If no one reports it, did it happen?

If no one photographs it, will you read about it?

I’m not going to go into the music itself, but in the past month I’ve heard extraordinary performances by major Chicago and international improvisers and ensembles debuting intricate compositions — and read not a word about any of it, although the concerts I’m thinking of at Northwestern University, the Logan Center at University of Chicago, and the popular recital hall Constellation were all well attended. Makes me wonder: did they happen?

You know, the old “tree falls in the forest” thing. If you didn’t hear it, do you care? Does the music only have impact to those present or does it extend to those knowledgable? In the forest, flora and fauna may absorb the soundwaves and molecular changes, may adapt their behavior as a result of the fallen tree. Butterfly-effect notwithstanding, without reportage, recording, myth or speculative description, how does music unreported, like the fallen forest tree, touch the human world?

Conversely, one might wonder why there ever were “reviews” of music (or dance or theater) performances? Only to sell future tickets? Or to take those performances seriously — that is, to consider their statements and affects?

NUNC!6 — Northwestern University’s New-Music Conference (“made possible in part by the Sorensen Jacobson Fund for New Music”) was a three-day affair, 11 presentations in all, including on the day I attended a brilliantly wide-ranging lecture by composer-educator-author-innovator George Lewis. There were convention-stretching pieces played by virtuosi instrumentalists; two hours of electro-acoustic works, recorded and/or live, and the International Contemporary Ensemble doing six works, ending with Lewis’ “Hexis” (2013 - below performed by Ensemble Dal Niente).

Students, local composers (many of them teach) and veteran aficionados, packed several music-friendly rooms with Lake Michigan just outside. Red-winged blackbirds were squawking. Maybe campus was abuzz about all this new music in the days that followed, but nothing in the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, Reader, Block Club, or elsewhere. Ok, I get it, no pop stars there. (P.S., I noticed no anti-semitism at Northwestern, which I lived near at the end of high school and have been on campus occasionally ever since.)

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, arguably a jazz star, played his soprano soft, slow and soothing, his tenor more rambunctiously, headlining the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s annual Gala (disclosure: I’m a board member) at the glamorous though boomy ballroom of the Hilton Hotel.

The well-dressed crowd; Branford Marsalis with pianist Jahari Stampley, drummer Dana Hall, bassist Eric Revis, photos © J Foster, cropped poorly by Substack

The venue did no favors to Marsalis’s regular quartet’s pianist Joey Calderazzo and bassist Eric Revis, but drummer Dana Hall — director of DePaul University’s Jazz Studies program, as well as busy gigging and recording — fit in well without rehearsal, several times clicking creatively with Marsalis, drawing him out. And Jahari Stampley, a 25 year-old Chicagoan who came up through Jazz Institute education programs and won the 2023 Herbie Hancock Piano Competition, sat in. I don’t expect reviews of performances at expensive fundraising events, but when we speak of jazz being underfinanced it may be newsworthy that 400-some attending for dinner, tickets ranging from $200 to $500 per seat, with paddle-raise $-pledging and sponsorship opportunities raised approximately $96,000. Nice night.

The Grossman Ensemble at the Logan Center’s large concert hall presented a program of four world premieres, again ending with a George Lewis work. This chamber group is a Chicago institution, seemingly as expert and adventurous at the International Contemporary Ensemble, performing the music (by composers Christopher Stark, Elizabeth Ogonek, Paul Novak as well as Lewis),crisply and clearly, pace and balance set unfussily by conductor Timothy Weiss. The program was intriguing in its abstractions and — to me, at any rate — sui generis approach to forms. I found it hard to get a handle on structures, needing to hear the pieces again as they slipped by so that I felt I’d hardly heard them once. Video will be posted on YouTube shortly — meanwhile, here’s a sample from a 2023 performance, electro-acoustic “Simulacra” by Felipe Tovar-Henae, also conducted by Weiss.

Then there was the would-be 70th birthday party at Constellation for Mars Williams, the spark-plug avant-garde and pop-rock woodwind and toys specialist who died last year. A big band directed by trombonist Jeff Albert up from New Orleans, with the ace Chicago horns of Ken Vandermark (tenor and clarinet), Jon Irabagon (bass sax and sopranino), Dave Rempis (alto and tenor), Ben LaMar Gay (cornet), with Steve Marquette, guitar; Macie Stewart, violin; Lia Kohl and Fred Lonberg-Holm, cellos, Anton Hatwich, bass; Tim Daisy and Michael Zerang, drums. Below: an extended trailer for a documentary on Mars introducing “Devil’s Whistle” at New Orleans’ Music Box Houses. If you’re really interested, here’s the whole Constellation set.

There, I’ve done it. Left a record, sketchy as it is, in words. May music reign. If we can’t hear it, let’s read or hear about it.