The Chicago Jazz Festival gets under way next week, and next week’s edition of the Reader will feature a comprehensive preview written by John Corbett, Bill Meyer, and yours truly. But the action gets started even before the paper hits the streets, with a couple of free screenings of Sun Ra documentaries A Joyful Noise and Mystery and Mr. Ra at the Chicago Cultural Center on Monday and Tuesday (part of larger celebration of the pianist and bandleader’s centennial) and a three-part series of early-evening solo piano performances at PianoForte Studios, also free. In this week’s paper I previewed Wednesday’s performance by New York’s Matthew Shipp, but don’t sleep on Tuesday’s concert by Chicago soul-jazz progenitor John Wright (early jazz specialist Sam Grossner kicks things off on Monday).
Today’s playlist:
