gram JAZZ PROMOTING AND NURTURING JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 WWW.JAZZINCHICAGO.ORG
LOVIE AUSTIN GOT THE WORLD IN A JUG
BY AYANA CONTRERAS
This holiday season, much ado was made about the sweat that snaked down actress Viola Davis’ neck. It was the sort that smeared her pancake makeup and kohl eyeliner. Viola’s earthy portrayal of the saucy titular character in the recent film adaptation of August Wilson’s playMa Rainey’s Black Bottom (replete with a period- correct horsehair wig) caught a lot of flack on social media for being unglamourous. However, the controversial sweat was simply a slice of stylistic realism, considering the film takes place in Chicago during the summer of 1927, long before central air conditioning was widespread. Decked in pancake makeup, sweat and glorious beads, this portrayal (while lacking the perfect Instagram-filtered veneer some might have craved), reflected the autonomy and the freedom to adorn that Ma and Black women like her clung to every time they got the chance.
The film led me to imagine that on that summer day in a recording studio nearby, as Ma was belting out her latest blues, perhaps fellow Paramount Records artist Lovie Austin sat at a piano, head arranging a song. In fact, Ma Rainey’s first Chicago recordings at Paramount were accompanied by Lovie Austin and her Blues Serenaders.
Lovie, like Ma, relished in crafting her presentation. Unlike Ma, she mainly worked in the background, supporting Blues vocalists like Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter and Ida Cox, while leaving an outsized impression on those who dared to glance beyond the spotlight.
In the liner notes for the 1977 compilation Jazz Women: A Feminist Perspective, the powerhouse pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams described her first encounter with Lovie, which occurred when Williams was a child:
“I remember seeing this great woman sitting in the pit and conducting five or six men, her legs crossed, a cigarette in her mouth, playing the show with her left hand and writing music with her right. Wow! I never forgot this episode...My entire concept was based on the few times I was around Lovie Austin.”
Lovie Austin was born Cora Calhoun in Chattanooga, Tennessee on September 19, 1887. After studying music theory at Roger Williams University and Knoxville College, she played the Vaudeville circuit before making her way to Chicago. During the 1920s, she served as a house musician at Paramount Records and accompanied primarily blues vocalists. She also composed a number of cuts including “Charleston Mad” and, perhaps most notably, “Down Hearted Blues”, a song she co-wrote with now-legendary blues singer Lovie Austin Alberta Hunter in 1922.
Lawd, he mistreated me and drove me from his door, Yes he mistreated me and drove me from his door. Ah, but the good book says, you got to reap just what you sow continued on page 2 JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 2 continued from page 1
Later made famous by Bessie Smith, Lovie’s ability to transcribe and obtain a copyright for the song (without relying on the less-than honorable record men around them), allowed Lovie and Alberta to reap the fruits of their labor: Bessie’s recording sold three quarters of a million copies in 6 months.
By the end of the 1920s, sightings of Lovie Austin, dressed to the nines and tooling around the South Side in a leopard skin-upholstered Stutz Bearcat roadster became the stuff of folklore and the embodiment of the New Negro as expressed by Alain Locke in 1925:
“With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without. The migrant masses, shifting from countryside to city, hurdle several generations of experience at a leap…”
Lovie’s jaunty roadster was in stark contrast with pianist Sammy Price’s recollection of the South of that time, captured in the 1989 documentary Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues:
“I remember vividly…in 1927… we were passing through Jackson, Mississippi. And the Blacks always rode in a special car, which they called Jim Crow car. The whites started throwing rocks and bricks and anything that they could get their hands on when the train passed, when it slowed down in the city. And that was quite a hectic affair.” But in the North, he noted that “There was more freedom. When you went to Chicago, you had the Dreamland, you had the Club DeLisa. In New York City you had Smalls Paradise where you could actually go in there and buy a drink and drink it and didn't have to bow your head… in order to get out of the place.”
According to Daphne Duval Harrison’s Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s, by 1932 record sales had dropped dramatically, plunging to 6 million records sold, compared with 106 million just five years earlier. The blues "Whatever Happened to Lovie Austin and the Blues recording craze subsequently died down, and Paramount Serenaders" - Hue Magazine, May 19, 1954 Records shuttered in 1935. Lovie went on to serve as musical director of the Monogram Theater on South State Street.
In a 1950 profile of Lovie published in DownBeat, she lamented that after the death of Paramount’s owner her royalty checks stopped coming, and by 1954, a piece in Hue Magazine titled “What Happened To Lovie Austin?” revealed that after twenty years at the Monogram, she was working as a pianist at a dance studio in Chicago. A photo that ran with the piece showed Lovie, in spectacles and gray upswept hair, working with small children.
Before leaving this earth in 1972, Lovie Austin recorded one final album with Alberta Hunter, 1961’s Chicago: The Living Legends. Even though the majority of her career was spent in the shadows, her swagger, talent and her gutsy percussive playing style left their mark on this world. And during those heady days slinking in that Stutz Bearcat, she was as formidable as the heroine of “Down Hearted Blues”:
Got the world in a jug, stopper right here in my hand, Got the world in a jug, stopper right here in my hand, And if you want it, sweet papa, you got to come under my command n
JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 3 FEBRUARY RECAP & UPCOMING EVENTS
2021 has been busy at the Jazz Institute and it's only the beginning! We hope that you have watched and/or participated in our virtual education and public events that are available on our new website and social media pages. Whether you missed our February videos or you want to rewatch, here is a summary just for you:
Jazz Links Virtual Jam Sessions: Robert Irving III Jazz Links Fellow Lenard Simpson at Constellation (Released on 2/10/21) (Released on 2/12/21) Mr. Irving discusses approaches to comping on the piano by using the interval of a perfect 4th to build voicings.
The Show Goes On Online: Presenting Jazz and Treasures In Our Midst Improvisation during the Pandemic (Released on 2/28/21) (Released on 2/18/21) Panel discussion moderated by Amina Dickerson of Panel discussion moderated by Jazz Journalists Association Dickerson Global Advisors featuring Executive Directors President and JIC Board Member, Howard Mandel. Heather Ireland Robinson (JIC), Kai EL' Zabar (eta Creative See full article on pages 5 & 7. Arts) and Monique Brinkman-Hill (South Side Community Arts Center). SAVE THE DATES!
March 10 (5PM): Jazz Links Virtual Jam Sessions feat. Katie Ernst https://www.youtube.com/JazzInstituteChicago March 13 (8PM): Jazz Links Fellow Camila Mennitte Pereyra livestream from Constellation https://www.constellation-chicago.com/calendar/the-jazz-institute-of- chicago-presents-camila-mennitte-pereyra-quintet March 19 (7PM): JazzCity - Women of Chicago Jazz feat. The Coco Elysses' Elixir Ensemble & Angel Bat Dawid's Sistazz of Tha Nitty Gritty. More details TBA at jazzinchicago.org March 25 (7PM): Panel discussion: 2020-2021 New Works Fresh Voices Angel Bat Dawid at Awardees & Jazz Links Fellows. More details TBA at jazzinchicago.org Garfield Park Conservatory photo by James Martin MARCH 2021 JAZZ IN CHICAGO 4 JOANIE PALLATTO CONFESSES AND CHANNELS ON “MY ORIGINAL PLAN”
BY COREY HALL
Forty-nine years ago, Atlantic Records released Von Freeman’s debut album, Eddie Harris “sang the blues,” and Joanie Pallatto spoke her last confession to a priest.
Pallatto – better known as Joanie, in the Vernacular of the Hip – reveals her reality in “The Confessional,” a song from her soon-to-be-released album, My Original Plan. During “The Confessional,” performed in partnership with Bill Nolte, an acclaimed Broadway actor and singer, Joanie asks, “Where is the angel of forgiveness?” After Nolte acknowledges the Holy Trinity in Latin, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen,” Joanie responds, “My mind recalls the dropping bombs/We were young but never wrong/It was all about a secret lie/That should never, never ever come true.”
Then, before and after Joanie’s final plea for forgiveness, she receives two spoken calls from “Father” Nolte: “Confess the sins of an unknown virgin,” and, “Come back when you are sorry for your sins,” causing Joanie, overwhelmed into spoken silence, to breathe a wordless response.
“I first started thinking about that song 10 years ago, but I never finished it. When I started working on this record, I said, ‘I have to finish this,’” she said, during a recent conversation, before singing, “ ‘Where is the angel of forgiveness?’ And then the rest of the song just started coming out.”
Before My Original Plan is released on April 16, listeners will be able to hear and see “Do Butterflies Cry?” the first single and video. Containing lyrics composed by Joanie and pianist Bradley Parker-Sparrow, her husband for 38 years and Southport Records business partner, the video debuted on YouTube in February. It begins, “So steal the sky/ from a perfect butterfly/with wings that open in/nature’s diagram…/She tries to blend/between the sun and land/and My Original Plan album cover. Click on the image to watch the Do Butterflies Cry? music video. then gently kisses/my right hand.”
Composing lyrics is easy, Joanie admits, as she allows instruction and inspiration from Sparrow and the late pianist King Fleming to fuel her.
“King always talked about taking a song to the channel, meaning the bridge. He would say, ‘You gotta go to the channel, Joanie!’” she recalled, when mentioning what she learned from The King and I, their recording from 2000. “But most of my lyric writing has come from watching Sparrow, because he’s so good at poetry and prose. He has his own sound, his own music, his own chords and own sense of harmony.”
Recorded during an intense three-day weekend in December 2019 with Southport’s studio studs, bassist John Devlin and drummer Luiz Ewerling, My Original Plan continues Joanie’s collaborations with Haque, who is also billed on the front cover. During pre-recording rehearsals, Haque asked for and received permission to co-produce. (Haque played on Joanie’s two previous solo recordings, It’s Not Easy and As You Spend Your Life, released in 2008 and 2011, respectively.) Joanie’s openness to new approaches, Haque said, made this new project fun and worth the work.
“I would come up with a hook – either a creative bass line or guitar line for every tune – and we would go back
JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 5 continued from page 4
and forth and get super excited,” said Haque, who also overdubbed additional keyboard and percussion parts from his home studio. “It was a good, creative flow between my ideas and her ideas. I wrote numerous interludes and sections that we ended up using.
“What’s most interesting about this record,” Haque continued, “is how far it is from a traditional jazz or Latin jazz record that Joanie has done in the past. She’s always had an adventurous, creative spirit, and we really went all the way there on a lot of these songs. There are lots of styles – some ambient stuff, some prog-rock stuff…there’s almost a 70s rock, classic pop kind of sound -- that make for a really entertaining listen.”
Joining Joanie and Haque as special guests were percussionist Juan Pastor, flutist Steve Eisen, and harmonicist Howard Levy. For “The Photograph,” Joanie called on a trumpeter whose voice spoke to the song’s soul.
“I knew Bobby Lewis was going to be perfect for that song, because that’s just his kind of song that brings out a special feeling,” Joanie said. “And Fareed is tapping on the back of his guitar, making some really nice rhythms.”
Joanie has also recorded a video for “This Winter,” which begins, “This winter/as you set aside your fears/’Tis the season/to look beyond the years/Resolutions that will guide you each day/as the snow drifts away.”
“There was a lot of emotion in putting that video together, with all those pictures of my family and Sparrow’s family and friends,” she said. “And the photos just seemed to flow with the song’s lyrics. There is a little bit of Christmas in the song, but it’s mainly about making resolutions, reflecting, and your expectations of life.”
After hearing an advance copy of Joanie’s new joint, guitarist and labelmate George Freeman sent the following message:
“Joanie, (the record) gets to my soul,” said Freeman, regarded by those in the know as George the Bomb! “It’s sentimental, and it makes you reminisce.” n
THE SHOW GOES ON ONLINE, AND WE'RE BETTER FOR IT
BY HOWARD MANDEL ©2021 [email protected]
So we can’t yet saunter out to our jazz haunts, enjoy their unique atmospheres listening in communion with friends and strangers. Still, Chicago jazz remains dynamic in musicians’ studios, sometimes the outdoors and especially on our screens – where local artists are finding it suddenly quite ease to connect with each other and audiences world- wide.
That was the message from panelists on the Jazz Institute’s “The Show Goes On – Online,” a Zoom chat streamed live (to the Institute’s Facebook page) February 18 and now archived for free access at our YouTube channel. Musicians Orbert Davis and Kurt Elling (as well as his business partner Bryan Farina), non-profit programmers- producers-presenters Chris Anderson of Fulton Street Collective, Marguerite Horberg of HotHouse, Olivia Junell representing Experimental Sound Studio and Steve Rashid of Studio5 (in Evanston) spoke of pivoting from live-in- person to digital-presentation in the course of the past year.
Jazz Institute ED Heather Ireland Robinson introduced the program, and I moderated the discussion, though little guidance was needed as these colleagues, who knew each other at least by reputation told stories of personal and organizational dismay, recovery, resolve and productivity freely and candidly for some 90 minutes.
As performers, Davis and Elling without dates to play faced genuine identity crises. Kurt said he'd started his "Cocktail Concerts," which featured appearances by guests like Dee Dee Bridgewater in July on FacebookLive continued on page 7
JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 6
*PLEASE NOTE: Not all venues have their schedules set by our deadlines VIRTUAL EVENTS CALENDAR or present jazz exclusively. Call ahead or check their websites.
JAZZ INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO EVENTS F o r more info and Livestream Link please visit https://ess.org/ March 10 (5PM): Jazz Links Virtual Jam Sessions feat. Katie Ernst esscalendar/2021/3/15/option https://www.youtube.com/JazzInstituteChicago March 29 (7PM): OPTION: Akira Sakata March 13 (8PM): Jazz Links Fellow Camila Mennitte Pereyra For more info and Livestream Link please visit https://ess.org/ livestream from Constellation esscalendar/2021/3/29/option-akira-sakata https://www.constellation-chicago.com/calendar/the-jazz- FULTON STREET COLLECTIVE/ JAZZ RECORD ART COLLECTIVE. institute-of-chicago-presents-camila-mennitte-pereyra-quintet 1821 W. Hubbard/773-852-2481. March 19 (7PM): JazzCity - Women of Chicago Jazz featuring the fultonstreetcollective.com/ jazzrecordartcollective.com /All Shows Coco Elysses' Elixir Ensemble and Angel Bat Dawid's Sistazz of Are Live-Streamed via Facebook and YouTube from FSC. There will Tha Nitty Gritty. More details TBA at jazzinchicago.org be no on-site audience until further notice. All shows start at 8PM. March 25 (7PM): Panel discussion: 2020-2021 New Works Fresh All shows streaming at https://www.youtube.com/ Voices Awardees & Jazz Links Fellows. More details TBA at fultonstreetcollective jazzinchicago.org March 2 (8PM): Jake Viktor Quartet CONSTELLATION March 3 (8PM): John Elmquist's Hag of a Few 3111 North Western Ave/ All performances start ar 8:30PM)/ March 6 (8PM): Carroll/Artry/Ward + Dave Miller Livestream concerts by donation March 9 (8PM): Chicago Soul Jazz Collective livestream www.constellation-chicago.com March 10 (8PM): Constantine Alexander's FIRE'TET livestream March 5 (8PM): Ra/Rempis - Virtual Event - Livestream Link: March 11 (8PM): The Great Kai & J.J. performed livestream https://www.constellation-chicago.com/calendar/rarempis March 15 (8PM): Lenard Simpson Quartet livestream March 13 (8PM): The Jazz Institute of Chicago Presents: Camila March 16 (8PM): Jack Sundstrom Trio livestream Mennitte Pereyra Quintet Live From Constellation - Virtual March 18 (8PM): Erik Skov Quartet perform Kurt Rosenwinkel’s Event - For more information and livestream links please visit 1993 release Intuit https://www.constellation-chicago.com/calendar/the-jazz- March 21 (8PM): Greg Artry Quartet livestream institute-of-chicago-presents-camila-mennitte-pereyra-quintet March 22 (8PM) Tom Garling Sextet March 19 (8PM): Jacob Slocum’s Rose Window - Virtual Event - Livestream Link: March 23 (8PM) A Night of Monk with Harry Tonchev Trio https://www.constellation-chicago.com/calendar/jacob- March 24 (8PM): Alejandro Urzagaste & Shara Maxwell Sextet slocums-rose-window perform Dinah Washington & Brook Benton’s "Two of Us" March 26 (8PM): Gustavo Cortiñas Album Release - Virtual March 25 (8PM): Eric Hines & Pan Dulce feat. Liza Micelli & Event - Livestream Link: Peter Mack https://www.constellation-chicago.com/calendar/gustavo- March 30 (8PM): Jon Rarick Quintet cortias-album-release March 31 (8PM): Juli Wood Trio ELASTIC ARTS MUSIC INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO elasticarts.org/ 2830 N. Milwaukee/773-772-3616/elasticarts. 1490 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL/(847) 905-1500/ https://www. org musicinst.org March 4 (7:30 PM): Julian Otis & Vincent Davis + Molly Jones & March 15 (7PM): Free Virtual Jazz Lecture Fall Series: “Dark Norman Long - Virtual Event Angels of the Violin: Jazz legends Eddie South and Stuff Smith” Livestream Link: https://elasticarts.org/event/julian-otis- - Virtual Event - For more info and to RSVP, please visit: vincent-davis-molly-jones-norman-long/ https://www.musicinst.org/news-events/event/2020/10/free- March 19 (8PM): Bricolage ft. Ken Vandermark & Mazen Kerbaj virtual-jazz-lecture-fall-series-%E2%80%9Cdark-angels-violin- - Virtual Event jazz-legends Livestream Link: https://elasticarts.org/event/bricolage-ft-ken- PIANO FORTE vandermark-mazen-kerbaj/ 1335 S. Michigan Ave/312-291-0000 EXPERIMENTAL SOUND STUDIO February 5 (6PM): The Orion Ensemble - Virtual Event - For ess.org / 5925 N Ravenswood/773-998-1069 more info and link to Livestream, please visit: March 1 (8:30PM): Place of Assembly: Corbett vs. Hillmer https://pianofortechicago.com/event/the-orion-ensemble-live- livestream-concert/ For more info and Livestream Link please visit https://ess.org/ esscalendar/2021/2/19/place-of-assembly-corbett-vs-hillmer WINTER’S JAZZ CLUB March 8 (7PM): OPTION: Junius Paul 465 N. McClurg Court (on the promenade)/ Ph: 312.344.1270/ www.wintersjazzclub.com/ [email protected] For more info and Livestream Link please visit https://ess.org/ esscalendar/2021/3/8/option-junius-paul March 5-7 (7PM): Winter's Jazz Revival - Part 1 - Virtual Event - For more info, RSVP, and link to Livestream, please visit: March 15 (7PM): OPTION: Gabby Fluke-Mogul https://www.wintersjazzclub.com/shows
JAZZGRAM A monthly newsletter published by the Jazz Institute of Chicago for its members. The Jazzgram represents the views of the authors, and unless so designated, does not reflect official policy of the Jazz Institute. We welcome news and articles with differing opinions.
Managing Editor: Adriana Prieto Design: Letterform | Production: Adriana Prieto Correspondents: Aaron Cohen, Corey Hall, Ayana Contreras, Howard Mandel, Rahsaan Clark Morris, Karl E. H. Seigfried Board of Directors: President: David Helverson Vice Presidents: Timuel Black, David Bloomberg, Warren Chapman, Roxana Espoz, William Norris, Keyonn Pope Secretary: Howard Mandel Treasurer: Brian Myerholtz Emeritus Director: Joseph B. Glossberg Executive Director: Heather Ireland Robinson Board Members: Miguel de la Cerna, Dan Epstein, Matthew Goldfine, Rajiv Halim, Jarrard Harris, Bill King, Jason Koransky, Terry Martin, Ted Oppenheimer, Bethany Pickens, Mike Reed, Kent Richmond, Judith E. Stein, Conrad Terry, Neil Tesser, DV Williams, Darryl Wilson Staff: Diane Chandler-Marshall, John Foster-Brooks, Mashaune Hardy, Meggy Huynh, Sheila Hobson, Michael Nearpass, Adriana Prieto, Raymond A. Thomas.
Founded in 1969, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, a not-for-profit corporation, promotes and nurtures jazz in Chicago by providing jazz education, developing and supporting musicians, building Chicago audiences and fostering a thriving jazz scene. 410 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 500, Chicago IL 60605 | 312-427-1676 • Fax: 312-427-1684 • JazzInChicago.org The Jazz Institute of Chicago is supported in part by The Alphawood Foundation | The Francis Beidler Foundation | The Chicago Community Trust | A CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events | Crown Family Philanthropies | The Philip Darling Foundation | The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation | The Illinois Arts Council Agency | Lloyd A. Fry Foundation | The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince | The National Endowment for the Arts | The Oppenheimer Family Foundation | The Polk Bros. Foundation | The Benjamin Rosenthal Foundation | Wells Fargo Foundation
JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 7 continued from page 5 for free, mostly in order to "preserve some sanity." These episodes, still live, drew initial viewership in the tens of hundreds, and are still viewable. Orbert credited his WDCB radio show with helping him "feed our audiences," mentioned he'd blown flugelhorn at one of Elling's "Porch Concerts" (literally webcasts from his home) and afterwards heard from new fans in places he'd never been.
Davis's Chicago Jazz Philharmonic found advantage in shifting its educational programming online, as one of its workshops reached highly motivated students in the Cuban province of Matanzas who hung in for an interactive session despite Internet lapses. No such problems hampered the extraordinary five nights of programming HotHouseGlobal, Horberg's Twitch.TV channel starting on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, beaming live music-making by Roscoe Mitchell, Junius Paul and Tomeka Reid, among others in alternation with shows by Cuban stars of the annual Jazz Plaza festival.
Experimental Sound Studio, which has an aesthetic focus on improvisation, new composition and electronic had launched its Quarantine Concerts on March 23, 2020, to try to keep musicians busy and with income stream possibilities. Horberg acknowledged that HotHouse had followed their model, and indeed, keeping musicians and their enablers employed seemed to be the primary motivations of these presentation efforts. Monetizing isn't shunned, but is such a challenge it can't be allowed to stop things from happening.
In mid-April Fulton Street Collective began its live- streams, including Jazz Art Record Collectives' re-creation of classic albums by current Chicagoans. As at concerts in the JARC loft, a visual artist works simultaneous with the music. "Tip jar" information is onscreen throughout the live-stream, urging viewers donate to support the artists/entertainers.
Steve Rashid related an evolution of the business-plan supporting Studio5 programming (which has also been heard on WDCB), from paywalled to free to now a ticketed event at Studio5 (which also has broadcast exposure on WDCB). Wanting to distinguish what they put on from an ever-more crowded field of livestreams, Rashid with his wife and sons dreamed up "Into the Mist."
It's an innovative integration of live performance, Zoom-enabled interaction and immersive website design whisking attendees virtually to 1927, where they engage with actors portraying celebrities of those days. The 90-minute event, which one navigates independently, culminates in a real-time performance by the Chicago Cellar Boys. Conceptually clever, relatively economical to stage and all-but-seamlessly realized, "Into the Mist" suggests the shape of online entertainments to come.
Toward that future, all the panelists in "The Show Goes On Online" agreed on several principles. Yes, live- streaming programs had stretched their production capacities and sometimes their budgets, but they had discovered workarounds. True, digital representation can't match live-in-reality experiences, however the potential audience is vastly enlarged by webcasts, there's no reason to give up the ability to play for people wherever there's an internet connection, and some hybrid of in-person and on-screen projects is sure to be sustained. Also, the documentation these webcasts provide, often of artists at the start of their careers, will be invaluable in years to come. Most important, perhaps, is that we come to acknowledge live-streamed jazz as undeniably the soundtrack of now.
Besides "The Show Goes On Online," in late February I moderated the Zoom panels "Reviewing 'Live' In the Age of Covid" for the Jazz Journalists Association, and "An International Artists Roundtable Discussion" featuring Chicago-native saxophonist Chico Freeman and his band in residence at the venue Moods in Zurich, Switzerland. All of these programs can be watched on YouTube. n JAZZ IN CHICAGO MARCH 2021 8 EDUCATION CORNER CAMILA MENNITTE PEREYRA - VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE
The Jazz Institute, in partnership with Constellation, is excited to feature a live stream performance on March 13th by Jazz Links Fellow Camila Mennitte Pereyra. Camila was born and raised in Córdoba, Argentina, and currently resides in Chicago. She moved to the States in 2014 to pursue her Bachelors in music at UW-Eau Claire and then went on to pursue her Masters at Indiana University. The concert will feature works by female composers and arrangers as well as some pieces by South-American composers. Camila will be joined on stage by Lenard Simpson, Zachary Finnegan, Andrew Lawrence, and Matt Ulery. The concert will be streamed at 8pm on Saturday, March 13th via JIC on our Facebook page, and by Constellation on their YouTube and Facebook pages.
The Jazz Links Fellowship Program offers opportunities to learn on-the-job with JIC mentors’ guidance, and performance opportunities across the city in communities underserved by the arts. The fellowship is supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
JAZZ LINKS VIRTUAL JAM SESSION: KATIE ERNST
The Jazz Links Virtual Jam Sessions continue March 10th with bassist Katie Ernst.
Taught by the Jazz Links house band members, the Jazz Links Virtual Jam Session video series is ideal for beginners of all ages who want to develop their musical musical proficiency and apply it to their practice routine. The videos are released at 5pm on the second Wednesday of each month and can be viewed on our Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube pages.
JAZZ LINKS STUDENT COUNCIL
The Jazz Links Student Council is still accepting new applicants. Created in 2005, the Jazz Links Student Council (JSLC) gives high school jazz musicians the opportunity to develop musically and professionally through exposure to live music, workshops with professional musicians, and performance opportunities throughout the city. In addition, JLSC members have participated in master classes at Columbia College, produced a CD, and are mentored in the business of music by veteran jazz artists. While the Jazz Institute of Chicago will not be hosting in person events during the current pandemic, the Student Council will continue to meet in a virtual format. Meetings generally take place monthly on Friday evenings during the academic year. Participation in Student Council also provides access for students to take part in the NextGenJazz Emerging Artists Project, which provides students with the guidance and resources to begin leading their own groups in a real-world professional setting.
Students wishing to join the Student Council are required to submit an application that can be accessed on our website (www.jazzinchicago.org)