The weather may have been arctic, but jazz fans from the city and suburbs crowded into the Blackstone Hotel Monday night, with scarcely a spare seat to be found during the 16th annual Jazz Fair.
Big bands, small groups, experimenters, traditionalists, scat singers, swing singers-a broad range of Chicago musicians held forth in various rooms throughout the hotel.
Though the evening held many pleasures, one of the more memorable was Gregorio Aguirre’s Caribbean Bop Band, which played an exuberant set in the hotel’s Crystal Ballroom. If the group proved to be more Caribbean than bop, that was just fine; its irrepressible rhythms, aggressive percussion and unrepentant front line had couples dancing around the bandstand.
Aguirre’s uninhibited personality defines this ensemble, his somewhat over-ripe vocals and rambunctious trombone work apparently encouraging his band to follow suit. So even listeners who have heard “Hello Young Lovers” and “Autumn Leaves” a few dozen times too many must have found these performances difficult to resist, if only for the brazen instrumental passages that energized them.
Each of the Carribean Bop Band’s players added significantly to the whole, but Bill Porter and Scott Suttar’s virtuoso trombone solos, Dave Spencer and Mark Olen’s dueling trumpets, Jose Rendon’s propulsive conga playing and Sonny Seals’ blistering tenor passages commanded special attention.
The other “find” of the evening was newcomer Kurt Elling, a singer who instantly-and justly-won over the huge crowd at the Jazz Showcase. Though accompanied by the aptly named Jazz Masters, a popular South Side band made up of first-rate veterans, Elling held his own, which was no small accomplishment.
His high-speed scat in music of Thelonious Monk (with ingenious lyrics by the great Jon Hendricks) and his unexpected whimsy in the old torch song “Everything Happens to Me” utterly disarmed his listeners.
True, Elling has a few rough edges (he tends to oversell an interpretation), and he owes a hefty debt to Mel Torme. But considering his technical accomplishments and his undeniable stage charisma, he’s off to a terrific start.
Elsewhere during the fair, which was presented by the non-profit Jazz Institute of Chicago, the Torque-tet ensemble demonstrated once again why it is one of the more appealing arrivals on the city’s new-music scene. Somehow, this quartet makes complex harmonies accessible and avant-garde experimentation appealing to a general audience.
Perhaps it’s the lean, transparent textures that guitarist Todd Coburn, bassist James Kirk, trombonist Steve Berry and percussionist Afifican create. Or maybe it’s the instrumental virtuosity of each of these players, with Coburn’s lightning-quick guitar lines and Afifi’s imaginative drum riffs driving the band forth. Whatever the reason, Torque-tet picked up many new fans.
Add to that the hard-swing style of the Ellington Dynasty, which opened the Jazz Fair, and this year’s installment could not miss.
