If I were keeping a diary of my time at the jazz festival just concluded . . . .
An event like this always brings out listeners I’m getting to meet for the first time, even after all these years on the air. There’s definitely a special joy to that.
At various times over the weekend at our booth I also met visitors from Germany, France, Canada, Mexico and Great Britain. Most had been in town all week, most on vacation. They raved about how beautiful the city was and how much fun it was to attend a festival that offered so much free music. A fresh pair of eyes are just what I need to remind me of how great a city I live in.
Even though the main stage (Petrillo) had more people both nights, the crowd at the Jazz and Heritage Stage was every bit as passionate about the performers they got to hear. (The size of our crowd was nothing to sneeze at, either. I’m guessing we had 2,000+ both nights.) And take a tip from me: if you want to hear great sounds and have a ball doing it, there’s no doubt as to which stage you’ll want to be at next year.
They really need to do something about the food vendors at the Jazz Festival. For someone who wanted to avoid fried food and the blandest of fare, you had to leave the jazz fest grounds and go across Michigan Avenue. And who wants to do that when there’s so much live music to see?
A printed schedule of performers ought to be something organizers should seriously consider for the 2011 fest. More people asked me about that than where the porta-potties were.
I always marvel at the global village that Smooth Jazz fans are. If you want to see Chicago’s glorious diversity in a truly harmonious setting, look around at the crowd at a Smooth Jazz concert. Music, as always, is the great unifier.
And then there was this, in Monday’s Chicago Tribune, from Howard Reich, commenting on singer Rene Marie’s Saturday night performance on the main stage:
“Unfortunately, this year the nearby Jazz and Heritage Stage ran concurrently with the Petrillo Music Shell (in the past, all the other stages shut down for the Petrillo main event). So while Rene Marie sang ballads, listeners had to endure the sounds of other bands, in other tunes, in other keys. Whose idea was that, anyway?”
Howard, if you’re unhappy there was a Smooth Jazz presence at the festival, just come right out and say so (at least you were upfront about that in your online chat—more on that in a moment). To couch it in a complaint about overlapping sounds from another stage is reaching. For one thing, the Jazz and Heritage Stage isn’t really “nearby.” In fact, it and the Young Jazz Lions’ stage are the two farthest from Petrillo on the festival grounds. Furthermore, I spent some time myself at Petrillo, Sunday night during the Kurt Elling performance, which featured as many quiet moments as any other. The sounds coming from the Jazz and Heritage Stage, with Nick Colionne playing, were barely audible. I couldn’t make out “other tunes,” let alone “other keys.”
And, speaking of Mr. Reich’s online chat, in case you missed it, here’s his unedited response to a question about a Smooth Jazz stage at this year’s jazz festival:
“There isn’t really a smooth-jazz stage this year … but two smooth-jazz entities (Close Up 2 jazz club and 87.7 FM) are booking some acts on one of the stages. This is not an encouraging development. Many years ago, the Chicago Jazz Festival booked Spyro Gyra, under the auspices of WNUA. That was an artistic disaster.”
I was at that one, too, but I don’t recall anything remotely disastrous about it. It was the 1992 festival, back when the event featured three nights of main stage music. The first night, which was Friday, September 4, was co-sponsored by WNUA and GRP Records. Spyro Gyra’s performance was hardly what you’d call an artistic disaster. (There were 15,000+ people in the seats that night and, if the lack of any booing was any indication, I don’t remember a single person being traumatized by the end of their set.) Mr. Reich also left out the fact that the station’s partnership with GRP also allowed WNUA to add to the night’s lineup the highly respected Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and vocalist Diane Schuur, winner of two Grammy awards in the jazz category. Add in opening acts Mike Smith and Bobby Broom, and “artistic disaster” would be the last phrase anyone (but Howard) would use to describe what I thought was a very pleasant and entertaining opening night of the ’92 fest.
Whether or not you were at this year’s festival, I leave you with this thought, having just come from two magical nights in Grant Park. There are lots of people putting their energies into keeping the music alive, from recording artists and their management to radio stations, club owners and sponsors. Combined with the support and passion that are still in the hearts of listeners and fans, you can be hopeful about the future of Smooth Jazz.
I was at the Jazz & Heritage stage on both evenings, this year. And I firmly believe that smooth jazz has earned the right to perform at the Petrillo Bandshell, if not at the Pritzker Pavillion during next year’s Chicago Jazzfest.