“Man, it feels like old times again,” said Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman. “This brings back memories!”
Though he probably never thought he would live to see the day, Freeman was exclaiming about the rebirth of the Sutherland Ballroom as a musical center at 47th Street and Drexel Boulevard. With the room’s return to service Saturday, Chicago’s perpetually expanding jazz landscape grew a little bigger.
From the early years of this century, the lounge inside the Sutherland Hotel presented the foremost names in jazz, the short list including Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Gene Ammons and Freeman.
But as South Side jazz clubs began to shut down in the ’60s and ’70s, the Sutherland also declined and fell silent. Recently refurbished, the grand old building now serves as a residential complex and, as of Saturday, a home to jazz as well.
Organized by residents of the Sutherland, the first Hyde Park/Kenwood Jaz Fest had the feeling of a neighborhood get-together, even if its artist lineup was world-class. With South Side greats such as Freeman, tenor saxophonist Ari Brown, trumpeter Malachi Thompson, the New Horizons Ensemble and others of similar stature on the bill, it was no surprise that a steadily swelling crowd packed the house.
Indeed, it’s a testament to the breadth and depth of talent in Chicago that a first-rate jazz festival could be created using musicians from only one part of the city. And though the musicians who live on the South Side represent a broad range of musical styles and historical perspectives, every performer at the Sutherland event shared at least one musical trait: a desire to search out new, sometimes radical sounds.
Consider Freeman, the foremost name on the lineup and, at 71, a tenor saxophonist with but one rival on his instrument today: Sonny Rollins. Freeman’s fame clearly isn’t equal to Rollins’, yet his improvisational ingenuity and brilliant technique are unsurpassed, as he proved to a cheering, sometimes screaming audience.
But Freeman wasn’t the only tenor giant in the house, his blistering set having been preceded by a similarly combustive performance from Brown and his quartet. The rumbling power of Brown’s low notes, the deep velvet of his middle range and the plaintive, crying sound of his high-note phrases proved sonically and dramatically startling.
With eyes closed, one might have guessed that a dozen players had taken the stage when the galvanic New Horizons Ensemble sextet began to play.
Singer Rita Warford, joined by two chanting poets, a traditional African dancer and a hard-hitting band aptly named Shout, proved that the tradition of multimedia extravaganzas conceived by the late Sun Ra, who also came of age on the South Side, endures.
So, too, does the Sutherland Ballroom.
