Made in Chicago is a special festival for how it tries to convey the music's richness. One of the key words to it is: continouity. Chicago Woj-tet's music shows the continuity innate to jazz music, how it connects to the heritage of past decades, how its fruits come from the trees rooted in history. How the presence encompasses both past and future.
Robert Irving III tributes the band to the memory of Wojtek Juszczak that features both the veteran sax player Ari Brown as the youngster Leon Q Allen on trumpet (the sextet is rounded up by Harrison Bankhead, Scott Hesse and Ernie Adams). The first piece is introduced by Irving with comparison of 80s in Poland to 60s in the States, the piece tries to express the rebellious times with ominous modal chords as the audience can hear fragments of talks, speeches, announcements (inbetween them, echoes of Lech Walesa and demonstration of "Solidarność"). Irving's story about his first visit to Poland (with Miles Davis band in the early 80s) was probably as valuable as the sounds themselves.
