Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/89744
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER HOFFMAN TALENT PATROL Josh Berman at the Chicago Cultural Center's Preston Bradley Hall. promoting cutting-edge jazz and improvised music. Now the group's annual Umbrella Music Festival—held this month at the Chicago Cultural Center and other venues—is recognized as one of the year's most influen- tial weekends of jazz, promoting Chicago as worldwide hub for improvised music. Berman grew up in Elmhurst but spent a lot of time hanging out at places like the old No Exit Cafe in Rogers Park; his affinity for straight-ahead jazz in high school prompted him to give the trumpet a try. "I rented a horn from some place in Lombard—I was 17," he recalls. As an 18-year-old, Berman started playing the trumpet for two hours a night, with his friend and colleague Weasel Walter on INSIGHT On Chicago jazz: "The scene is smaller, but the intensity is the same. All the famous guys live in New York, so we do our own thing." On his career: When Berman was told it would take 10 years to become good, "I was like, 10 years!? I'll be almost 30!" drums. "Ultimately I got so hung up with the music, I dropped out of Columbia College, and we moved to Wicker Park.... It was a ridiculous time," Berman says. He realized that if he really wanted to pursue music, he'd have to study. "Brad Goode, a fantastic trumpet player, liked my enthusiasm and gave me an appropriate instrument—he was ready to teach me how to do everything," he says. But Berman was young and unfocused; he spent a long time struggling with how to play, how to prac- tice, and how to create the music he loved and appreciated. "I dropped out of scene for a long time and practiced. I didn't really resurface until the late '90s. If you want to be a great trumpet player, a com- the josh berman THIS COMPOSER AND CORNETIST IS A RISING STAR ON CHICAGO'S JAZZ SCENE. BY SARAH PRESTON GORENSTEIN F orty-year-old Josh Berman has been a leader of Chicago's impro- vised, free-jazz music scene for more than a decade, but in a way his career is just taking off. Performing with such talents as Ab Baars, Jeb Bishop, Bill Dixon, Ken Vandermark, and Rob Mazurek, Berman came onto the scene as it was forming in the '90s. In 2006 he cofounded the Umbrella Music Group, a 52 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM collective dedicated to presenting and poser, sadly, you actually have to learn to read and write music—you have to learn how to play scales." That effort paid off. A couple of years later, drum- mer and promoter Mike Reed asked Berman to start booking the Hungry Brain with him. Reed's interest at the time was progressive jazz—a more consonant style—while Berman was more of a free jazz, noisy, modern music kind of guy. "He wanted to put a series together that split the difference between these two musics," Berman explains. This curated series is now part of the Umbrella Music Group, cofounded by Berman, which includes three weekly series as well as this month's Umbrella Music Festival. In 2009 Berman released the album Old Idea to critical acclaim, and he followed it up this year with There Now, released in July. "Being a musician is a funny life," Berman says. "It's weird when you get paid $11 for something you can get paid $1,000 for the next day." The Umbrella Music Festival takes place November 7 through 11 at the Chicago Cultural Center and other local venues; 312-744-6630; umbrellamusic.org MA a