Fred Anderson in the Chicago Tribune

[Lazaro Vega]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/northwest/chi-ovn_jazz0608jun08,1,6666563.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

"THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE"

As Fred Anderson returns to local stages, jazz musicians sing his praises

Prolonged illness can't silence this free-jazz giant

By Howard Reich, "Tribune" arts critic (hreich@tribune.com)

Published June 8, 2007

It has been more than six months since Fred Anderson played in public, and some listeners have been wondering whether he ever would perform again.

But this weekend, the 78-year-old tenor saxophone giant will return to the stage of the Velvet Lounge, the South Side club he developed as a nexus for new music in Chicago. Better still, Sunday's cameo performance with the Great Black Music Ensemble will launch a month's worth of dates that will place Anderson directly in the spotlight -- where he belongs.

Though Anderson doesn't want to get into the specifics of the health woes that sidelined him for so long, he says that, generally speaking, he had run out of energy for the first time in his life.

"I was run down," says Anderson, who first picked up his horn again a month ago and has been reacquainting himself with it ever since.

"All those years I was playing around the world, I didn't get sick. I had a long run," adds Anderson, who understood that his performance career might be coming to a close.

"But I took a lot of tests, and it worked out fine," continues Anderson. "I had some good doctors, and they put me back on track again."

For the past several weeks, Anderson has been rehearsing alone on stage at the Velvet Lounge -- building up his breath and stamina, working to recapture the plush tone and heroic musical gestures that long have been his trademark.

To anyone who follows Chicago jazz, his return comes as something of a blessing.

"It's not just all the people out there who love and Fred as a musician who will welcome him back," says Lauren Deutsch, who serves as executive director of the non-profit Jazz Institute of Chicago.

Anderson's comeback, continues Deutsch, "has great resonance for all the musicians who look to Fred as a father figure."

Indeed, from his role as a founding member of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the mid-1960s to his stewardship of the Velvet Lounge starting in the early 1980s, Anderson has been a guiding spirit to some of the city's most intrepid young artists. Everyone from veteran reedist Mwata Bowden to ascending young trumpeters Maurice Brown and Corey Wilkes have drawn inspiration from Anderson's devotion to the most innovative forms of jazz improvisation.

Equally important, Anderson's Velvet Lounge has given them a forum in which to play their music as they wanted to, without artistic restrictions.

When the Velvet Lounge closed in April of 2006, uncounted musicians played benefit concerts on Anderson's behalf, enabling him to raise the $160,000 needed to reopen the place in its new home, on East Cermak Road. Anderson dug into his own pocket as well, taking a financial gamble at an age when many others might not.

If the reopening of the Velvet Lounge last July was a boon for music in Chicago, Anderson's return to it is no less significant.

"Music is my life," he says, "and I'm just trying to keep this club going."

Fred Anderson will be guest with the Great Black Music Ensemble at 6 p.m. Sunday and will play a CD release party with Hamid Drake, Jeff Parker and Josh Abrams at 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Velvet Lounge, 67 E. Cermak Rd.; $10-$20; 312-791-9050. He also will play at the "Tuesdays on the Terrace" series from 5:30 to 8 p.m. June 19 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; admission is free but reservations are recommended; 312-397-4034.

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From Margaret Davis:

P.S. Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge has a Web site at

www.velvetlounge.net, and you can get on its Email list by

Emailing Stuart Mann at jazz.mann@comcast.net.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

This is good to hear. I only bought my first Anderson album last year.

MG

[gslade]

Great to hear that he is doing ok

[sal]

He's the man.

[Kalo]

Good News! A really fine musician. I hope he stays strong for many more years.