Recent Jazz Articles

I had the opportunity to interview with Fred Anderson on several occasions. In each instance I walked away with the feeling that I was a better person for the time I spent with him. It was his wisdom, his generosity of spirit, his knowingness that our time here on this planet was short at best, and ...

There aren't many artists with so singular a vision as that of late Fred Anderson, who died June 24 at the age of 81. There are fewer to be certain if the list is restricted to members of that exalted and nebulous class called “masters." It's a word that, in jazz, gets thrown around a little ...

Fred Anderson Trio Birthday Live 2000 Asian Improv 2009 Fred Anderson 21st Century Chase Delmark 2009

Of all the players who have come through Fred Anderson's training ground in Chicago, none has been more closely identified with him than drummer Hamid Drake. But as ...

Fred Anderson 21st Century Chase Delmark Records 2009

Saxophonist Fred Anderson turned 80 on March 22, 2009 and celebrated the occasion with a concert at The Velvet Lounge in Chicago. He called in fellow tenor player Kidd Jordan, bassist/cellist Harrison Bankhead, guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Chad Taylor to join ...

Fred Anderson and Chad Taylor Solos and Duos Concert Series University of Massachusetts at Amherst December 5, 2007

The function of superlatives is to thrust what is being described into a zone of excellence considered untouchable. Such hyperbolic words can paradoxically lose power, especially when used so much they become ...

Carrying on tradition brings history through time without imitation. Not all musicians make it their job to ensure that the music of the past, while changeable as a result of the passage of cultural time, stays intact. It's all about new tunes and improvisation: the creation of music that upholds the tradition, with those to whom ...

Fred Anderson/Harrison Bankhead The Great Vision Concert Ayler 2007 Fred Anderson Timeless Delmark 2006 Fred Anderson/Hamid Drake From the River to the Ocean Thrill Jockey 2007 Irene Schweizer/Fred Anderson/Hamid Drake Live Willisau & Taktlos ...

Fred Anderson Timeless/Live At The Velvet Lounge Delmark Records 2006

If there's a particularly effective way of documenting free jazz on DVD, this could be it. The fact that the old Velvet Lounge, the club saxophonist Fred Anderson owns, has now disappeared beneath the ravages of the bulldozers, ensures that ...

Fred Anderson Timeless: Live At The Velvet Lounge Delmark 2006

Shot during the final days of the original Velvet Lounge, Timeless presents tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson's trio playing one of his last shows at the Southside Chicago bar he has run since the early 1980s. A victim of poor urban ...

Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson has seen it all in his 75-plus years. One of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the '60s, Anderson has been tireless in his mission to nurture young jazz talent in his hometown of Chicago, Ill.. With his first club in the '70s, The Birdhouse ...

The Art Ensemble Of Chicago With Fred Anderson November 6, 2002 Earshot Jazz Festival Seattle, WA

The first set started slowly with woodwinds player Roscoe Mitchell striking a large metal bowl with a mallet. He did this repeatedly while Malachi Favors, who was dressed in African garments and was wearing ...

It was broad daylight the first time I drove down to Chicago's South Loop, just to see where Fred Anderson's legendary Velvet Lounge was. I went right passed it. In the middle of the afternoon, there isn't much going on in the area that surrounds the city's mammoth convention center, McCormick Place. Squeezed in between an ...

Improvised music always is at its most exciting in a live setting. Of course the orthodox purists of free improvisation would argue that there is no point in “fixing" a musical improvisation by recording it. They might say that the stamping of a CD takes the life out of a performance. I would argue that while ...

Next door to the Velvet Lounge in Chicago's Near South Side neighborhood is Fitzee's Bar-B-Que, a chicken joint whose counter sports a bullet-proof window separating the kitchen and dining room. Across the street is a recently constructed LaSalle Bank branch, complete with ritzy landscaping. Walking down the street on a recent Saturday night, you might not ...