Swing shift

BLU AIN’T GREEN Club owners Diane Delin and Greg Pasenko kept hope alive that their Bucktown jazz den might reopen until late July, when they decided to pull the plug permanently.

Photo: Tim Burkhart; Imaging, Jamie DiVecchio Ramsay

FRED ANDERSON

Photo: Peter Bell

In the last two months, the local jazz community suffered a one-two punch. First, in late June, Velvet Lounge owner and saxophone stalwart Fred Anderson died. The passing of one of Chicago’s great musical mentors at age 81 has left a deep void; his avant-garde hub was an incubator of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a collective he cofounded. A week later, the upstart Club Blujazz abruptly shut down, after just four months in business.

The loss of both the sax icon and the Bucktown bop club threw into question whether Chicago could sustain its reputation as a renowned jazz center. However, the local debut of the Clean Feed Festival (previously a New York City–only affair) speaks to the growing momentum of the Umbrella Music collective, a contingent of North Side players and presenters with a soft spot for the left side of the jazz-improv spectrum. In November, the fifth installment of the Umbrella Music Festival will feature a slew of vanguard guests, mostly imported (Swedish saxist Fredrik Ljungkvist, Spanish pianist Agusti Fernandez) but also including American heavyweights like visionary trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and sax warrior David S. Ware. Suggesting a new model for a new century, Umbrella operates in multiple venues: the Chicago Cultural Center, Elastic, Hungry Brain and the Hideout. Instead of a stay at a traditional jazz club, visiting performers typically hit North Side watering holes and independent art spaces (like Heaven Gallery or Elastic).

As the man behind the Hideout’s celebrated Wednesday weekly, the Immediate Sound Series, Mitch Cocanig has first-hand experience in bringing world-class talent to working-class venues. The Umbrella cofounder recently booked a national tour for hometown percussionist Hamid Drake and German reedist Peter Brötzmann. “When the big living legends come to town, they’re either playing at the Jazz Showcase or Symphony Center,” the 28-year-old says, noting the financial disparity (if not chasm) separating the underground from the mainstream. “We’re never going to match those numbers,” Cocanig admits. “If Herbie Hanock comes to town, that’s equal to our entire [annual budget].” Of course, Cocanig and Umbrella aren’t interested in rivaling those institutions. Given its ambitious early bookings, it seemed Blujazz was.

Yet none of the Umbrella venues hosts jazz exclusively. It’s increasingly difficult to cater solely to the genre. Or, in the Bucktown club's case, impossible.

Asked if he was surprised to see Blujazz close, Mike Reed—Umbrella cofounder, director of the Pitchfork Music Festival and vice chairman of the AACM—alludes to another failed venture. “I said the same thing when the Morse opened: ‘How long?’ Opening up a jazz venue, you really have to know how to run a bar.” Reed’s witnessed the shift in the local landscape, having seen jazz programming dry up at venues like the Empty Bottle and, more recently, Green Dolphin Street (where the bookings were never ambitious, to put it politely). The drummer cites the Green Mill as an example of a bustling club that’s jazz-exclusive. “[Proprietor Dave Jemilo] knows how to run a bar,” Reed says. “The bar feeds his ability to have music there.” Reed, who cocurates the Sunday weekly Emerging Improvisers at Roscoe Village pub the Hungry Brain, has a canny sense for catering to a younger audience. “When the HotHouse was around, it was basically at the edge of, like, three colleges and universities,” the 36-year-old notes. “But did they have anything that catered to them? No. Can you go in there and buy a buck-fifty Pabst? No. Well, then, who the fuck wants to hang out there?”

The same might be asked of the Jazz Showcase, with its old-fashioned marketing and publicity. In 2008, father-and-son Joe and Wayne Segal’s swing emporium relocated to a swank new home in the historic Dearborn Station on Printers Row with city support. Reed notes a disparity between the jazz hall’s antiquated repertoire and its potential audience. “There’s a dormitory, like, a block away. Is there anything for those kids? Eighteen-plus shows? They probably do have some of that, but they’re definitely not letting anybody know about it.”

In fact, Showcase offers plenty for students and young performers. “We have students from DePaul, Columbia and Roosevelt University, and we have nights where big bands from those schools play and all the students get in for free,” Wayne tells us, noting “it’s been working out quite well.” Also, the younger Segal adds, the club has no age restriction and often discounts admission for students and musicians.

That approach would’ve come in handy for the defunct Club Blujazz. Although an initial e-mail to the jazz community left open the possibility of resuming operation, co-owner Greg Pasenko puts that idea to rest. “We didn’t wanna borrow any more money, and an investment didn’t come through,” he says. A failed real-estate venture deprived Pasenko and wife Diane Delin (who still helm the 15-year-old Blujazz record label) of “burn money.” The club’s financial woes were clear from its website: At first it boasted an ambitious lineup including celebrated artists like Fred Hersch and Denny Zeitlin but then listed lesser names and slashed cover charges in the weeks preceding the club’s closing. “We always wanted to be more eclectic, we wanted to open the door toward more AACM or Ken Vandermark–type things,” as well as jam bands and world-music acts, Pasenko says, “but felt that we shouldn’t confuse everybody right at the beginning.”

The Velvet Lounge continues to be programmed by Dan Melnick, a volunteer who’s booked the club for two years. Like Anderson, Melnick, a self-employed Web programmer, digs into his own pocket to bring in out-of-town talent on occasion. Anderson’s granddaughter Jasmine Anderson-Sebaggala inherited ownership of the club, but her involvement with the scene isn’t that of her grandfather’s; for one thing, she’s not a musician.

Melnick tells us the Velvet was never profitable for Anderson. It remains a labor of love for both the promoters and the artists, including musicians young and old willing to take a hit for the sake of keeping the venue afloat. “I’ve been talking to William Parker, and Roscoe Mitchell has expressed interest in coming in on his own dime in order to play at the Velvet and support the club,” the former Jazz Institute of Chicago programs manager tells us. Restructuring as a nonprofit is also being considered. The Velvet went through one reimagining when it moved to Cermak Road from its original Indiana Avenue location in 2006. Melnick hopes the jazz haunt can overcome its obstacles again. “I’m optimistic that the Velvet can transform into something that Fred would be proud of.”

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