At first glance, the situation might seem ominous: Three major Chicago jazz rooms shuttered in the course of two years.
Without HotHouse (the avant-garde club on North Milwaukee Avenue), the Gold Star Sardine Bar (a chic room on North Lake Shore Drive) and the Bop Shop (a multi-faceted club long based in Wicker Park), was Chicago’s jazz scene withering away?
Though each room closed its doors due to different, and somewhat arcane, circumstances, music lovers had to wonder if an ominous trend was afoot. And though the owners of each of the clubs promised that the rooms would reopen sometime in the future, music in Chicago seemed diminished without them. Even the closing of The Bulls, a long-running Lincoln Park club that offered jazz and other instrumental music, was something of a loss.
Appearances can be deceiving, however, for Chicago’s jazz scene actually is expanding, though in unexpected ways. In fact, not only is the number of jazz venues growing, but the music is being presented in new contexts and by new organizations. Consider the most recent developments:
– HotHouse, which through most of the ’90s was the city’s premiere avant-garde club, will reopen in March. This time, though, the room won’t be on bohemian North Milwaukee Avenue but near the colleges and universities of the South Loop, at 31 E. Balbo Dr. More important, HotHouse will re-emerge not as Marguerite Horberg’s privately owned jazz club but as a not-for-profit institution with full-time staff and board of directors. And the new venue, still helmed by Horberg, won’t be the cramped and dilapidated joint of the past but a refurbished, 8,000-square-foot expanse containing two separate performance spaces.
– Several of Chicago’s not-for-profit cultural institutions have put their marketing muscle behind jazz offerings, the roster including Symphony Center, Steppenwolf Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the DuSable Museum of African-American History and Unity Temple, in Oak Park. Together, their offerings represent a remarkably broad range of musical styles, from the commercial fare of Symphony Center to the esoteric acts of Unity Temple.
– The Jazz Showcase, for nearly two years ensconced in its sleek headquarters on West Grand Avenue, is expanding its schedule, offering five nights of music every week in the winter (a significant extension of the Friday-through-Sunday winter lineup of recent years). In addition, the club’s new satellite room, Joe’s Bebop Cafe and Jazz Emporium, on Navy Pier, is thriving as a jazz-themed restaurant with live music seven nights a week.
– Meanwhile, once-overlooked rooms such as the Metropole in the Fairmont Hotel (on North Columbus Drive), Green Dolphin Street (on North Ashland Avenue) and the Note (in HotHouse’s old space), have expanded and improved their jazz programming for the new year. In coming months, jazz lovers will find major-name Chicago artists at the Metropole, local stars and national artists at Green Dolphin (which last year improved its troubled acoustics) and standing engagements by Chicago legends at the Note.
Add to that the expanded, four-nights-a-week schedule at Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge (on the Near South Side), the daringly programmed Wednesday night jazz series at the Empty Bottle (in Wicker Park) and the recent emergence of new rooms such as the NTU Performing Arts Gallery (on South Michigan Avenue), Rituals (on South Dearborn Street) and the Beale Street Blues Cafe (formerly the Blue Note, in suburban Palatine), and there’s no doubt Chicago is swinging hard.
Even Chicago’s top cabaret, Toulouse Cognac Bar, has spread its wings, recently expanding its seating capacity and engaging longtime Chicago arts impresario Jeffrey Ortmann as artistic director.
Amid all this activity, at least one striking trend has emerged: the institutionalization of jazz. Though the music once flourished mostly in clubs, jazz increasingly is turning up in non-profit cultural institutions.
“That’s definitely happening, and it’s almost by necessity,” says Horberg, who heads the newly reconstituted HotHouse. “By having a staff and a board and a downtown location, you set up a model that can last long after one club owner leaves the scene. That always has been our goal at HotHouse: to become an institution. That way the place has a much better chance of survival over the long term.”
The remarkable critical and popular success of Steppenwolf’s Traffic series, the national media attention lavished on Unity Temple’s Creative and Improvised Music lineup and the large crowds that have patronized the Ameritech Jazz series at Symphony Center and concerts at the DuSable Museum of African-American History certainly suggest that the non-profit world has discovered jazz in a major way.
Look at the sea of young faces that turn out wherever jazz is played — whether in gilded halls such as Symphony Center or up-and-coming clubs such as the Note — and it’s not hard to understand why these venues have turned to “America’s classical music,” as Tony Bennett often calls jazz.
Bucking the trend
Studies by the National Endowment for the Arts have indicated that in an era when audiences for many of the performing arts have been graying and shrinking, the jazz audience apparently bucks the trend. “There’s a growing taste and rediscovery of jazz among young people, and I see it every night in my club,” says Nick Novich, who refurbished the old HotHouse into a chic, urban venue he calls the Note.
“Why? One reason is that when radio just locks it up to 20 top hits, eventually people rebel; they want to hear something else, something new. There was a period when jazz seemed dormant, but I think one of the things that has recharged the scene is all the young new artists, especially in cities like Chicago. When you have people like (singer) Kurt Elling and (guitarist) Fareed Haque living here, they inevitably attract young audiences.”
And then there are the jazz legends who call Chicago home. Novich, for instance, wasted no time in signing octogenarian drummer Barrett Deems and septuagenarian saxophonist Von Freeman for regular engagements, with Deems’ Wednesday night big-band shows and Freeman’s Sunday night jam sessions among the most popular attractions at the Note.
And even Jazz Showcase owner Joe Segal, who has endured his share of blows during 50 years as a jazz presenter, sounds almost optimistic about the perpetually expanding jazz landscape in Chicago.
“Obviously, it’s not like the old days, when people would bounce from club to club — going from the London House to Mister Kelly’s to the Showcase, but there’s a surprising amount going on,” says Segal. “Even the newer clubs, like Green Dolphin Street, are presenting really good musicians.”
Though one might think that the death of so many jazz legends during the ’90s would hurt Segal’s business, which always has focused on the biggest names in jazz, he has been surprised at the drawing power of the young stars. Tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Danilo Perez, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton, and singer-pianist Diana Krall have packed the place.
Whether the Gold Star and the Bop Shop ever resurface remains to be seen, but if they do they will find that the scene has heated up considerably, the competition fiercer than ever.
“It takes time to establish yourself as a music room, and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight,” says Susan Ellefson, who books the Metropole in the Fairmont Hotel. “But over just two years, we’ve developed a mailing list that’s in the thousands, and with all the new construction going on here (in the newly coined `River East’ neighborhood), we think the potential is considerable.
“You just have to stick around long enough to develop it.”
