Sept. 04--It's just possible that when the 37th annual Chicago Jazz Festival ends on Sunday, listeners will look back on opening night as its stirring high point.
For with leonine singer-pianist Henry Butler roaring behind the keyboard and a mighty band snarling alongside him, Thursday evening's opener produced a performance that will be remembered long after this festival is over.
Butler always has exemplified age-old New Orleans traditions re-imagined for contemporary times, and he has proven it in uncounted Chicago clubs and concert halls through the decades. But no single room really is big enough to contain a pianism as mighty or a voice as imploring as his.
Set him loose on the stage of the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, however, with thousands in the audience screaming their approval, and you're encountering Butler as he was meant to be heard: on the grandest scale possible.
This wasn't about noise, however, even if many of the most heavily scored passages were strangely over-amplified in a venue that usually manages sound a whole lot better. Rather, it was the depth and majesty of Butler's performance, with trumpeter Steven Bernstein leading an aptly rambunctious band, that left the lasting impression.
For the most part, Butler, Bernstein and an organization they call the Hot 9 were playing music from their "Viper's Drag" album, the best jazz recording of last year. True, if you want to get technical, 10 musicians were on the album and 10 were on the Pritzker stage (not exactly the same personnel), but of course the title was designed to evoke Louis Armstrong's landmark Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of the 1920s.
Like Armstrong, Butler has New Orleans rhythms and cadences streaming through his veins. The singer-pianist hasn't lived in the Crescent City since Hurricane Katrina, but it surely lives in him.
No single piece proved that more strikingly than "Buddy Bolden's Blues," a classic by a New Orleans jazz progenitor who preceded Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton. Butler toyed with the words Morton sings on recordings, but the gently rolling tempo and throaty, urgent vocals poetically recalled the early days of New Orleans jazz (or at least as much as we know of it from recordings and other documentation).
But that was just the starting point, for before long Butler was accompanying himself at the piano with a degree of virtuosity and velocity suggesting the foremost pianist in the history of jazz: Art Tatum. To hear that swirl of sound rising up from Butler's piano, lightning-quick scales and arpeggios flashing up and down the keyboard while Butler's voice thundered atop it all, was to gain new understanding of the term "one-man band." If you didn't know better, you'd swear three musicians were playing: one singer and two pianists.
Add to this Bernstein's cries on slide trumpet and plenty of churn from the rest of the Hot 9, and this evening achieved its artistic climax long before the night was done. There were other pleasures too, though, including the wailing horns and glistening pianism of Butler's "Booker Time" and the heady incantations and hard-driving rhythms of Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag."
Former Chicago trumpeter Marquis Hill opened the evening leading his Blacktet in a leaner, more translucent music. His rhythmically nimble, melodically sleek, harmonically sophisticated playing reminded listeners why he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition last year. Most of the musical intensity, however, came from alto saxophonist Christopher McBride, a longtime Hill collaborator whose ferocity of expression is unmistakable at all tempos, and vibraphonist Justefan, who produced some of the most brilliant, incisive and technically adept solos he has given Chicago.
Not a bad way to open a festival.
hreich@tribpub.com
The Chicago Jazz Festival continues with shows starting noon to 8:30 p.m. Friday and 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Millennium Park, near Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue; admission is free; 312-744-3316 or www.chicagojazzfestival.us or www.jazzinchicago.org. Among the highlights:
Friday
12:30 p.m.: Spin Quartet; Jazz and Heritage Pavilion
2 p.m.: Art Hoyle Sextet; Jazz and Heritage Pavilion
3:30 p.m.: Bobby Lewis Sextet; Jazz and Heritage Pavilion
3:30 p.m.: Craig Taborn Trio; Von Freeman Pavilion
5 p.m.: Chico Freeman and George Freeman; Pritzker Pavilion
6 p.m.: Jose James; Pritzker Pavilion
7:10 p.m.: Fred Hersch Trio; Pritzker Pavilion
8:30 p.m.: Chicago Jazz Orchestra tribute to Billy Strayhorn
Saturday
2 p.m.: Juan Pastor's Chinchano; Jazz and Heritage Pavilion
2:50 p.m.: Columbia College Jazz Ensemble with Dave Douglas; Chicago Community Trust Young Jazz Lions Pavilion
3:30 p.m.: Ryan Cohan Quartet featuring Joe Locke; Von Freeman Pavilion
7:10 p.m.: Mark Turner Quartet; Pritzker Pavilion
8:30 p.m.: Dee Dee Bridgewater; Pritzker Pavilion
Sunday
3:45 p.m.: Tomeka Reid with Kenwood Academy High School Jazz Band; Chicago Community Trust Young Jazz Lions Pavilion
5 p.m.: Jeff Parker Trio; Pritzker Pavilion
6 p.m.: Jane Bunnett and Maqueque; Pritzker Pavilion
8:30 p.m.: Muhal Richard Abrams' Experimental Band; Pritzker Pavilion
