In a word, it’s splendid.
The new home of HotHouse, a club that has been sorely missed over the past couple of years, lives up to expectations, and then some.
Those who remember the intimate but somewhat shabby quarters that HotHouse occupied on North Milwaukee Avenue, where the club thrived for several years, will be struck by the spaciousness, elegance and comfort level of the new room. Though listeners have been wondering whether HotHouse founder Marguerite Horberg ever would reopen her popular venue, the intrepid club owner apparently judged wisely in waiting until she found the right space.
The reborn HotHouse, on the southwest corner of East Balbo Drive and South Wabash Avenue, has a great deal to recommend it. The club now stands within easy walking distance of several universities and cultural institutions, all of which should provide HotHouse with a steady flow of patrons.
Because visitors enter a large foyer with a formal box office before heading upstairs to the two music rooms, the place feels more like a hip urban arts center than a mere storefront club. Considering the range of musical, literary, performance and political events that Horberg always has presented, the setting hardly could be more appropriate.
The main music room, on the second floor of a South Loop low-rise, has been shrewdly designed to provide a variety of sightlines. Clubgoers seated at the stageside cafe tables will have a different view of the action than those a couple of steps up in the booths along the room’s perimeter.
Sound, of course, is the critical element in any music club, and though Saturday night’s offerings were a bit overamplified for this listener’s tastes, a few adjustments in the sound booth should set matters right.
Whether the smaller, adjoining space (called the Salon) can present events concurrently with the main room (or Lounge) remains to be seen. Certainly Horberg and associates have time to figure out how the rooms can best co-exist.
Ernest Dawkins’ New Horizons Ensemble helped inaugurate the main room on Saturday evening, and the band played exultantly. Moreover, Dawkins and colleagues made the most of the space, closing their set by taking a grand, musical march through the room.
The traditional Mexican song forms that Sones de Mexico performed may have seemed light years removed from New Horizons’ avant-garde eruptions, but that’s precisely the kind of unexpected juxtaposition that long ago made HotHouse indispensable to music in Chicago.
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The AACM Large Ensemble performs Thursday at HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo Drive. Phone 312-362-9707.
