Next month, when Orchestra Hall unveils its jazz lineup for the 1996-97 season, dramatic changes will be in store.
For starters, the five-concert subscription series now in progress will be roughly doubled, to 9 or 10 events (details have not yet been revealed). The expansion clearly reflects the considerable commercial and critical success that the series has enjoyed since its inception, in 1994.
More important, Orchestra Hall officially will hand over the reins for jazz programming to Ravinia Festival executive director Zarin Mehta. Widely considered one of the savviest musical managers in America, Mehta (the brother of conductor Zubin Mehta) will run all the jazz events at Orchestra Hall.
In addition, Mehta, 57, will be in charge of Orchestra Hall pops concerts, holiday events, piano series–everything, in fact, outside of the affairs of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. These will remain the province of CSO executive director Henry Fogel and music director Daniel Barenboim.
All of which means that the expanding Jazz at Orchestra Hall series stands at a crossroads. If Mehta and his Ravinia Festival dream big, they could create one of the foremost jazz programs in America. If not, they could end up with little more than a series of scattered concerts that make minimal impact on musical life in Chicago, let alone the rest of the country.
At the moment, however, the prospects look promising.
The very fact that Orchestra Hall is turning to Mehta to run its jazz series is as encouraging as it is unusual. Major arts institutions such as Orchestra Hall, which is owned and operated by the CSO (through its parent Orchestral Association), do not typically hand over control of their presentations to anyone.
That Fogel and Barenboim are doing so suggests a recognition that Orchestra Hall’s area of expertise always has focused on symphonic music, not jazz. To acknowledge this by placing the jazz series in the hands of Mehta, a connoisseur and experienced presenter of the music, is a gesture at once inspired and shrewd.
“It all happened as we began to look down the road, especially to when Orchestra Hall is expanded and renovated,” says Fogel, who, with Barenboim, is guiding the reconstruction of the hall. The expanded Symphony Center tentatively is scheduled to open in fall of 1997.
“We thought that with the creation of Symphony Center, we really needed to develop a better, more cohesive identity for our (non-CSO) concert presentations. And we realized that what we needed to do was to hire another staff member to get that work done,” says Fogel, whose staff had its hands full managing all of the Orchestra Hall attractions.
“Daniel (Barenboim), Martha Gilmer (CSO artistic administrator) and I talked about who would have a broad range of musical knowledge and at the same time would have enough of a business sense to do the programming for all of these things,” adds Fogel.
“And Daniel said, `One of the best people in the business that I know is Zarin Mehta.’
“My reaction was, `He already has a job.’
“But Daniel said, `I bet he could work this in.’
“So I approached Zarin, and he had the idea that we should engage not just him but the Ravinia Festival to do this. That brings into our administration another whole creative team.”
Fogel, Barenboim and Gilmer hardly could have chosen a jazz devotee more qualified for the task. Mehta’s many years of experience as an accountant and as managing director for the Montreal Symphony won him the Ravinia executive director’s job in 1990, and since then, he has given jazz unprecedented prominence at Ravinia.
In his first full season (1991), Mehta created Ravinia’s Jazz in June series, which brought everyone from Oscar Peterson to Dizzy Gillespie to the Highland Park festival. And though the fledgling Jazz in June had the misfortune to run opposite the three-peat playoff years of the Chicago Bulls, which decimated audiences, Mehta refused to give up on the idea.
Last year, with the Bulls out of contention and the Ravinia jazz package moved to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the series attracted its largest crowds yet, auguring well for its future.
So the $64,000 question now is what Mehta wants to accomplish at Orchestra Hall, Chicago’s most prestigious musical address.
“The first thing I have to figure out is what kind of audience commitment there is for jazz at Orchestra Hall,” says Mehta, who notes that he’s encouraged by the early returns. With most of Orchestra Hall’s recent jazz events attracting sell-out crowds, or something close to it, Chicago certainly appears eager to hear jazz there.
“The events so far have been pretty well attended, but the question is how many of those ticket-buyers will renew next year. Will the interest stay high, or will it dry up?
“So we will have to evaluate what happens as the next couple of years go by.
“One thing that’s very promising is that in ’97, when Symphony Center opens, the (Orchestra Hall) ballroom will be sound-isolated, so there may be all sort of experimental and creative musical events we can do there (in addition to mainstage shows).
“Also, toward the back of Orchestra Hall, off of Adams Street, there will be a rehearsal space that will seat 200 to 300 people, and you could have jazz performances in there, too. You could do a lot of experimental music, maybe some late-night concerts, though I’m not going to book anything in there until we see the finished space.”
Clearly, Mehta has no shortage of ideas for the future. Sooner or later, though, he probably will need two critical ingredients if jazz is to hold an honored and important role in the new Symphony Center.
First, the series surely will need an artistic director. Without a respected, well-known jazz musician to help shape artistic policy, develop themed programs and generally put a face on the series, Jazz at Orchestra Hall could become a grab-bag of shows featuring jazz artists who happen to be on the road in any given year.
In other words, just as the Chicago Symphony has a music director in Barenboim and the Jazz at Lincoln Center program has an artistic director in Wynton Marsalis, so does Jazz at Orchestra Hall need an artistic chief.
“An artistic director is not out of the question,” says Mehta. “In fact, nothing is ruled out. But it’s premature to get into that right now. First we’re going to have to see who our constituency is going to be.”
Beyond selecting an artistic director, the series probably ought to have a resident ensemble, as do the programs at Lincoln Center (Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra) and Carnegie Hall (Carnegie Hall Jazz Band) in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra).
As the aforementioned institutions have proven, a resident performing ensemble consistently can explore repertory, educate audiences and otherwise anchor a jazz series.
“Actually, I’ve already thought about that for Ravinia,” says Mehta, “and if there is a resident jazz group at Ravinia, why not have it in residence in both places?
“All of this has to be thought about and discussed.”
Along these lines, one possibility Mehta and friends should consider is the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, currently based at Columbia College Chicago and directed by veteran bandleader and composer William Russo. Though just in its second full-fledged season, CJE already stands on a par, artistically, with Wynton Marsalis’ Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Jon Faddis’ Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and David Baker and Gunther Schuller’s Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.
But these are issues for the future, says Mehta. For now, he’s eager to launch the newly expanded jazz season at Orchestra Hall, a series that could be a boon not only for jazz fans but for the hall itself and its focal point, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
“We’re excited about the jazz series not only because of the size of the audiences it draws,” says Fogel, “but because it clearly has been attracting people who haven’t been in Orchestra Hall before.
“We can tell this in many ways–for instance, a lot of the jazz series audience needs more help in finding their seats; they’re not that familiar with the hall.
“To me, that’s terrific, because it opens up this facility to a different audience. That makes Orchestra Hall more important and relevant to a broader segment of the community, to people who may not have thought about us at all.
“And I’m hoping that at least some of those people might someday say, `Why don’t we try a CSO concert?’ “
With recent studies showing that the audience for classical concerts in America has been shrinking and aging, the infusion of new visitors to Orchestra Hall only can be good news.
As far as the jazz audience is concerned, the arrival of Mehta on the scene comes at a fitting moment.
Just last month, the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, which had been considered a “department” of Lincoln Center, was made a Lincoln Center “constituent,” equal in status to the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet.
Like those major institutions, Jazz at Lincoln Center now will be able to appoint its own board, raise its own funds and otherwise operate autonomously.
The move was “a recognition that jazz is a fine art,” Marsalis told The New York Times last month.
“Though the people have always known that it’s a fine art, I think that this type of institutional recognition is important.”
In time, perhaps the Orchestra Hall series will have the range of Lincoln Center’s, with its mix of live performances, lectures, films screenings, children’s concerts and other attractions on jazz themes.
“But remember, it took them several years to get there,” says Mehta, referring to the sweeping Lincoln Center jazz lineup, which was launched in 1987 as a three-concert Classical Jazz package.
“Still,” adds Mehta, “this an exciting new beginning.”
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THE FACTS
Jazz at Orchestra Hall
What: A series of jazz concerts
When: Feb. 23 Sonny Rollins; March 29, Wynton Marsalis; May 10, Joe Williams and the Count Basie Orchestra
Where: Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan Ave.
Tickets: $15 – $37 for Rollins and Marsalis; $16 – $49 for Basie
Call: 312-435-6666
