Listen to Chicago jazz master Fred Anderson play his horn—his tone as big as all outdoors, his ideas tumbling one atop another—and it's clear that, musically at least, he maintains the vigor of youth (as well as the lung power).
Yet Sunday night, when Anderson takes the stage of his iconic Velvet Lounge, on the Near South Side, he'll launch a weeklong festival celebrating his milestone birthday (which occurs March 22, as the fest reaches its climax). Major jazz artists from across the city and around the country will meet at the Velvet for what everyone is dubbing Fred Fest, to play tribute to a musician who has nurtured more jazz careers than he can remember.
“When you look at the cross-section of musicians he has inspired, it's incredible," says percussion virtuoso Kahil El'Zabar, who, like many of his colleagues, has rearranged his international touring schedule to participate in the festival.
“Someone like a Corey Wilkes or a Junius Paul or a Ken Vandermark or a Kahil El'Zabar— Fred's commitment has had an effect and an inspiration on all of us."
For more than 25 years, Anderson has nurtured young, often radical Chicago musicians early in their careers—when no one else would—and encouraged them to play the music they wanted to play. In so doing, Anderson has given the world scores of brashly iconoclastic jazz artists. From twentysomething innovators such as pianist Justin Dillard and saxophonist Kevin Nabors to seasoned experimenters such as Mwata Bowden and Ernest Dawkins, Anderson has been muse and mentor, champion and protector.
His only regret about this remarkable achievement is that neither the festival nor the Velvet stage is big enough to accommodate everyone who wants to thank him musically during the next several nights.
“That's the sad part," says Anderson, seated in the empty club on a recent weekday, the chairs turned upside down on the tables, the 3 p.m. light streaming in from Cermak Road.
“I want the players to know that even if you weren't invited to play in the festival," adds Anderson, “we still love you, and there's room for everyone the rest of the year."
It's critical to note, though, that Anderson would not have lured to his club so many gifted artists of so many generations were it not for the eloquence and integrity of his work on tenor saxophone. Just as he never compromised in his music—refusing to play publicly until he was well into this 30s, when he finally felt ready to be heard—so he never asked his colleagues to make concessions in their art. Yet Anderson's philosophy was a long time in the making, the future artist virtually stumbling into music as a child and backing into it as an adult.
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