Glittering Diamond of Englewood

The number of significant jazz festivals held throughout the country each year easily bubble up into the hundreds.  When you consider their proliferation across the globe as well as here in the United States, that number could easily slip into the thousands.  From the behemoths like Newport and Monterey to that massive all-inclusive juggernaut at the North Sea Festival in Rotterdam, most cities of consequence and many small communities jump on the bandwagon and offer their own tribute to “America’s classical music”.

Chicago’s extremely fortunate to host two highly renowned jazz galas.   Anchoring the month of September, the Chicago Jazz Festival opens the month and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival closes it. But people seem to forget about a third little gem of a celebration smack dab in the middle of the month; a little diamond known as the Englewood Jazz Festival.

There’s usually a small band of volunteers passing out pluggers for the Englewood festival after the last set of the last night of the huge city sponsored event early in the month.  But most Chicagoans don’t get past the name “Englewood” on the invitation.  To local ears, it might as well read “in rebel held territories of Syria”.

Englewood’s disturbing reputation is amplified by seemingly endless reports of violence and killing.  But knowing that a community is made of more than grim statistics, the lop-sidedness of the neighborhood’s reputation didn’t faze esteemed saxophone player Ernest Dawkins from pursuing his desire to bring a jazz festival to the people.  That wish celebrated its nineteenth birthday this year.

Despite it’s nearly two decades of existence, the Englewood Jazz Fest remains a modest affair.  Where the Chicago Jazz Fest extends over several days with local jazz clubs riding the wave and extending the music long into the night after Pritzker bandshell shuts down at 9pm.   The Englewood event is but a single day between noon and six and has the feel of a sprawling picnic with sensational music.  And while both the downtown festival and Hyde Park festival are noted for their breathe of audience diversity, the Englewood festival is nearly exclusively African American in composition.  With jazz’s roots so deeply embedded in the black community, there’s almost a feeling of returning to origins in the Englewood experience.

This year’s festival had providence working on its side.  For years Dawkins has been keen to get virtuoso saxophonist James Carter on the bill and this year it happened.  A Detroit native who performs frequently in New York, Carter may not be well known to a lot of local jazz enthusiasts.  But as soon as he and Dawkins kicked off their set with Central Park West, you knew you were inhabiting the right spot at the right time in the universe.

Carter, who first toured Europe as a professional musician at 16, opened with fireworks with a horn run that had jaws dropping like a heavy rain.  Exceptionally gifted on the baritone and soprano sax, his instrument of choice on the opening number was tenor.   And he played it as if was tailor made for him alone.  The sounds he conjured out of his horn were often percussive, and completely alien from what you’d expect to hear in an instrument you thought you knew.  Two or three songs in, and a voice in the audience was overheard declaring, “Nobody plays the sax like James Carter, man”.  That voice was correct.  Even Dawkins was caught chuckling to himself and audibly musing, “maybe I should give up the saxophone.”

Closing on the quintet’s extended version of Giant Steps, the song evolved into a jam session with east coaster  Greg Murphy slipping in on piano.  The Collier brothers, Ed on sax and Jeremiah on drums, both very young and very gifted went toe to toe with the group’s established lions and let them and everybody else know that their stockpile of talent vied with the heavyweights.  But if this turned out to be a battle of the sax’s, it was probably one of the most congenial “cutting sessions” in the history of jazz.    These guys were playing out of sheer joy in the music.  That it was also a showcase of the dizzying heights of their virtuosity seemed beside the point.

A wonderful transplant from St. Louis preceded them and may have inadvertently set the stage for the band’s brand of play Saturday afternoon.  The timbre of Denise Thimes voice can go low; lending a seductive appeal to her singing.  She also has a way of speckling her audience chat with a lot of homespun earned wisdom.  Hers was a deliciously delivered “grown folks” show that could have been, if the sultry meter was turned just a tad higher, perfectly comfortable in a smoke-filled midnight cabaret.  Often uttering “Oh, I wish I could get somebody to go with me now”, her beautifully nuanced interpretations of Embraceable You and Nina Simone’s Peaches were respectfully rendered and gleamed with the polish of a genuine artist.  She never explained the abbreviated take on Nancy Wilson’s Guess Who I Saw Today but said she’d apologize to the band later.  Too bad.  Wilson’s classic is a superb study in musical storytelling and always a welcome treat when given the delicately suspenseful phrasing it demands and deserves.  But you never even felt the bump.  Thimes just went with the flow and jammed with her very capable band that included the ever so solid Marlene Rosenberg on bass and Isaiah Collier on sax.

Englewood Jazz Festival 2018

September 15

Noon – 6pm

Hamilton Park and Cultural Center

513 W. 72^nd St.

Chicago, Il

englewoodjazzfest.org