Jazz Train Coming To The CTA

Jazz is coming to el, though it won't be cheap.

Beginning this weekend, the CTA will start running a car featuring live Jazz musicians on a Purple Line train running from downtown to Evanston and back.

"People ride the CTA every day to work, but we thought this would be a good chance to take the train out of that context and put it in a different one," Daniel Melnick, the program director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, told the Tribune's Howard Reich.

The new car, called the Chi-Jazz El Train by the Mayor's Office of Special Events and the Jazz Institute of Chicago, leaves on its inaugural two-hour trip from the Library Stop at 1 p.m. Sunday. A CTA historian will point out noteworthy landmarks along the way.

Guitarist Neal Alger, saxophonist Brian Gephart, and bassist Mike Arnopol will be playing live in one car while the music is piped to the others.

"It's certainly a gig unlike any other," Alger told the Tribune's Reich.

It'll cost a lot more than the normal CTA fare to ride, however. Tickets are $15 for the general public and $10 for Jazz Institute members. Food and non-alcoholic drinks will be allowed.

Get tickets here.