LESTER BOWIE

A RT I S T F E AT U RE
photo courtesy of the artist
Chicago drummer Mike Reed, 42, is a realist—and a
visionary. More than a dozen years ago he experienced
his own epiphany about the (jazz) music business and
his place in it while working part-time as a bartender.
“I was thinking about my future and how I didn’t want
to still be a bartender when I was 39…or 49,” he recalls.
Reed, who had been involved with different bands in
Chicago’s music ferment since his mid ‘90s return after
completing a degree in English and Psychology at the
University of Dayton Ohio, was already co-curating a
series of Sunday sessions at the Hungry Brain club
with cornet player Josh Berman. Earlier, while working
for a marketing agency, he had helped organize city
concerts encouraging people to vote in the presidential
election. Promotion seemed to be the appropriate
career choice and within a year, he had partnered with
Pitchfork, a Chicago-based online music magazine, to
create the annual summer Pitchfork Music Festival.
Related to his booking expertise, but more sui
generis to the jazz community was another series of
incidents that happened about five years ago. Reed,
looking for investment property, found out that the
owners of the Viaduct Theater in Chicago’s northwest
wanted to sell. Almost simultaneously an e-mail
arrived from Links Hall, the venerable arts organization
offering space to performing artists for the research,
development and presentation of new works. Rising
rents meant Links needed a new location and it was
willing to sign a multi-year lease to obtain it. With
Links as a committed tenant, Reed could afford to
purchase and renovate the theater. Since the space had
already been zoned to include a bar and Links’ need
was during the day, why not create a club there as
well? Before getting fully involved he wrote three long
memos listing the pros and cons and showed them to
friends involved in business. Most thought it a viable
proposition. He received a small business grant to help
with the conversion and within three years
Constellation has become one of the prime venues for
progressive music in the city and pays for itself.
“Business is actually organizing a system and working
out logical plans and processing,” explains Reed.
Besides Pitchfork and Constellation commitments,
Reed is also part of the programming committee of
Chicago’s city jazz festival and was Vice-Chairperson of
the Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM) from 2009-11. Last year Reed and a
partner bought Hungry Brain, which has a similar
booking policy as Constellation. Citing his commitment
to local music, Reed was recently named one of the city’s
most influential people by Chicago Magazine.
This business acumen shouldn’t distract from the
fact that Reed is very much an active recording and
touring musician, part of many bands, the newest of
which, Flesh & Bone with long-time associates alto
saxophonist Greg Ward, tenor saxophonist Tim
Haldeman, bass clarinetist Jason Stein as well as new
recruits Ben Lamar Gay (cornet) and Kevin Coval and
Marvin Tate (spoken word), will perform at this
MIKE
REED
by ken waxman
month’s Vision Festival. Reed has long been drawn to
lyrics, so an association with spoken-word artists isn’t
a stretch. Growing up in Evanston, a Chicago suburb,
he was first interested in blues and classic soul music
and later rock and rap before getting into jazz.
Admitting that his parents weren’t very supportive
of having a jazz drummer in the house, playing music
was more or less put on hold until he entered the
University of Dayton. Deciding that he wanted to play
again he began spending his time with friends in the
school’s jazz program. At that point the department
was so small he was allowed to participate as much as
he wanted.
On school breaks, he was able to attend shows by
local Chicago legends from swing drummer Barrett
Deems to bop saxophonist Von Freeman. Reed’s desire
was to be Philly Joe Jones and move to New York but a
fellow university musician convinced him that the
Windy City would be a better choice. Reed soon started
playing as much as he could, attending sessions led by
Freeman at The Apartment Lounge or by tenor
saxophonist Fred Anderson at The Velvet Lounge.
“That was a pivotal moment in Chicago,” Reed
remembers. “There was the emergence of underground
groups such as Tortoise, the various configurations of
Ken Vandermark and the Chicago Underground and
the reemergence of Fred Anderson. It opened the door
to a completely creative scene that if you felt you had
enough talent you could pull it off.”
Around the same time Reed developed as a
composer. “It didn’t seem to be odd to write your own
tunes,” he notes. He had begun composing in college
after he realized that rather than transcribing and
arranging tunes he liked, he could create his own in a
similar style. That skill was put to good use as he
formed bands such as People, Places & Things and
Loose Assembly, most of which feature the same
musicians involved in Flesh & Blood. “Around 1999
I got involved with thinking ‘what is jazz’, began
appreciating different sounds and concentrating on
original music,” he says. Reed, who had been working
and recording with musicians associated with the
AACM such as saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Ed
Wilkerson, cellist Tomeka Reid and flutist Nicole
Mitchell, was asked to join the association in 2004.
Besides putting his organizational skills to work, he
explains that his musical work with all AACM members
is on an equal footing, with them playing his
compositions as well as him playing theirs.
Reed, who devoted Proliferation, a CD with People,
Places & Things, to Chicago hardbop classics plus CDs
with Loose Assembly, The Speed of Change and
Artifacts, a trio with Mitchell and Reid, to versions of
AACM classics, feels there’s a lot more jazz created
and played in Chicago that can be exposed nationally
and internationally. His work in the studio, at his
clubs, at concerts and with the local jazz festival is
designed to help promote the city’s creative music
scene any way he can. v
For more information, visit mikereed-music.com. Reed is at Judson
Memorial Church Jun. 12th as part of Vision Festival. See Calendar.
Recommended Listening:
• Mike Reed—In The Context Of (482 Music, 2004)
• Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly—Last Year’s Ghost
(482 Music, 2005)
• Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things—
Stories and Negotiations (482 Music, 2008)
• Jason Adasiewicz Sunrooms—Spacer (Delmark, 2011)
• Roscoe Mitchell/Mike Reed—In Pursuit of Magic
(482 Music, 2013)
• Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things—
A New Kind of Dance (482 Music, 2014)
billy lester
Solo piano concert
at
the Drawing room,
56 Willoughby St. #3,
Brooklyn nY 11201.
Saturday, June 11th
7pM. $25 admission
info@drawingroommusic.com
new music.
billylestermusic.com
youtube.com/user/
billylestermusic
THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | JUNE 2016 7