credit: Michael Jackson

Kris Davis Diatom Ribbons

Sun 9/4, 6:25 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion

It’s hard to think of a more audacious reinvention than the one Kris Davis undertook on the 2019 album Diatom Ribbons (Pyroclastic). The Canadian-born pianist, who’s been based in New York for two decades, had already established herself as a bracingly rigorous, exceptionally lucid instrumentalist and composer, both as a bandleader and as a collaborator with the likes of Craig Taborn, Rob Mazurek, and Hafez Modirzadeh. But over the ten tracks of Diatom Ribbons, she creates a vast new palette for herself by drawing on a wider range of musical communities than ever before. She incorporates Val Jeanty’s poetry-wise turntablism, Terri Lynne Carrington’s organically morphing drum grooves, the dueling guitars of Marc Ribot and Nels Cline, and the languorous vocals of Esperanza Spalding (among other things) into a celebration of limitless possibility. For this appearance she’ll perform in a stripped-down quartet with Jeanty, Carrington, and bassist Trevor Dunn, who also appears on Diatom Ribbons—a lineup I’d expect to drill down into the project’s rhythmic core. Davis also plays Saturday, September 3, at Constellation.

Kris Davis’s Diatom Ribbons features a complement of ten musicians.

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For several years now, the heart of the Chicago Jazz Festival has been in Millennium Park. This year the four days of the fest also include programming at the Cultural Center (from 11 AM till 5:15 PM on Thursday, September 1) and a lunchtime show at the Maxwell Street Market on Sunday, September 4. Around the city, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and local music organizations have jointly booked more than a dozen neighborhood concerts from Tuesday, August 23, through Wednesday, August 31. 

Of course, the local venues that routinely host jazz aren’t about to stop during the jazziest weekend of the year—in fact, many of them put in extra effort to attract concertgoers in a festival mood. Below I’ve listed the best of those shows. If you stick it out till the last note at Pritzker Pavilion, you’ll get to some of these pretty late—but not too late to enjoy some top-shelf music.

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I love Dracula. I’ve loved him ever since a Saturday afternoon in the late 70s or early 80s when I saw Bela Lugosi portray him on TV as part of Creature Double Feature. Max Schreck, Christopher Lee, and many other actors have only deepened my appreciation for the immortal bloodsucker. I always root for him and I’m always sad when he’s destroyed. Any new production of Bram Stoker’s book has a high bar to clear and a lot of baggage to haul. 

Orson Welles’ DraculaThrough 9/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, glassappletheatre.com, $25 ($15 students, seniors, industry, and military/veterans)

Brian McKnight has added an extra challenge in adapting Orson Welles’s 1938 radio play to the stage for Glass Apple Theatre. The magic of audio drama is that the listener imagines the action with only voices to guide them. There’s nothing wrong with McKnight’s cast. Their costumes look period-accurate to late-19th century Europe, and the shape of an Art Deco radio against the back wall of the stage—with video projections of stormy seas and brooding Transylvanian landscape coming through the sound mesh—is a nice touch. But the characters are stuck statically behind four lecterns, reciting text, then exiting stage left or right. They can’t touch because they represent only voices. Here, unlike in the movies, Dracula is almost a bit part. He’s just a guy glowering in a handsome burgundy suit. He doesn’t bite or fly but stalks offstage meekly when his lines are finished.

I spent minutes at a time listening with my eyes closed, and that was a mildly enjoyable way to take in what comes off as a dated Gothic tale. It would have worked much better coming out of the speakers of my stereo at home. But even then, none of the menace, erotic tension, or mystery of so many other iterations I know would have been there. I was perfectly happy with this Dracula turning to dust; he didn’t have much life to lose.

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