Geof Bradfield and Mike Allemana performed as part of the adapted 2020 Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Sunday, September 27 at Allison Davis Garden in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL. For more details about the Hyde Park Jazz Festival visit hydeparkjazzfestival.org.
Born in Houston, TX, saxophonist and composer GEOF BRADFIELD has shared the stage throughout North America, Europe, Russia, Asia, Africa and the Middle East with jazz luminaries such as Randy Weston, Carl Allen, Brian Blade, Rodney Whitaker, Etienne Charles, Joe Locke, and Orrin Evans. He also performs and records regularly with fellow Chicago artists including Dana Hall, Clark Sommers, Jeff Parker, Matt Ulery, Marquis Hill, and Ryan Cohan, to name a few. His work is featured on 50+ CDs, including seven albums as a leader that have garnered critical accolades from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Downbeat, the Chicago Tribune and NPR. Bradfield has been recognized in Downbeat Critics Polls as a Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist and Arranger. Birdhoused, recorded live at Chicago’s legendary Green Mill jazz club and released on Vancouver label Cellar Live in 2017, garnered 4 ½ stars from Downbeat. His most recent large scale work Yes, and…Music for Nine Improvisers (Delmark Records 2018) was commissioned by Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program with the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and features a nonet of top-flight Chicago and New York artists.
A committed educator, Bradfield is Professor of Jazz Studies at Northern Illinois University and has given master classes and lectures at the Brubeck Institute, the Manhattan School of Music, the Jazz Education Network conference, and numerous other national and international venues.
Born and raised in Elmhurst, IL, MIKE ALLEMANA started playing guitar at the age of 8. In 1997, Von Freeman asked Mike to join his group at the New Apartment Lounge, a tenure that lasted until Freeman’s passing in 2012. While with Freeman, Mike toured to Berlin in 2002, which was released as Vonski Speaks on Nessa Records in 2009, and recorded on Von Freeman’s 2002 release The Improvisor on Premonition Records.
Other career highlights include performances with Dr. Lonnie Smith in 1998 and 1999, a four-year residency at Andy’s Jazz Club with tenor saxophonist Ron Dewar from 1998-2002, a 2005 performance at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center with Von Freeman and drumming legend Mickey Roker, a 2006 performance with Von Freeman and master drummer Jimmy Cobb, and performances with alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. In 2010, Mike toured to Poznan, Poland to perform with fellow Chicago guitarists Bobby Broom and Jeff Parker for the Made in Chicago Festival. The Jazz Institute of Chicago commissioned him in 2011 to arrange Von Freeman’s original compositions for a 10-piece ensemble for the Made in Chicago concert series at Millennium Park which featured special guests Eric Alexander, Julian Priester, and Steve Coleman. He travelled again to Poznan in 2011 to perform an original 4-part suite dedicated to Von Freeman written for jazz octet, commissioned by the Made in Chicago Festival. Allemana joined forces with guitarist George Freeman (b. 1927) in 2013 to form the George Freeman/Mike Allemana Organ Quartet which performs every April with drumming legend Bernard Purdie. This band was captured live in 2015 for the 2017 release Live at the Green Mill on Ears&Eyes Records. In 2021, Mike will be part of vocalist Alyssa Allgood’s lastest album and will release Vonology on Ears&Eyes Records.
In 2019, he was awarded the Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and earned his Ph.D. in June of 2020. His dissertation, “‘Will You Still Be Mine?’: Memory, Place, Race and Jazz on Chicago’s South Side,” examines how the racialized geography of Chicago’s South and North Sides has shaped and continues to shape lived musical experience on the local jazz scene, with particular focus on the late saxophonist Von Freeman’s South Side jam sessions at the New Apartment Lounge. For the 2020-2021 academic year, Mike will be a Humanities Teaching Fellow in the Music Department at the University of Chicago.
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