Aug. 07--Last month, former Chicagoan and MacArthur Fellowship winner Steve Coleman launched a three-week residency designed to nurture jazz on the South Side, where he grew up.
Playing concerts and leading workshops, teaching young musicians and coaching pros, the saxophonist-bandleader sought to inspire a wide range of Chicago musicians.
Because Coleman hopes to make summertime visits to his hometown an annual affair, it will be a while before we can fully gauge the impact of this work. But Thursday night's performance at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, which kicked off the summer's "Made in Chicago: World Class Jazz" series, suggested that Coleman's strategy already shows significant achievement and holds still greater promise.
For the rhythmically volatile, melodically unpredictable, harmonically distinctive music of Coleman and his band, Five Elements, emerged with an unusually high degree of polish and control. This caliber of performance only occurs when musicians can play together nightly in extended residencies of the sort that Coleman has conceived. That scenario was nearly routine in earlier generations, when bands played for weeks on end at particular jazz clubs, but those extended engagements no longer exist, prompting Coleman's strategy.
To underscore the value of the project for all involved, Coleman invited several of the Chicago artists who have been collaborating with his band during the past few weeks to sit in for portions of this performance. The Chicagoans absorbed his musical language while often transforming it on their own terms.
Coleman opened the evening in the best way possible, with an extended solo in his "Beyond All We Know," affording listeners an opportunity to savor the singular tonal quality of his work on alto saxophone. That ripe, full-bodied, nuance-rich sound of his ranks among the most identifiable in jazz, but it's what he does with it that matters most. Rhythmic accents, phrase lengths and downbeats are in constant flux, forcing listeners to pay close attention.
You can't simply tap your toe and bounce along to this music, in other words. It's too rhythmically restless and melodically inventive for that. Once Coleman completed his essay, the rest of the ensemble joined the fray, his incantatory lines at the center of the sound.
Coleman dramatically changed the syntax of the music with his "Pad Thai," the long-lined lyricism of "Beyond All We Know" giving way to an urgently telegraphic main motif. Here was rhythmic agitation writ large across the band, with a dynamic, Colemanesque solo from tenor saxophonist Maria Grand and jagged lines from pianist David Bryant.
Lest all of this original music throw listeners completely off guard, Coleman punctuated an intermissionless set with the occasional standard. But by playing familiar fare, Coleman shed additional light on his methodology. For even as the basic melodic profile of Duke Ellington's "Prelude to a Kiss" was apparent, the saxophonist's coiled phrases, rhythmic displacements and thematic adjustments illuminated how he thinks about music. Chicago guitarist Mike Allemana joined the band here, speaking Coleman's language with sinuous solos.
Later in the evening, Coleman welcomed several other Chicagoans onto the bandstand. Alto saxophonist Brent Griffin evoked the character of Coleman's sound while bringing to bear a blues sensibility of his own. Tenor saxophonist Geof Bradfield elegantly picked up on the even-keel dynamics of Coleman's approach. And trumpeter Chad McCullough created solos of mercurial poetry and high craft.
No, the pieces that featured the Chicago guests in round-robin solos didn't convey quite the intensity or expressive cohesiveness of the earlier portions of evening, which featured Coleman's band in top form. Yet the sound and sight of so many musicians unfurling so many melodic strands at once crystallized what Coleman's venture is all about: artists coming together to unveil new music, re-evaluate the classics and poise jazz for the future.
Ventures such as this can only foster that cause.
"Made in Chicago: World Class Jazz" continues with "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady," Thursday; "AACM Chicago Presents Great Black Music Ensemble," Aug. 20; "We REInsist! Max and Roach and Oscar Brown, Jr.'s 'Freedom Now Suite,' Reimagined,'" Aug. 27; all concerts start at 6:30 p.m. at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, near Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue; free; 312-742-1168 or millenniumpark.org.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic
hreich@tribpub.com
