Michael Allemana: Von Freeman: Music, Storytelling, and Metaphysics

Saturday, September 24

TIME: 3:00pm-4:00pm

VEUNUE: Logan Center Screening Room (Artist Talks)

The presentation will be a brief overview of Michael Allemana's extensive research on the great Chicago artist Von Freeman's music and life. Allemana will then deep dive into what he has pulled together from a large archive of interviews with Von and people who knew him. This archive includes bootleg performances from the 1970s unit the 2010s, Allemana's personal experiences working with Von, important historical material, and the musical and social questions that Von’s views on life and art and his music provoke.

Mike Allemana

Guitarist Mike Allemana has been a fixture on the Chicago scene since the early 1990s. He has shared the stage with numerous jazz luminaries, including fifteen years as a member of saxophonist Von Freeman’s quartet at the famed New Apartment Lounge. Since 2013, he has collaborated with guitarist George Freeman in a quartet that features drumming legend Bernard Purdie and organist Pete Benson. Mike’s latest release, Vonology, a five-movement original work that draws from Mike’s musical and historical research of Von Freeman, has received much acclaim in the jazz press, and will be featured at the 2022 Chicago Jazz Festival. His future projects include an album of his string quartet, vocal, and horn arrangements for vocalist Paul Marinaro’s upcoming fall release Not Quite Yet, and performances with saxophonist Chico Freeman. 

Being a passionate advocate for Chicago’s jazz scene, Mike conducts historical and ethnographic research of local musical communities. He earned a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a dissertation that explores the historical and contemporary ways that Chicago’s changing racial boundaries have shaped musicmaking and social life on the local jazz scene, with particular focus on Von Freeman’s New Apartment Lounge jam session. This research was produced in part while Mike was a dissertation fellow in 2019–2020 at the University of Chicago’s Center of the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. His current research includes the forgotten contributions of Dr. Mildred Bryant-Jones to South Side music education from the 1920s through the 1940s, and preparations for a book that will explore Von Freeman’s life, music, and local and international impact.