“ ‘It must be soooooo different!!!!’ writes Howard Reich in Sunday’s (11/25) Chicago Tribune. “That’s what many readers, friends and, yes, even colleagues have been saying to me since last summer, when I added classical music to my decades-long coverage of jazz…. Uh, no…. To me, classical and jazz are fundamentally the same…. To visit Orchestra Hall one night, the Green Mill Jazz Club another … feels as natural to me as humming a melody from a Schubert symphony one moment, a phrase from Gershwin’s ‘Porgy and Bess’ the next…. I’m newly impressed by how much the classical world does to enlighten and educate its audience. The program books at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera beautifully illuminate the historical context and inner workings of the music…. Jazz artists often don’t even bother to mention which compositions they’re playing, who wrote them or when…. On the other hand, jazz has it all over classical music when it comes to making face-to-face contact with its audience…. In jazz, you can hear world-class singer-pianist-songwriter Patricia Barber Monday nights at the Green Mill for $8…. Both art forms aspire toward the same goal: to create something deeper and more lasting than the commonplace.”
Posted November 27, 2018
