by Howard Reich, Arts critic
September 25, 2011
What makes a great jazz festival?
Certainly you need top musicians, superb venues, creative presentations, engaged audiences and a sense of constant reinvention and surprise.
By those criteria, the fifth annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival – which ended Sunday – qualified as the most artistically satisfying fest on Chicago’s jazz calendar. That all the performances were free and open to everyone, yet not dependent on City Hall largesse, only underscored the miracle of this independently produced event.
Not that there weren’t minor glitches in a festival that this year doubled in duration to two days. Some shows started a bit late. Others drew turn-away crowds, suggesting certain attractions needed to be presented in larger spaces – or at least in multiple sets, to accommodate demand.
Yet when listeners are clamoring to see performances (every show I attended during 10 hours on Saturday was packed), it’s a strong indication that a festival is connecting viscerally with its audience.
The biggest artistic revelation occurred Saturday night, when a huge crowd heard visionary reedist-bandleader Don Byron radically re-conceive music of Chicago gospel pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey.
It’s no exaggeration to observe that Dorsey invented the syntax for 20th century gospel music, applying the blues vernacular of his youth to a propulsive new kind of sacred sound. Though first harshly rejected by church officialdom, Dorsey’s work eventually came to define gospel music in America, and Byron has boldly sought to redefine it – or at least re-examine it from a 21st century jazz perspective.
Bryon’s New Gospel Quintet somehow stayed true to the down-home spirit of Dorsey’s music while refreshing it with splashes of dissonance, free-wheeling instrumental improvisation and vocal lines that soared freely to the heavens. These weren’t just re-interpretations of Dorsey’s classics – they were major reconstructions of them.
In the most famous of Dorsey’s works, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” Byron produced a throbbing tone and testifying spirit on tenor saxophone, while vocalist DK Dyson stretched Dorsey’s melody lines into heady new shapes. Swooping up to high notes and dipping dramatically to low ones, Dyson made an experimental-jazz aria of “Precious Lord,” which proved predictably indestructible.
The only flaw in this otherwise gripping performance concerned volume and balance in climactic passages, with the band’s instrumentals sometimes drowning out Dyson’s words. These lyrics are critical to the context of this music, and when Byron records this work for an upcoming release, he’ll need to take pains to make sure listeners can hear the text.
Earlier in the day, Chicago cellist-composer Tomeka Reid delicately bridged straight-ahead swing idioms with avant-garde techniques at the Oriental Institute, the heavy reverberation of the gallery enhancing the tonal resonance of her music. Pianist Miguel de la Cerna’s quartet proved you can play a mystical, challenging music in an outdoor setting – the garden at the University of Chicago‘s International House – and still hold an audience entranced.
Elsewhere at the fest, Chicago singer Sarah Marie Young sounded quite polished in standard repertory and uncommonly persuasive in music of Motown. But she needs to add heft to her top voice, which can get shrill.
And pianist Stephanie Trick offered earnest, technically assured but far-too-polite versions of stride-piano and boogie works. She’ll have to develop more sound in her right hand, more imagination in her interpretations and more fire in her delivery if she hopes to do justice to classics by Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and others who made the piano jump.
Read More
A great jazz fest takes root in Hyde Park, according to the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 20, 2011. Rarely has a Chicago musical institution grown as dramatically and impressively as the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. What started as a one-day event five years ago will double in duration this weekend, bringing top-notch musicians to first-rate venues across the neighborhood. But that’s just part of the story of this festival’s blossoming. Read full article.
