Howard Reich has covered the arts for the Tribune since 1977 and joined the staff in 1983. He has written five books: “Portraits in Jazz,” “Let Freedom Swing,” “Jelly’s Blues” (with William Gaines), “Van Cliburn” and “Prisoner of Her Past” (originally published as “The First and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich”). He has served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Music four times, including the first time a jazz work won: Wynton Marsalis’ “Blood on the Fields.” Reich has received two Deems Taylor Awards from ASCAP; Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University's Alumni Association; seven Peter Lisagor Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists; and an Excellence in Journalism Award from the Chicago Association of Black Journalists. The Chicago Journalists Association named him Chicago Journalist of the Year in 2011 and has given him three Sarah Brown Boyden Awards.
Marquis Hill, a rising Chicago trumpeter who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has won one of the most prestigious jazz competitions in the world.
Charlie Parker died more than half a century ago, at age 34, but his music resonates in our culture to this day.
The spirit of Louis Armstrong swept into the Jazz Showcase on Thursday night, thanks to the work of a musician who rightly sees enormous value in Satchmo's model.
You don't have to be a jazz aficionado to be acquainted with Herbie Hancock, a protean musician who has ventured far afield from his jazz and classical roots to become something of an icon of American culture.
He was the greatest jazz virtuoso to pick up a saxophone and a primary architect of the musical language we call bebop.
It was a three-and-half-hour marathon of songs — some indelible, some forgettable, all sharing at least one rarefied trait: Each appeared in a Tony Award-winning musical.