A Chicago-based jazz trio has earned an award for an album recorded live during a performance at a Springfield theater.
The trio of Paul Wertico, David Cain and Larry Gray recorded their album ``Sound Portraits'' last summer at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. It won top honors for a live performance at the annual Independent Music Awards given out on Tuesday.
Wertico is a seven-time Grammy Award winner who teaches jazz studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He says the performance was 100 percent improvised and came ``spontaneously from the heart.''
The album was one of thousands of entries submitted for the awards selection. The group is currently editing and mixing a performance at the Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, which Wertico says inspired the music.
