For fans of jazz great Earl Lavon Freeman — also known as Von and the great Vonski — it doesn’t get any better.
The tenor saxophonist is heading to the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall on Thursday, Feb. 24 to give a free performance with the Von Freeman Quartet and to discuss his life, career and music with Chicago Tribune jazz critic Howard Reich.
To register for complimentary tickets visit: http://rosenberger.uchicago.edu/event_registration.shtml. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the performance begins at 8 p.m.
Freeman, who rarely gives interviews, is renowned as a major force in jazz, helping to shape the craft for more than six decades. “For generations, musicians from around the world have trekked to Chicago for a chance to play with the city’s most revered living jazz artist,” Reich wrote recently in the Chicago Tribune. Reich, one of the nation’s most respected jazz writers, has covered music and culture for the Tribune since 1977.
In June, the University of Chicago awarded Freeman the Rosenberger Medal, an honor established in 1917 by Mr. and Mrs. Jesse L. Rosenberger to “recognize achievement through research, in authorship, in invention, for discovery, for unusual public service or for anything deemed to be of great benefit to humanity.”
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
