Listening Session: Howard Reich and “The Majesty of Chicago Jazz”
Saturday, September 26
TIME: 1pm - 2pm
VENUE: Logan Center screening Room. 915 east 60th st.
Photo of Howard Reich by Pam Becker
“The Majesty of chicago jazz”
Author and former Chicago Tribune jazz critic Howard Reich offers a cinematic, guided tour of the artists featured in his newest book, The Majesty of Chicago Jazz: Twenty-Five Visionaries Who Define the City’s Sound (University of Chicago Press). The book, which gathers 35 years of Reich’s writings on Chicago jazz, amounts to a personalized history of the music, from the 1920s to today. Reich will screen film clips of Chicago innovators Louis Armstrong, Anita O’Day, Ahmad Jamal, Von Freeman, Patricia Barber, Orbert Davis and others and will reminisce on covering–and often getting to know–these masters. Reich will welcome attendees to share their memories of hearing these musicians and will sign copies of the new book.
howard reich
Howard Reich covered music for the Chicago Tribune for 43 years, his tenure as the newspaper’s staff jazz critic spanning 1989 to 2021. He served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Music four times, including the year when Wynton Marsalis’ Blood on the Fields became the first jazz composition to win (1997). Reich, who holds two honorary doctorate degrees, is the Emmy Award-winning writer-producer of three documentary films and author of seven books, including Let Freedom Swing, Portraits in Jazz and Jelly’s Blues (with William Gaines). Reich developed his book The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel into the opera The Dialogue of Memories, with music by Tom Cipullo and libretto by Reich with Cipullo. The Kartemquin film Prisoner of Her Past, based on Reich’s book of the same name, has aired more than 500 times in 140-plus markets on PBS. Reich wrote the original story and scenario for the ballet Kimiko’s Pearl–about Japanese Canadian internment–inspired by the family history of Chris Mori and Alexis Spieldenner, founders of the Bravo Niagara! Festival. Reich lives in a Chicago suburb with Pam Becker, his wife, a retired Tribune editor.
“Music lovers will find, then follow, a great music critic. Howard Reich, writing for the Chicago Tribune, put Chicago on the map.”
--- Patricia Barber, musician and composer
about the book
The first book to trace the vast influence of Chicago jazz from its origins to today—from Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton to Anita O’Day, Herbie Hancock, and the AACM.
Author and Chicago native Howard Reich gives readers a front-row seat to the history of Chicago jazz as it roared forth in jazz clubs, concert halls, and festivals. Reich covered Chicago jazz for more than thirty years as the Chicago Tribune’s staff critic, and in this collection, he argues that jazz as an art form is inconceivable without Chicago. Carefully choosing from among his thousands of articles on jazz, Reich highlights twenty-five of the most important Chicago jazz artists who pushed the art form forward.
The Majesty of Chicago Jazz begins with two New Orleans visionaries who achieved their artistic pinnacles in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties: Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. In the decades that followed, Chicago produced an uninterrupted line of innovators: revolutionaries Ahmad Jamal and Sun Ra, iconoclasts Von Freeman and Fred Anderson, populists Herbie Hancock and Ramsey Lewis, chameleons Patricia Barber and Kurt Elling, and the breakthrough band of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), among others. Reich offers two pieces on each of the book’s twenty-five visionaries, including profiles, reviews, appreciations, and obituaries. The book concludes with a beginner-friendly discography, perfect for those looking to listen along.
The Majesty of Chicago Jazz is captivating for jazz newcomers and aficionados alike—all are guaranteed to learn something surprising here. With a musician’s ear and a journalist’s expertise, Reich offers listeners a valuable guide to the groundbreaking jazz that has come out of Chicago, a city that remains a fertile breeding ground for musical experimentation.