The Center for International Exhibition and Performance since 1987
Please join us for our special “pocket JAZZ festival” to celebrate our 35th anniversary and to celebrate our announcement related to a permanent site for HotHouse.
The one-day event on Saturday July 23, 2022 features multi-arts programming in a free event for all ages. The festival will take place in Bronzeville on the historic site of the Chicago Youth Center 3953 S. Michigan. The program will also be simultaneously live-streamed at no charge over our HotHouseGlobal channels (YouTube, Twitch and Facebook).
HotHouse has organized the performances of three renowned Jazz ensembles (Trio W.A.Z., The Fred Jackson Quintet, and Burnt Sugar Arkestra Chamber) group art–making activities, and the presentation of the Jazz Journalist Association Lifetime Achievement Award (posthumously) to the renowned author and musician, Greg Tate- a founding member of the Burnt Sugar Arkestra.
Spoken word artists Marvin Tate and Keith Kelley will also perform literary tributes to Greg Tate.
Against the backdrop of the iconic cultural treasures that are signature contributions to Bronzeville’s legacy as a destination for Afro-arts expression, HotHouse will stage this important gathering subtitled “unity in the community”.
Guests are invited to bring their own chairs and picnic.
In a highly competitive application process, HotHouse received support from the city for this initiative. “This program is partially supported by a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events”.
While the event is free, registration is encouraged via the Eventbrite Registration
The Featured Jazz Ensembles are:
Trio W.A.Z.
Edward Wilkerson
Tatsu Aoki
Micheal Zerang
with special guest Ronnie Malley
The Fred Jackson Quintet with
Fred Jackson Jr – Alto / Soprano sax and percussion
Mai Sugimoto – Alto Sax / Flute
Coco Elysses – Percussion
Josh Abrahams – Bass
Avreeayl Ra – Drums
Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber from New York City
Krunk Imaginations & Hollering Hoodoo Ghosts Conduction # 2 Crew
Shelley Nicole – Vocals/Conduction
Bruce Mack – Vocals/Synthesizer/Conduction
Leon Gruenbaum – Keyboards/Samchillian/Vocals
Lewis “Flip” Barnes – Trumpet
V. Jeffrey Smith – Tenor & Soprano Saxes
Ben Tyree – Electric Guitar
Marque Gilmore the Inna*Most – Trap Drums/Electronic Drums/Conduction
Jared Michael Nickerson – Electric Bass/Conduction
BSAC Photo credit: Sarah M. Golonka & Photo Manipulation: Amy Gail
Emcee Tara Betts
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
TRIO W.A.Z. EDWARD WILKERSON JR., TATSU AOKI AND MICHAEL ZERANG
TATSU AOKI – Bassist Tatsu Aoki is a prolific and accomplished musician, composer and educator. He works in a wide array of musical styles, ranging from traditional Asian music to jazz to experimental music and is a much in-demand artist performing on both contrabass and the shamisen (Japanese 3-stringed lute). He has recorded over 100 albums featuring many of the musical legends of Chicago, including Fred Anderson, Von Freeman, Malachi Favors Maghostut, Don Moye and John Watson Sr. 2006 saw Aoki present his most ambitious work to date, “re: Rooted” a continuation of his “Rooted” composition cycle featuring the MIYUMI Project Big Band at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion. Aoki is the founder and Artistic Director of the Annual Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival.
MICHAEL ZERANG was born in Chicago and is a first generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms. As a percussionist, composer and collaborator, Zerang has over one hundred titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 35 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators, primarily in The United States, Western and Eastern Europe.
EDWARD L. WILKERSON, JR. is one of the great saxophone and clarinet players on the Chicago scene. He is known as a bandleader and composer, particularly associated with medium- to large-scale projects – as founder and director of the cutting-edge octet 8 Bold Souls, and the 25-member performance ensemble Shadow Vignettes. He has been a major presence in Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), teaching composition at the organization’s music school and serving for a time as AACM president. Wilkerson has toured festivals and concert halls throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. “Defender”, a large-scale piece for Shadow Vignettes, was commissioned by the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund and featured in the 10th Anniversary of New Music America, a presentation of BAM’s Next Wave Festival.His music can be heard on 14 recordings, including two film soundtracks and the critically acclaimed albums Birth of a Notion, and 8 Bold Souls, both on his own Sessoms Records label.
Special Guest
RONNIE MALLEY is a multi-instrumentalist musician, theatrical performer, producer, and educator. He has collaborated with artists internationally, composed and consulted for many cultural music projects in film and theater, appeared as a guest artist on several works, and is executive director of Intercultural Music Production in Chicago. Ronnie has a degree in Global Music Studies from DePaul University and is a teaching artist with Chicago Public Schools, Global Voices Initiative, and Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, a faculty member at Old Town School of Folk Music, and a guest lecturer at universities.
THE FRED JACKSON QUINTET
The Erudition Project was originally developed for the sole purpose of autodidact conversations and a vehicle for my compositions. An erudite is a seeker of knowledge, searching for the truth in the matter. All the musicians in the group have been on their own personal explorations of life and music. The aim is to create a sound scape often associated with films. We paint
auditory pictures. The great Ornette Coleman once said “the first thing you play is the territory and the next thing you play is the adventure”. This is the focus of the group’s collaborative efforts to improvise “by any means necessary”.
The Erudition Project is also a tool for the sole purpose of searching one’s personal development. Finding yourself in the music. Catching up with yourself. (Erudition Ensemble or Erudition Trio, etc.)
BURNT SUGAR THE ARKESTRA CHAMBER
Founded by Village Voice icon Gregory Stephen ‘Ionman” Tate (1957-2021) and now led by Dayton Ohio monster groove bassist Jared Michael Nickerson, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber is a NYC-territory band, a neo-tribal thang, a community hang, a society music guild aspiring to the condition of all that is molten, glacial, racial, spacial, oceanic, mythic, antiphonal and telepathic!
In 2022, BSAC continues to give tribute to their sonic Sensei, Maestro Lawrence Butch Morris (1947-2013) for showing them “THE WAY” of Conducted Improvisation allowing them to “never playing anything the same way once,” and to GT for creating the caramelized spaceship allowing BSAC access to a many-splendored and darkly energetic celestial realm of cosmic noise & riddim!
BSAC will present “Krunk Imaginations and Hollering Hoodoo Ghosts #2” for their Hot House debut!
“Listening/watching Burnt Sugar playing live is an intense, amazing experience. The passionate, playful, committed way each artist interacts with the others, their deep respect both for the music and for the other members of the band is a show in itself. A band of equals, where every single unique note is part of the game. If there existed a place where Sun Ra’s Arkestra would meet George Clinton’s Funkadelic/Parliament it’s there you will find Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber.” Pino Saulo Rai Radio 3 / ITALY
EMCEES
TARA BETTS
Tara Betts is the author of two full-length poetry collections Break the Habit, which was published in October 2016 with Trio House Press and her debut collection Arc & Hue on the Willow Books imprint of Aquarius Press. In 2010, Essence Magazine named her as one of their “40 Favorite Poets”.
ART MAKING COORDINATION
MIKAEL DIFIORE
Mikael DiFiore is a visual and conceptual artist based in Chicago. Alongside a personal career in painting, sculpture, and fashion design, Mikael has led dozens of events such as gallery shows, open mic poetry, music festivals, fashion shows, and vending pop ups. With the intent of fueling Chicago’s art community, Mikael has a strong focus on youth artists and providing the resources, exposure, and funds to drive their art career further.
JAZZ JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION
The JJA’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism is determined by the voting of professional journalist members of the JJA to honor enduring, career-long contributions of those who report on, analyze and evaluate the music described as or emerging from jazz. Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism winners include Kevin Whitehead, Stanley Crouch, Patricia Willard, Ted Gioia, Willard Jenkins, Amiri Baraka, Gary Giddins, Neil Tesser, Howard Mandel, Dan Morgenstern, Nat Hentoff and Stanley Dance, among others.
Greg Tate is honored with the Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award for his fresh, original, enlightening and incisive perspective on a broad range of American culture, all informed by his in-depth knowledge of Black music and improvisational activities, as well as his activism in co-founding the Black Rock Coalition and convening musical groups such as Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber.