March 21--Early last Thursday evening, one of Chicago's most appealing jazz guitarists stepped behind the bar of the Green Mill Jazz Club, climbed onto the tiny stage there and began unspooling gorgeous strands of melody.
As Andy Brown wended his way through standards such as "Dancing in the Dark" and a range of bossa nova classics, listeners barely stirred. A room that can get a bit rambunctious come 9 p.m. instead fell to a hush, as everyone savored the progress of Brown's 5:30 p.m. set.
In effect, the audience was hearing something close to a jazz recital, albeit in an environment rather more relaxed than your typical, highbrow concert hall. Nonetheless, every shift in tone and dynamics that Brown offered resonated crisply through the house, the characteristic beauty of his sound matched by the textural intricacies of his solos.
Brown launched his weekly cocktail hour show at the start of the year, and it's already drawing a following, though surely no one relishes the opportunity more than the guitarist himself.
"It's a rare thing, solo guitar," says Brown. "Often it's done at restaurants or parties -- it's ambience.
"I did (this) as a challenge, to see if I could pull it off. It's sort of tough to say: I'm going to play solo, just a little guitar, and try to keep the room somewhat contained. It was a challenge to see if I could get outside playing background music."
On this night Brown surely has, the luster of his sound, accessibility of his tunes and complexity of his arrangements converging to command attention. He acknowledges, though, that as crowds start filtering in for the big band that starts at 9 p.m. Thursdays, the conversation level goes up and his challenge increases.
Yet this new offering at the Green Mill attests to club owner Dave Jemilo's knack for coming up with attractions not readily encountered in most jazz rooms.
The idea, though, originated with Brown, who "just approached me," recalls Jemilo, who long has featured organist Chris Foreman from 5 to 8 p.m. Fridays, also behind the bar.
"I thought: Well, Chris does really good on Friday -- would something work during the week?" adds Jemilo.
"I was hemming and hawing," until Jemilo went to check out Brown playing a solo appearance elsewhere.
"It was really cool," says Jemilo. "The solo thing -- I never realized how important it is to be able to (play) a certain way that it makes a different than playing with a lot of people. He's throwing a bass line as he's going along, and a melody, interspersing it all to make it sound like more than just a guitar. People were digging it, and it was good.
"And I thought: What the hell? This thing could work."
So far, says Jemilo, Thursday traffic has increased noticeably, with the added benefit that listeners arriving early for the main event at 9 p.m. are greeted with live music.
The open-ended engagement holds particular resonance for Brown, who for years played Sunday nights behind the Green Mill bar with organist Foreman and singer Kimberly Gordon. More important, the first time Brown walked into the Mill -- when he was visiting from his native Cincinnati with singer Petra van Nuis, his wife -- they encountered one of the best duos this city has produced performing behind the bar: singer Grazyna Auguscik with guitarist Paulinho Garcia.
"We were spellbound that something like that could be going on and packed on a Sunday night," recalls Brown of that evening in the 1990s.
"That was one of the things that made us fall in love with Chicago."
But the new slot isn't Brown's only steady engagement in Chicago. For four years, he has led his quartet Wednesday nights at Andy's Jazz Club, on East Hubbard Street.
Keeping a band together that long is no easy task these days, and Brown is celebrating his band's durability with a new album, "Direct Call" (Delmark Records). Like Brown's Green Mill engagement, the album focuses on what might be called the "mainstream" or "traditional" fare that is at the heart of Brown's work, though he winces a bit at those restrictive terms.
"People see me as a lot more traditional than the way I see myself," says Brown.
"When you see the Fat Babies," continues Brown, referring to the brilliant Chicago ensemble that focuses on repertoire of the 1920s and '30s, "you don't get a sense that it's old. It's like: Wow, it's so fresh.
"The stuff I like is what used to be called mainstream. It was the bread and butter: Oscar Peterson, Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz. Now people think that's passe or something, so it's harder to find that."
Indeed, in Chicago -- where the new sound in jazz has been prized above all else since early in the 20th century -- Brown stands as a kind of outlier.
What matters most, of course, is not so much the repertory he plays but how he plays it. Both the ebullient new recording and Brown's soft-spoken new solo set make a compelling case for the value of his art.
Andy Brown plays solo from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursdays at the Green Mill Jazz Club, 4802 N. Broadway; no cover; 773-878-5552 or www.greenmilljazz.com.
The Andy Brown Quartet plays at 5 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays at Andy's Jazz Club, 11 E. Hubbard St.; $10; 312-642-6805 or www.andysjazzclub.com
Music at the Empire Room
Tickets sold out swiftly for the Frank Sinatra homage last November in the Empire Room of the Palmer House Hilton, leading the venue to book a similar show next month.
"The Birth of the Great American Songbook" will feature singers Ron Hawking and Spider Saloff with the City Lights Orchestra conducted by Rich Daniels on April 23. Like last time, the event will have several parts, with a 6 p.m. cocktail hour, three-course dinner, concert performance and after-dinner dancing until 11 p.m.
Single tickets are $175; VIP tickets, which include premium seating and open bar, are $200; phone 312-726-7500.
Chi-Town Jazz Festival receipts
The recent Chi-Town Jazz Festival, for which all performers and venues donate their services, raised $41,000 for hunger relief, according to event founder the Rev. John Moulder. That means that since its inception, the festival has raised $219,000 for its noble cause.
hreich@tribpub.com
"Portraits in Jazz": Howard Reich's e-book collects his interviews with Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and others, as well as profiles of early masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Get the e-book at www.chicagotribune.com/ebooks.
