Chicago music is rarely trimmed in Los Angeles glitter or Nashville rhinestone. This is not a city of chart watchers or trend hoppers, and its innovations don’t necessarily show up in the Billboard Top 10. It is a city with a roll-up-the-sleeves attitude, and every decade or so that resilient, do-it-yourself-because-no-one-is-going-to-do-it-for-you approach leaves its mark on the consciousness of popular culture.
In the ’60s it was the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) that launched an epochal brand of improvised music, epitomized by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and Fred Anderson. In the ’80s, it was house music, industrial-disco and alternative-rock; they began here beneath the mainstream radar, only to flourish a decade later worldwide.
Once again, Chicago stands at the crossroads of new music, blending elements of indie rock, jazz and the avant-garde in a way that has brought it international attention, if not widespread commercial radio airplay or ‘N Sync-worthy bank accounts.
Beginning Wednesday, two simultaneously staged music festivals will focus attention on these percolating scenes: the fourth annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music, and Noise Pop Chicago, an offshoot of a long-running San Francisco-based festival. Though prestigious in their own right, bringing in renowned artists and bands ranging from England’s art-punk pioneers Wire to German free-jazz bassist Peter Kowald, the festivals merely punctuate what has been a remarkable, nearly decade-long run of activity for the city’s new-music underground.
Among the catalysts for this creative burst have been jazz virtuoso and band leader Ken Vandermark and John Corbett, a respected jazz critic, deejay and concert promoter. Together, they have been booking a weekly series of jazz concerts at the Empty Bottle on Western Avenue since 1996 and initiated the Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music there the following year.
At the time, booking improvised music at a club devoted to indie rock seemed absurd. But Empty Bottle owner Bruce Finkleman gave Vandermark and Corbett free reign.
“We thought we had three months to do something and that would be it,” Vandermark says. “But audiences started showing up right away.”
Almost as an indulgence, they booked a personal favorite, the wickedly abstract jazz saxophonist Joe McPhee, who had never played Chicago in a three-decade career.
“We thought, `Why not try to do something really significant before they pull the plug?’ ” Corbett says. “Yet we had more than 200 people out at 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and we looked at each other and said, `This might actually work.’ “
Adds Vandermark: “It was a challenging concert too: Solo music, extremely `uncommercial.’ But he captivated that audience. The respect the audience had for what he was doing–it wasn’t just 200 people showing up to be cool, it was 200 people who really wanted to listen. To find this large, focused group of people ready for this kind of music here was a bit of surprise.”
The audience Vandermark and Corbett found that night is comprised of young listeners in their 20s and 30s with at least some background in rock. “It’s primarily alternative-rock kids who may be burned out on rock and are just looking for something more aggressive, different and original,” says David Viecelli, who heads the Billions Corp. booking agency that is coproducing the Noise Pop festival.
The Wednesday night jazz series at the Bottle coincided with the rise of a “post-rock” scene in Chicago, in which veteran indie-rockers began experimenting with sounds and influences outside the traditional rock spectrum. Bands such as Tortoise, Gastr del Sol (which included former punk-rocker David Grubbs and guitar improviser Jim O’Rourke) and the Sea & Cake tinkered with everything from short-wave radio static to bossa nova, while loosening and in some cases completely upending the arrangement strictures of the traditional pop song.
At the same time, a Chicago jazz community with links to the rock world was emerging around musicians such as Vandermark, Mars Williams and Hamid Drake.
“There is a tendency for Chicago musicians to be very inclusionary about their tastes and interests and the way it applies to the music they play,” Vandermark says.
“Almost every musician I’ve played with in Chicago has either worked with rock musicians or played rock music, and they continue to do so. In New York it’s not quite like that, where the musicians are very devoted to improvised music, but they frown on more popular forms.”
In Chicago, it’s not unusual to see combinations such as Isotope (a blend of Tortoise band members and jazz musicians) or DK3 (a trio consisting of Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison, rock drummer Jim Kimball and Vandermark) creating a hybrid instrumental music.
Though this music doesn’t have a marketing category attached to it yet because it moves so freely among genres, it clearly has an adventurous audience and a bulldog entrepreneurial attitude to match. Like the musicians in the AACM and the ’70s loft scene in New York.
The new Chicago improvisers are blocked from traditional performance venues, so they must create their own–which is why the idea of booking new jazz at a rock club like the Bottle no longer seems so far-fetched.
Adds Vandermark: “I just did a European tour with [Swedish saxophonist Matts Gustaffson] and the best gig we had was put on by a bunch of punk-rock kids in Stuttgart. The oldest person in the audience was maybe 25, and they went ballistic. That kind of energy is what I’m seeing in Chicago.”
To cross paths with the Noise Pop festival makes sense, says Viacelli: “These audiences are cross-pollinating already.”
It’s why Noise Pop will offer such unusual combinations as Welsh punk-rocker Jon Langford and Latin trance-pop maestro Carlos Ortega; improv-giant O’Rourke and pop-rock tunesmith Jeff Tweedy; and folk-soul giant Terry Callier sharing a bill with the Sea & Cake’s slyly adventurous singer Sam Prekop.
“This is a good indication of how things work in Chicago,” Vandermark says. “In a normal competitive situation, one of the festivals would’ve demanded that the other not happen at the same time. But both parties were willing to take the risk that this could expand the possibilities for both festivals.”
From that standpoint alone, the Empty Bottle jazz series and festivals have been a massive success. In recent years, once elusive European giants such as Germany’s Peter Brotzmann and Sweden’s Gustaffson began making Chicago a regular stop on their North American itineraries, rather than focusing on the East Coast.
The British Broadcasting Corporation now broadcasts concerts back to England from the Bottle, and French MTV is rolling into town to document the burgeoning Bottle scene.
“Now the Empty Bottle is a club known internationally as an improvised music venue,” Vandermark says with a disbelieving chuckle, “even though we haven’t made enough money doing this to pay for the international phone calls. But we’re doing this out of a genuine love for this music, and as fans.
“It’s a chance for us to see these people, too, and in many cases these are life-changing experiences–that’s how I’m getting paid.”
HIGHLIGHTS OF FESTIVALS
Highlights of the Empty Bottle Jazz and Improvised Music Festival and Noise Pop. For details, see www.noisepop.com; for Empty Bottle events call 773-276-3600:
Wednesday
Wire at Metro: Brit punk-pop pioneers offer career retrospective Peter Kowald/Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake at Empty Bottle: Reprise of walloping 1998 date at Anderson’s South Side club, the Velvet Lounge.
Thursday
Apples in Stereo at Empty Bottle: Leading lights of Elephant 6 collective favoring ornate ’60s-style pop with echoes of “Pet Sounds.”
Friday
Sleater-Kinney at Metro: The best indie-rock band on the planet? They might be.
Sam Prekop/Terry Callier at Double Door: Prekop is the voice of the Sea & Cake, Callier a ’60s folk-soul pioneer.
Peter Kowald/Floris Floridis/Gunter “Baby” Sommer at Empty Bottle: Top European improvisers, with Floridis and Sommer making Chicago debuts.
Fred Lonborg-Holm salutes Fred Katz at Empty Bottle: Master cellist gets his due from one of Chicago’s finest.
Saturday
Floris Floridis/Ken Vandermark/Andre Jaume at Cultural Center (free): All clarinets all the time.
Andre Jaume tribute to Jimmy Giuffre at Empty Bottle: France’s Jaume plays solo.
Jon Langford/Carlos Ortega at Double Door: Collaboration merging worlds of postpunk and Latin trance.
May 14
Gunter “Baby” Sommer at Cultural Center: First U.S. solo performance by renowned German percussionist.
Loos at Empty Bottle: Improvised music at its most confrontational.
Jeff Tweedy and Jim O’Rourke at Double Door: Unlikely pairing has fascinating possibilities.
