Workin' and steamin' at the Chicago Jazz Festival

Jazz musicians have been working up a sweat at the Chicago Jazz Festival this weekend. This is physical labor, with rhythm sections banging away at their instruments in 80-degree heat.

Clark Sommers, playing upright bass in he Dan Cray Trio, arrived with a sunburn, attacked his instrument like a demon, then went tourist and darted about Grant Park catching the remaining acts. Just watching was fatiguing.

Charlie Haden stopped to hear the cicadas leading a pickup band from the far end of the Jackson Boulevard stage. Paul Wertico was physically the frontman, sun shining on his drum set just beyond the stage monitors. The laid-back set was a marked contrast with New Orleans' high-energy Astral Project.

It was hard not to enjoy the small stage, where you could sit close enough to hear the instruments over the public-address speakers. But no one seemed to be enjoying himself more than Ted Hogarth, a baritone sax sideman getting to step out with friends and a stack of Gerry Mulligan big band charts, a Labor Day labor of love.

80 percent of success

Business has spent months reflecting on how to move quickly. A few books like "Our Iceberg Is Melting" have started thousands of executives thinking about doing something unique.

So I took a perverse interest in taking a break from such business reading for "Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up." Maybe I'm not so clever after all. Why not look for advice on transformative change from an improv coach?

Stanford drama prof Patricia Ryan Madson in fact shares some ideas with the "Getting Things Done" brand of productivity advisers. For instance, begin with what seems obvious and once it is under way any task seems smaller.

By "don't prepare," Madson actually is saying to pay attention to the issue at hand rather than plotting your response. Which, if reports on global warming are correct, is what the penguins would do.

All the children are above average

The first look at standardized test results are out, and 64.8 percent of Illinois Scholastic Aptitude Tests at Andersen School this year had passing grades, vs. 64.1 percent citywide.

That was 269th out of the 527 schools for which the city posted composite scores. Not high enough to rate boasts in the real estate ads, but much better than the 31.2 percent just four years ago.

Like many schools, science grades slipped while math improved strongly (70.8 percent passed).

Composite scores nearby include 67.0 percent at Peabody, 71.5 percent at Sabin, 72.7 percent at Burr and 78.7 percent at Pritzker.

Wisdom of the market

There's a message for all corporate managers in the Chicago Tribune report "Keeping the Oil Flowing". BP paid a high price for deferred maintenance, according to author David Greising, in the 2005 explosion of a Texas refinery, the 2006 spill at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and extended repairs to its Thunder Horse platform on the Gulf of Mexico.

But striking a balance between fiscal and quality priorities is not unique to Big Oil, and the balance is difficult even for a company chastened by experience. "The day someone says budget doesn't matter," said BP's top North American official, "well, then I'm working at the wrong company."

No one ever claimed money was no object in the news business. A sign of that industry's troubles came in the Chicago Tribune own lower circulation and flat readership in its most recent circulation audit. Top executive Scott Smith still could accurately characterize as "among the best in the industry."

This writer does not tell tales out of school, so here is not the place to find news of the Tribune Co's impending sale or who is being severed from the company. That only partly explains the lack of posts in this space of late.

Late hours at work also leave little time for establishing the East Village Association website, much less contributing to this one. This year's spring distractions include gardening (no soreness this weekend) and the White Sox (still smarting from Tampa Bay home stand).