Whoever came up with the idea of dubbing Thursday’s special Grant Park concert “Jazz Flute Night” ought to enroll immediately in “Music Appreciation 101.”
Though the concert featured the flute and included good music and bad, it bore virtually no relation to jazz. That is, unless you hear jazz in the folk-rock of Jethro Tull or the warblings of several interchangeable New Age instrumentalists.
So those who packed Grant Park expecting to hear improvisation in the jazz tradition surely were disappointed, while listeners hoping to hear music of some substance were only partly satisfied.
By far the most appealing and original music-making came from the flute of Ian Anderson, who appeared with his enduringly popular band Jethro Tull. The booking represented a coup for the National Flute Association, which is holding its 25th annual convention in Chicago this week and helped organize the Grant Park concert.
One hastens to note that Anderson is not a great flutist, nor does he claim to be. As a singer, too, his limitations are apparent, and no one is going to call him a mandolin virtuoso. But the originality and fearless eclecticism of the music he plays with Jethro Tull render his technical shortcomings virtually irrelevant.
The way Anderson and friends merge elements of rock ‘n’ roll with classical melody, blues harmony and traditional British balladry is something to behold. Whether the band was playing a “Bouree” adapted from J.S. Bach or a cut from Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” album, the sweep and swagger of the music proved difficult to resist. That Anderson was equally adept at shifting from four-square rock rhythms to a subtler, jazz-swing feeling (and back) attested to the man’s musical versatility.
Anderson, in other words, transcends the rock genre into which he is typically categorized. Though self-taught and self-styled, he commands a degree of musicianship and stage savvy that place him among the most compelling flutists in any genre.
Unfortunately, the performers who preceded him on this concert were considerably less appealing.
The Nelson Rangell Band, for instance, offered easy-listening fare more appropriate to a grocery-store’s sound system than an important concert in Grant Park. Flutist Rangell knows how to throw off scales and arpeggios with relative ease, but the childlike simplicity of his music makes one wonder if he actually believes in this pap or simply is condescending to his audience.
The Steve Kujala Band was no better, with the bandleader unspooling one saccharine melody after another. With a vibrato almost wide enough to suggest a yodel and a tone that was rarely less than sickly sweet, Kujala did not help this evening.
Compared to Kujala and Rangell, Jim Walker and Free Flight didn’t sound so bad. Still, Walker’s jazz-meets-the-classics ditties were not exactly profound. The man played his instrument dexterously enough, but considering that he applied his talents to treacle such as “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” one wondered why he bothered.
At any rate, one hopes that Kujala, Rangell and Walker stuck around to hear Anderson, who said twice as much as they with half the technique.
