I had a chance to hear the Vandermark 5 play in Chicago shortly after fellow Chicagoan Ken Vandermark formed the group in 1996. If my prior experiences of Vandermark are any measure (including his recent appearance in the Bop Shop Atrium with the Ab Baars Trio), it will be a great show when Bop Arts brings them to town at Bop Shop Atrium on August 6th, starting at 8:00 pm. The V5 are an exciting live act that should fill that space and your ears with the same sort of intense improvisation you hear in this video of the V5 from one of my favorite places in the Chicago jazz scene—The Green Mill.

By the way, like Jazz@Rochester, Ken Vandermark is on Twitter where he writes short dispatches from the tours he is doing with his various projects.