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Aug. 14--Nearly a year ago, the colossal New Orleans tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan was gearing up to play his annual date at Chicago's fabled Velvet Lounge, on the Near South Side.
But the Labor Day-weekend engagement, timed to coincide with the Chicago Jazz Festival, never took place, because Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed Jordan's house and forced him to flee to Baton Rouge.
Over the weekend, Jordan made his first return to Chicago since the onslaught of Katrina, and he marveled at the sleek new home of the Velvet Lounge, which opened to the public two weeks ago at 67 E. Cermak Rd.
"This is some place -- I can't get over it," said Jordan, recalling the somewhat battered interior (and exterior) of the old Velvet, on South Indiana Avenue.
With a player of Jordan's stature as headliner, it's no wonder the Velvet promoted his weekend run as the club's official grand opening, though many musicians have played the room during the past fortnight.
Regardless of the billing, however, there was no question that Jordan and colleagues set a high standard for the Velvet Lounge, where a capacity audience turned out to hear him. Joined by iconic Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson (who owns the Velvet), plus the explosive drummer Alvin Fielder and the versatile Chicago bassist Tatsu Aoki, Jordan presided over some of the most thunderous, soulful musicmaking yet heard at the new club.
The sheer endurance and stamina that Jordan and Anderson showed -- improvising together for more than an hour without pause -- had to inspire musicians half their age (many of whom were in the audience).
But it wasn't just the remarkable lung power of their work that made an impression. The ingenuity of their duets, the heroic scale of their performances and the fierce individuality of their statements made Friday evening's first set indelible.
Though skeptical listeners might draw few distinctions among practitioners of "free jazz" improvisation, in which soloists improvise outside of traditional concepts of melody and rhythm, Jordan and Anderson in fact command unmistakably distinctive voices.
Listen to Jordan playing at peak form, as he did over the weekend, and you'll hear an avalanche of ideas, expressed in bursts and exclamations. The penetrating and sometimes acidic quality of his tone, the telegraphic nature of his themes and the squeals of his high-register playing distinguish his work from anyone else's.
Anderson, by contrast, long has preferred to issue long, rumbling, low- and mid-register phrases that convey a rugged lyric beauty of their own.
To hear the two musicians working together -- Jordan's ecstatic cries dovetailing with Anderson's majestic riffs -- was to gain new appreciation for their ability to adjust to an ever-shifting musical landscape.
hreich@tribune.com
Douglas Ewart and Inventions plays at 9 p.m. Friday, and Ernest Dawkins' South Africa project plays at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Velvet Lounge, 67 E. Cermak Rd.; $10-$20; 312-791-9050.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
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