Death At Chevelle Show
“Hundreds of friends and family members gathered at Bartlett High School on Memorial Day to remember a 24-year-old former football player who died after falling from a catwalk at the Aragon Ballroom over the weekend,” the Tribune reports.
“[Kyle] Kirchhoff, a defensive line coach for the College of DuPage who went to Loras College in Iowa, died Friday night during a rock concert by the band Chevelle at the North Side venue. Kirchhoff was with two friends on the Aragon’s second-floor balcony when the trio wandered through a door, a source said.
“Two of the three found their way to a catwalk where they were able to watch the show, and after a short while, they noticed Kirchhoff wasn’t with them. When they searched for him, they found his body. He had apparently fallen about 6 to 8 feet onto two metal rods, the source said. Kirchhoff suffered two wounds to his chest and was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at 10:54 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office and police.”
*
Here’s Chevelle’s statement on Facebook.
Sonic Beauty
“Very few avant-gardists have achieved such a union of sheer musical audacity and unfettered swing as the luminous pianist Myra Melford,” Chris Searle writes for The People’s Daily Morning Star.
“She was born in Glencoe, Illinois, in 1957 and grew up in Chicago. Fascinated by boogie woogie as a young woman, but also living, listening and playing in the Windy City, it was the genre-breaking sounds of the musicians who comprised the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, like pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and violinist Leroy Jenkins, who provoked her adventurous spirit, as well as studies with powerfully innovative pianists like Art Lande and Ron Blake.”
*
From Wikipedia:
“Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an ‘explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn’t seem to have been designed for.'”
*
Here she is:
Noted: “[Mason Bates and Anna Clyne] will host their final MusicNOW concert June 1 at the Harris Theater, with avant-garde jazz artists John Zorn and Myra Melford playing their own music.”
Hologram Kizzie
Interesting interview with the former Psalm One, straight outta Englewood.
Noted: “Hologram Kizzie released Hug Life in 2014 out on Bonafyde. You can catch her next at The Promontory on June 4.”
Accordion Hero
“There was a time in America when playing accordion was akin to playing electric guitar today,” Pete Wicklund writes for the Racine Journal Times.
“And Frank Ricchio was masterful enough at the instrument that he developed a reputation regionally and nationally. Enough so that band leader Lawrence Welk offered him the job that Myron Floren ended up taking, to become Welk’s most famous band member.
“Ricchio may have missed out on that opportunity for national fame. But he made a name for himself in the Milwaukee area and was able to make a career out of music and provide for his family of nine children.
“Ricchio died at the age of 91 on Good Friday, a day fitting for the devout Catholic, said his son Frank Ricchio Jr.”
Remembering Billy Butler
“Billy Butler’s voice was a beguiling mix of strong and plush,” Maureen O’Donnell writes for the Sun-Times.
“That’s no surprise, when you consider two of his biggest influences were Curtis Mayfield, the soul giant whose purr was a featherbed for the ears, and his big brother, Jerry ‘Iceman’ Butler, who sang with the luster of a pearl and the grit that made it.
“The creator of an exuberant 1960s Chicago soul sound whose compositions were recorded by Al Green, Isaac Hayes and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Billy Butler died of cancer March 31 at a Chicago nursing home. He was 69.”
*
1967:
–
Comments welcome.
Posted on May 27, 2015