Fred Anderson makes first trip to KC

Kansascity.com previews Anderson.

Look up tenor sax man Fred Anderson in any good jazz reference book and you’ll see his music described in phrases like “avant-garde” and “free.”

But ask Anderson, who is 79 and making his first trip to Kansas City this weekend, and he’ll describe it in much more conservative terms.

“I don’t consider it playing ‘outside,’ ” he says on the phone from the Velvet Lounge, the important Chicago club he has run since 1982. There’s a “structure” in everything he plays, he says.