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Jazz in the city.

Christmas Eve 2023.

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Jazz in the city [ Christmas Eve 2924 ]

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Greg Spero Live Show Review: 7/31, Polk Bros Park, Chicago

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Mere hours before performing Friday night at Polk Bros Park, Greg Spero posted a picture on Facebook of himself boarding a plane from L.A. in a gas mask. The Highland Park native was returning to Chicago to perform as part of Navy Pier’s Water Colors series, weekly free jazz nights that have occurred despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Audience members could bring their blankets, chairs, food, and drinks and sit in pre-drawn, socially distant circles, required to don a mask should they choose to leave to take a picture or use the bathroom. As Spero started playing solemn, rolling piano notes, he was joined on stage by a masked Dee Alexander; she removed her face covering and belted a rendition of Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy”. The rest of the band then joined, some wearing masks, the others, like the horn players, obviously not, spaced out on stage as much as they could. This was a COVID concert.

As jazz venues like The Green Mill have inexplicably reopened without singers or horn players in order to mitigate risk of transmission, the Water Colors series seemed infinitely more “normal” in comparison, or at least a hell of a lot safer. Perhaps the ultimate test of normalcy, I found myself grooving to the lively sax-and-trumpet-led tunes, vocal trills, hand percussion, and scratchy guitar and drum solos, as if a pandemic wasn’t even going on. It also helped to have an overwhelming display of talent on stage in general; Spero remarked that he was embarrassed even calling it his show, buoyed by Alexander, percussionists Kalyan Pathak and Charles Heath, bassist Jeremiah Hunt, trumpeter Corey Wilkes, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, tenor saxophonist Irvin Pierce, and spoken word artist J. Ivy. They elevated tracks like Spero’s “No Rest For The Weary”, co-written by Peter Yastrow (and whose studio version features the Chicago all-star duo of Makaya McCraven and Junius Paul) and versions of Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” and John Lennon’s “Imagine”, normally overdone but unique in their hands. Most exciting was the performance of a track called “The Chant”, built around tugging horn lines, part of an upcoming album called The Chicago Experiment to be released on Ropeadope. (The track “Maxwell Street” from the album has already been released.)

Sure, the occasional wandering, panicky thought entered my head while at the show. Did Navy Pier pay for Spero’s gas mask? Did all of the band members get tested before the performance? Why isn’t that Karen’s mask covering her nose? Seeing a live show right now, unable to stand and dance, not at a drive-in in the suburbs but in Chicago, was weird. The model presented by Navy Pier was workable for nights like this, but not sustainable for a local or national industry by any means. But I think I and a lot of other people needed, at least for one safe night, the communal experience, that of being alone, together.