The Velvet Lounge
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The Velvet Lounge
The Velvet Lounge was a nightclub in the South Loop of Chicago. It started as a jazz club and was called the "dusty epicenter of the Midwest's free form jazz scene." It was located at 2128 1/2 S. Indiana Avenue before moving to 67 E. Cermak when the original building was scheduled for demolition. It closed permanently in 2019. History The club was established in 1983 by jazz saxophonist Fred Anderson who owned the business until his death in 2010. Many live albums were recorded at the club, including a series of performances featuring Anderson himself, on the Delmark label, and 1998's ''Live at the Velvet Lounge'' with Anderson, Peter Kowald, and Hamid Drake. Many prominent musicians played the Velvet Lounge early in their careers, particularly in Sunday night jam sessions. The club's standard lineup of the early 1990s featured trumpeter , saxophonist Art Taylor, pianist , bassist , and drummer . From the mid 1990s, the "Velvet Graduates" house band included tenor saxophonist ...
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South Loop, Chicago
The Loop, one of Chicago's 77 designated Community areas in Chicago, community areas, is the central business district of the city and is the main section of Downtown Chicago. Home to Chicago's commercial core, it is the second largest commercial business district in North America and contains the headquarters and regional offices of several global and national businesses, retail establishments, restaurants, hotels, and theaters, as well as many of Chicago's most famous attractions. It is home to Chicago's Chicago City Hall, City Hall, the seat of Cook County, Illinois, Cook County, and numerous offices of other levels of government and consulates of foreign nations. The intersection of State Street (Chicago), State Street and Madison Street (Chicago), Madison Street, located in the area, is the origin of the address system of Roads and expressways in Chicago, Chicago's street grid. Most of Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park's 319 acres (1.29 km2) are in the eastern section of ...
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Fred Anderson (musician)
Fred Anderson (March 22, 1929 – June 24, 2010) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who was based in Chicago, Illinois. Anderson's playing was rooted in the swing music and hard bop idioms, but he also incorporated innovations from free jazz. Anderson was also noted for having mentored numerous young musicians. Critic Ben Ratliff called him "a father figure of experimental jazz in Chicago". Writer John Corbett referred to him as "scene caretaker, underground booster, indefatigable cultural worker, quiet force for good." In 2001, author John Litweiler called Anderson "the finest tenor saxophonist in free jazz/underground jazz/outside jazz today." Biography Anderson was born in Monroe, Louisiana. When he was ten, his parents separated, and he moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he initially lived with his mother and aunt in a one-room apartment. When Anderson was a teenager, a friend introduced him to the music of Charlie Parker, and he soon decided he wanted to play saxophone, ...
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Delmark Records
Delmark Records is an American jazz and blues independent record label. It was founded in 1958 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The label originated in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1953 when then owner, and founder, Bob Koester released a recording of the Windy City Six, a traditional jazz group, under the Delmar imprint. History Born in 1932 in Wichita, Kansas, Bob Koester was the son of a petroleum engineer. While in the hospital with polio when he was a child, he listened to the radio and was cheered up when he heard Eddie Condon and Benny Goodman. In his teens, he was a dedicated jazz fan who began buying old records from a Salvation Army store. At concerts in Kansas City, he heard Red Allen, Count Basie, Jimmy Rushing, Tommy Douglas, Lionel Hampton, and Jay McShann. Moving from Wichita to St. Louis to attend college, Koester began his career as a record trader in his dormitory room. Joining a local jazz club gave Koester his first taste of live jazz, seeing Clark Terry per ...
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Live At The Velvet Lounge
''Live at the Velvet Lounge'' is an album by American jazz saxophonist Fred Anderson with German free jazz bassist Peter Kowald and long-time collaborator drummer Hamid Drake. The record documents a June 1998 performance at the Chicago club owned by Anderson, the Velvet Lounge, and was released on the Okka Disk label.''Live at the Velvet Lounge''
at Okka Disk


Reception

In her review for , Joslyn Layne states "Before you know it, the trio is in the midst of a lively musical display that melds Anderson's all-out blowing, Kowald's extended techniques, and Drake's skill in hand percussion." ''



Peter Kowald
Peter Kowald (21 April 1944 – 21 September 2002) was a German free jazz and free improvising double bassist and tubist. Career A member of the Globe Unity Orchestra, and a touring double-bass player, Kowald collaborated with many European free jazz and American free-jazz players during his career, including Peter Brötzmann, Irène Schweizer, Karl Berger, Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, Karl E. H. Seigfried, Conny Bauer, Jeffrey Morgan, Wadada Leo Smith, Günter Sommer, William Parker, Barre Phillips, Joëlle Léandre, Alfred Harth, Lauren Newton and Evan Parker. He also recorded a number of solo double-bass albums, and was a member of the London Jazz Composer's Orchestra until 1985. He also recorded a number of pioneering double bass duets with Maarten Altena, Barry Guy, Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips, William Parker, Damon Smith and Peter Jacquemyn. In addition, Kowald collaborated extensively with poets and artists and with the dancers Gerlinde Lambeck, Anne M ...
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Hamid Drake
Hamid Drake (born August 3, 1955) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. By the close of the 1990s, Hamid Drake was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influence, in addition to using the standard trap set, Drake has collaborated extensively with top free jazz improvisers. Drake also has performed world music; by the late 1970s, he was a member of Foday Musa Suso's Mandingo Griot Society and has played reggae throughout his career. Drake has worked with trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Fred Anderson, Archie Shepp and David Murray and bassists Reggie Workman and William Parker (in many lineups) He studied drums extensively, including eastern and Caribbean styles. He frequently plays without sticks, using his hands to develop subtle commanding undertones. His tabla playing is notable for his subtlety and flair ...
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Art Taylor
Arthur S. Taylor Jr. (April 6, 1929 – February 6, 1995) was an American jazz drummer, who "helped define the sound of modern jazz drumming".Watrous, Peter (February 7, 1995)"Art Taylor, 65, Jazz Drummer Who Inspired Young Musicians" ''The New York Times''. Career As a teenager, Taylor joined a local Harlem band that featured Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean and Kenny Drew. After playing in the bands of Howard McGhee (1948), Coleman Hawkins (1950–51), Buddy DeFranco (1952), Bud Powell (1953), George Wallington and Art Farmer (1954), Powell and Wallington again (1954–55), Gigi Gryce and Donald Byrd (1956), he formed his own group, Taylor's Wailers.Feather, Leonard & Gitler, Ira (2007), ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'', p. 637. Oxford University Press. Between 1957 and 1963, he toured with Donald Byrd, recorded with Miles Davis, Gene Ammons and John Coltrane, and performed with Thelonious Monk; Taylor also was a member of the original Kenny Dorham Quartet of 1957 ...
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Karl E
Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austrian Emperor * Karl (footballer) (born 1993), Karl Cachoeira Della Vedova Júnior, Brazilian footballer In myth * Karl (mythology), in Norse mythology, a son of Rig and considered the progenitor of peasants (churl) * ''Karl'', giant in Icelandic myth, associated with Drangey island Vehicles * Opel Karl, a car * ST ''Karl'', Swedish tugboat requisitioned during the Second World War as ST ''Empire Henchman'' Other uses * Karl, Germany, municipality in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany * ''Karl-Gerät'', AKA Mörser Karl, 600mm German mortar used in the Second World War * KARL project, an open source knowledge management system * Korean Amateur Radio League, a national non-profit organization for amateur radio enthusiasts in South Korea * KARL ...
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Mike Reed (musician)
Mike Reed (born May 26, 1974) is an American jazz drummer, bandleader, composer and music presenter. Career Reed was born in Bielefeld, Germany, in 1974, but raised in Evanston, Illinois north of Chicago. He returned to Chicago in the 1990s after majoring in English and psychology at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He played with David Boykin Expanse, Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra, and the Josh Berman Quartet. He leads the quintet Loose Assembly and the quartet People, Places & Things, with whom he recorded several albums on the 482 Music label. In 2000 he and cornetist Josh Berman started the Sunday Transmission music series at the Hungry Brain bar in Chicago in 2000. He helped start Downtown Sound music series, a free weekly concert program in Chicago's Millennium Park that has included indie rock, world music, and contemporary soul. He is a founding director of the Pitchfork Music Festival and joined the committee that programs the annual Chicago Jazz Festival. Sin ...
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Constellation (Chicago)
Constellation is a performing arts nightclub in Chicago, Illinois, "with an emphasis on forward-thinking practices particularly in the areas of jazz, improvised, experimental, and contemporary classical music." Constellation was founded in 2013 by Mike Reed, a Chicago-based drummer and composer. Reed was originally Constellation's for-profit (nominally) owner and then, from 2018 through at least 2021, its nonprofit organization president. Constellation has replaced, and expanded upon, the now-closed Velvet Lounge as a hub of avant garde jazz and improvised music in Chicago. Musicians who have played at Constellation include Fred Hersch, Bobby Broom, Ari Brown, Josh Berman,Ben Ratliff"Merging Textures Across the Decades" ''The New York Times'', August 17, 2012. and many others. See also *List of jazz clubs This is a list of notable venues where jazz music is played. It includes jazz clubs, clubs, dancehalls and historic venues such as theatres. A jazz club is a venue where th ...
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Downbeat Magazine
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the "downbeat" in music, also called "beat one", or the first beat of a musical measure. ''DownBeat'' publishes results of annual surveys of both its readers and critics in a variety of categories. The ''DownBeat'' Jazz Hall of Fame includes winners from both the readers' and critics' poll. The results of the readers' poll are published in the December issue, those of the critics' poll in the August issue. Popular features of ''DownBeat'' magazine include its "Reviews" section where jazz critics, using a '1-Star to 5-Star' maximum rating system, rate the latest musical recordings, vintage recordings, and books; articles on individual musicians and music forms; and its famous "Blindfold Test" column, in a ...
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List Of Jazz Clubs
This is a list of notable venues where jazz music is played. It includes jazz clubs, clubs, dancehalls and historic venues such as theatres. A jazz club is a venue where the primary entertainment is the performance of live jazz music. Jazz clubs are usually a type of nightclub or bar, which is licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Jazz clubs were in large rooms in the eras of Orchestral jazz and big band jazz, when bands were large and often augmented by a string section. Large rooms were also more common in the Swing era, because at that time, jazz was popular as a dance music, so the dancers needed space to move. With the transition to 1940s-era styles like Bebop and later styles such as soul jazz, small combos of musicians such as quartets and trios were mostly used, and the music became more of a music to listen to, rather than a form of dance music. As a result, smaller clubs with small stages became practical. In the 2000s, jazz clubs may be found in the basements of large ...
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