A strong pair of shows taking place in Chicago on Sunday.
INDIGO TRIO This group’s new Live in Montreal, recorded in 2005, captures the first time its members–flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Harrison Bankhead, and drummer Hamid Drake–performed as a trio. That’s astonishing, not just because they’ve collaborated so often in other groupings over the decades, but because on the CD they sound like they’ve spent years absorbing the material (four collective improvisations and two Mitchell originals), hovering together in that sweet spot between detailed lyricism and airy spontaneity. Mitchell is one of Chicago’s most talented improvisers and well on her way to becoming jazz’s greatest living flute player–great enough to redeem the notion of jazz flute for people who’d otherwise think of Will Ferrell. Here she threads skeins of melody through long-form harmonic structures and terse motific variations, while the rhythm section nonchalantly follows her complex lines as if they’d memorized the schematics beforehand, tugging and tightening where needed. Though Mitchell largely runs the show, there’s plenty of space for Bankhead and Drake, whose extended solos effortlessly maintain the music’s snap and swing. Live in Montreal is the third album in the online-only Paperback Series on Dave Douglas’s label Greenleaf. This early show is a release party; the Jazz Jam with Isaiah Spencer begins at 9. –> 6 PM, Velvet Lounge, 67 E. Cermak, 312-791-9050, $15. –Peter Margasak
MINGUS BIG BAND Charles Mingus was a paradigm-shifting bassist, a volatile bandleader, and a quite readable author. But it’s his skill as a prolific and visionary composer, of everything from tough and tender ballads to rollicking jazz anthems, that has allowed the Mingus Big Band to remain fresh and viable for the past 15 years. Though Mingus did write large-ensemble material, the MBB works instead from new arrangements of small-group classics like “Boogie Stop Shuffle” and “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as well as lesser-known masterworks such as “Free Cell Block F” and “Cumbia & Jazz Fusion.” Mingus’s widow, Sue, directs the band, continually reconstituting it by drawing from a pool of former Mingus sidemen–trumpeter Jack Walrath on this tour–and recruiting such excellent young soloists as saxophonist Donny McCaslin, trombonist Ku-umba Frank Lacy, and pianist Orrin Evans. Take-no-prisoners music may not strike you as the first thing you want to hear in the morning, but that only makes this “jazz brunch” performance all the more unusual. –> 1 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 Roosevelt, Berwyn, 708-788-2118 or 312-559-1212, $20.
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