The quiet side of Dana Hall’s art on display at Winter’s Jazz Club
In most contexts, Chicago drummer Dana Hall emerges as a center of gravity and energy. The question on Wednesday night was how all that sound and intensity would play in...
Home > Reviews
All Stories
‘Porgy and Bess’ uncut: Revelations on an American classic in Michigan
A few weeks before the first performance of the opera “Porgy and Bess,” in its Boston tryout of 1935, composer George Gershwin attended a run-through of the epic work in...
Stars come out for Elmhurst College Jazz Festival
How do you top a 50th anniversary? The question applies to the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival, which last year celebrated the golden milestone featuring singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, the Vanguard...
A buoyant solo set from Chicago treasure Erwin Helfer at the Hungry Brain
Was it a club date? A piano recital? A romping solo session of blues, boogie and more? All the above, really, when 82-year-old Chicago pianist Erwin Helfer sat down at...
Lauren Deutsch prepares to leave top post at Jazz Institute
Executive directors of arts organizations don’t typically last for decades. But when Lauren Deutsch steps down from that post at the nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago on March 1, she...
Mavis Staples, Delmark tribute highlight 35th Chicago Blues Fest
A set by Mavis Staples, a tribute to Little Walter and a salute to Chicago-based Delmark Records and its founder, Bob Koester, will headline the 35th annual Chicago Blues Festival,...
DePaul grad Amir ElSaffar leads profound concert at Symphony Center
The year is young, but what likely will stand as one of the more profound concerts of 2018 took place Friday night in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center. For trumpeter...
Scott Hamilton and Harry Allen celebrate swing
The much-missed Chicago radio announcer Dick Buckley used to call them the “good old good ones”: jazz standards that never tire the ear, no matter how many times you’ve heard...
Amir ElSaffar expands the definition of jazz
Jazz always has embraced the sounds of far-flung cultures, from the French and Spanish influences in music of Jelly Roll Morton to the Afro-Caribbean experiments of Dizzy Gillespie and Chano...
‘Body and Soul’ doc explores links between jazz and Jews
Its haunting melody has inspired more than 3,000 recordings, most notably saxophonist Coleman Hawkins’ 1939 masterpiece. But what does Johnny Green’s “Body and Soul” tell us about jazz, race and...