Hitting the jazz highway

Salinger-Ridley, Ko, Jensen, Zamora, Barnick *

Building your jazz skills isn’t just about playing your instrument, singing your songs, developing your style and strengthening your improvisational skills. It’s also about dealing with challenges on the road, disruptive sleep patterns, and getting along with your band mates as you jump on the van and head to the next gig.

Four students from the Boston-based Berklee College of Music will absorb a lot of that experience starting Thursday when they join trumpeter Ingrid Jensen on a five-date concert tour winding through parts of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. They’ll perform five gigs in five nights.

A golden career is being honored this week

Larry Monroe
(Photo by Phil Farnsworth)

Larry Monroe helped shape and expand the reach of Boston-based Berklee College of Music over the past 50 years in many ways. Most notably, Monroe helped establish Berklee’s international network of schools in 12 countries, including Berklee Valencia, the college's new campus in Spain.

His Berklee ties are strong - as a student, teacher, dean, vice president and global ambassador. As an educator, he influenced saxophonists Branford Marsalis, Miguel Zenon, Donald Harrison and countless others. Early in his career, alto saxophonist Monroe performed with Lou Rawls, Buddy Rich and Dizzy Gillespie.

The college will celebrate Monroe’s many contributions, but in some ways likely mourn his retirement, with a Berklee Performance Center concert on Thursday night, October 18, featuring students and faculty, former Monroe student Donald Harrison and Italian bassist Giovanni Tommaso, who helped Monroe create Berklee's 27-year partnership with the Umbria Jazz Festival.

It’s a fitting sendoff. What a run it has been.

Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival 2010

Taking note of newcomers, up-and-comers
The Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s annual jazz festival in bucolic Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is many different things to the thousands of attendees, some of whom seem to be there every single year.

It’s a chance for summer weekend reunions of families, extended families and groups of friends - who roll in with coolers, lawn chairs, tarps and tents each day and their own branded signage during the last weekend in June.

It’s a chance to experience a village fair-like musical smorgasbord: catch a bit of music (generally jazz, blues, R&B and a bit of world music), on the main stage, bask in the sun or duck for cover during a gentle shower, catch a bit of the afternoon series on the smaller stage up the hill, and wander through the huge arts and crafts tent. Or groove to the drum circle one group of attendees sets up under one of the balcony ramps every year - performing between main stage sets.
George Duke, Al Jarreau ...>

For two days, it feels like a community unto itself. For more mainstream tastes, SPAC’s main stage amphitheatre offers the bigger names, the household names for the most part - Ramsey Lewis, Ahmad Jamal, Ann Hampton Callaway, Taj Mahal, Al Jarreau and George Duke, the contemporary sax team of Gerald Albright and Kirk Whalum, and the weekend closer, Gladys Knight.
Ann Hampton Callaway... >

The Gazebo stage up the hill has evolved through the years to be the up close and personal showcase for fresh talent and newer bands. It’s where you get the energizing, affirmation that jazz will be in good hands for many years to come.

There were several personal highlights among this year’s showcase opportunities at the festival’s 33rd edition:

Trio of Oz - This festival marked the North American debut of this stunning new band with drummer Omar Hakim, pianist Rachel Z and bassist Maeve Royce. You’ll hear an original dropped in here and there, and something by Nicolazzo’s old boss Wayne Shorter, but this is principally a chance to put a terrific jazz twist on rock music that has touched the players deeply – with a songbook that stretches from Alice in Chains to Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Dungen, Police and Stone Temple Pilots. The way they stretched

“King of Pain” and “Angry Chair” was fascinating. Royce’s powerful and rock-solid bass notes are the glue for Hakim and Z to dig deeper into the music.

Trumpeter Mario Abney, > who calls New Orleans and Chicago his home bases. His hard bop-rooted sextet bubbled with hip-hip energy and enthusiasm, the three-man horn line working the crowd second-line-style twice to close the Saturday Gazebo schedule - once on “Rollin” and on the encore, “When the Saints Go Marchin In” - in a set that went 20 minutes over schedule. People loved it. One woman even jumped atop a picnic table under a nearby tree to grove to the musical energy - with her hula hoop.

Hailey Niswanger, this 20-year-old saxophonist, who hails from Portland, Oregon, is the latest wunderkind to emerge from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Her sound is anything but derivative. She lets her melodies breathe and is judicious in the notes she opts to play, particularly on soprano. Niswanger >> (pronounced NICE-wonger) does kick her intensity up a bit on alto. She offered her takes on Coltrane, Monk, Ornette Coleman, Ellis Marsalis and three originals. Keep your eyes and ears open. This young adventurer has also been working for the past year in the Boston-based Either/Orchestra big band.

Saxophonist JD Allen’s trio with Gregg August on bass and Rodney Green on drums. This is a rising talent with a great sound, and Saratoga offered him an upstate showcase - outside the New York club scene.

Other Gazebo treats: a chance to hear live the talented young bassist Linda Oh’s trio and Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s quartet.

On the main stage: clarinetist Evan Christopher provided a beautiful 21st century update to some historic New Orleans fare, including Tommy Ladnier’s “Mojo Blues” from 1929. Taj Mahal presented a long set of global blues and guitarist Al DiMeola added to the world music feel with his New World Sinfonia.
Evan Christopher ... >

Singer Ann Hampton Callaway put a strong jazz twist on her American Songbookfare on Chick Corea’s exotic “Spain” (lyrics by Al Jarreau) and “At Last.” Ramsey Lewis’s longstanding trio celebrated the core of his gospel and Chicago blues grounded sound.

And Juan de Marcos Gonzalez >> presented his 13-piece Afro-Cuban All Stars in a 70-minute energetic set that had many in the crowd up dancing at their seats – or in the aisles.

Seeking fresh talent – and honoring Dr. Fast Hands

This is the 16th consecutive year that faculty members from Boston’s Berklee College of Music will jet to San Juan for one of its (now global) outreach programs. Berklee in Puerto Rico will provide classes and award $300,000 in scholarships for young musicians to attend Berklee. Saxophonist Miguel Zenon, a participant in Berklee in Puerto Rico’s first year, is one of more than 100 such scholarship recipients from Puerto Rico.

This year, more than 200 young musicians will take part in the program June 1 to 6 at Escuela de Bellas Artes de Carolina. And on the final day of the jazz education program, a group of top students will perform as the opener at the Puerto Rico Heineken JazzFest’s final evening at the Tito Puente Amphitheater in San Juan. (This year’s festival runs June 3 to 6.)

Berklee will also honor Puerto Rico’s strong musical roots that evening by awarding an honorary doctor of music to percussionist, composer and bandleader Giovanni Hidalgo (pictured).

The Puerto Rico native is considered one of the best conga players of his generation - and possibly the fastest. Hidalgo, a member of late trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s adventurous United Nation Orchestra, taught in Berklee’s percussion department from 1992 to 1996.

Hidalgo will receive his honorary degree in a terrific festival spotlight: between sets of the festival’s finale. It is a big band extravaganza featuring 10 special guests: Eddie Gomez, Dave Valentín, Paquito D’Rivera, Michel Camilo, Alex Acuña, Eddie Palmieri, Chick Corea, Andy González, Gato Barbieri - and conguero Hidalgo.

That evening figures to be a dandy - and a great way to put a wrap on the festival's 20th annual edition.

Reminders of the future of jazz

For those naysayers and/or moldy figs who say, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that jazz is dead, don’t buy it. The music isn’t even on life support, given the attention and interest it receives from music educators and their serious students at college, high school and lower levels.

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington” competition each May draws perhaps the most fanfare. But it certainly holds no monopoly.

Consider last weekend’s Charles Mingus High School Competition at the Manhattan School of Music, where schools from New England dominated the winner’s circle.

Among Mingus’s compositions performed were “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” “Fables of Faubus,” “Better Get Hit in Your Soul,” “Jelly Roll” and “Ecclusiastics.”

Competition co-founder Sue Mingus, the bassist’s widow and musical champion, said: “For years, Mingus’s music was thought to be too difficult to perform, and today, the spirit and vitality that was heard by all of the young musicians playing Mingus’s music was really thrilling.”

The winning ensembles included:

• Best Big Band – Regular High School: The Rivers Big Band, The Rivers School; Weston, Massachusetts (Philippe Crettienne, director).
• Best Big Band – Specialized School: Academy Big Band, Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts; Hartford, Connecticut (Douglas Maher, director).
• Mingus Spirit Award: Rio Americano Combo, Rio Americano High School, Sacramento, California. (Maxwell Kiesner, director).
• Best Combo – Regular High School: Foxborough High School Jazz Quintet, Foxborough, Massachusetts (Stephen C. Massey, director).
• Best Combo – Specialized High School: Manasia Improv Ensemble, Manhattan School of Music Precollege (Jeremy Manasia, director).
  

Congratulations to these winners, as well as the winners of best arranger, and outstanding and section categories from this nationwide competition.

Berklee Festival is right around the corner
It is also good to note that in less than a month – March 13 – Boston’s Berklee College of Music will host its 42nd annual High School Jazz Festival, with 200 bands and 3,000 musicians expected to compete for $175,000 in partial scholarships to Berklee’s Five-Week Summer Performance Program.

The Hynes Convention Center event will also feature free clinics by trombonist and producer Delfeayo Marsalis, drummer Peter Erskine and trumpeter Eric Miyashiro, as well as performances by the Crescent Super Band, an internationally touring all-star high school ensemble from Utah, Berklee's Concert Jazz Orchestra, Global Jazz Institute, City Music, Salsa, and P-Funk ensembles. New this year is Band Slam, a non-competing category for students who play non-jazz styles, ranging from hip-hop to bluegrass.

For more information, visit: http://www.berklee.edu/events/hsjazzfest

September spirit

There is a lot of programming diversity going on near and far for jazz and jazz venues in September. These caught my interest. I know I will catch at least one of them in person. And it is a great time to confirm that jazzlives#

September 2 - Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles - The original members of Return to Forever reunite for a concert that will open Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White’s first worldwide trio tour. For this one show, they will be joined by RTF’s original guitarist Bill Connors, as well as special guests Chaka Khan and Jean-Luc Ponty. Connor's appearance will mark the first performance of Return to Forever's original electric lineup since 1974.

Labor Day Weekend

September 4, 5 and 6 - Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Lenox MA - This year, in addition to several straight-ahead performances, is blending some classical works into some of its sets at Ozawa Hall. See this earlier post for details.

September 4, 5 and 6 - Chicago Jazz Festival - This annual free event takes place on three stages in Grant Park. The Dave Holland Big Band is Saturday night’s headliner at the Petrillo Bandshell.

September 4, 5, 6 and 7 - Detroit International Jazz Festival. This huge free, outdoor event is marking its 30th year with events on five downtown stages. It opens with a concert by Hank Jones as the festival honors one of the great families in jazz. the Clayton Brothers, Dave Brubeck and the Brubeck brothers, John and Bucky Pizzarelli, Larry and Julian Coryell, The Heath Brothers, Pete and Juan Escovedo, Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, and T.S. Monk in “Monk on Monk” - a performance honoring the musical legacy of his father, Thelonious Monk.

September 18 to 26 - Boston’s Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival will showcase more than 20 bands at various clubs and venues. The free, six-block-long outdoor extravaganza along Columbus Avenue on Saturday the 26th will include Donald Harrison, Joe Louis Walker, Jane Bunnett, and the Defenders of Groove with Melvin Sparks, Ernie Andrews and Plas Johnson.

September 26 - Singer Barbra Streisand performs at New York’s historic Village Vanguard - the world’s most famous jazz basement - for a performance three days before the release of her new jazz/cabaret album Love Is the Answer, which features the singer with the Diana Krall quartet and Johnny Mandel. According to her Web site, this will be Streisand’s first club appearance since 1961, when she opened at the Vanguard for Miles Davis. There is a catch. This is a free show for winners of a contest for those who pre-ordered the CD from her site.

Big numbers in a January without IAJE

A jazz-related gathering in Boston next weekend will be a hang of sorts for thousands, but not on the wide range of levels as the gone-but-not-forgotten IAJE conferences.

Saturday, January 31 brings the Berklee College of Music's 41st annual High School Jazz Festival, with some 3,000 musicians in 200 bands competing for $175,000 in Berklee scholarships.

In addition to the student competitions, the Hynes Convention Center event will feature concerts and clinics (free and open to the public), featuring brothers Delfeayo (trombone) and Jason Marsalis (vibes), and drummers Gregg Bissonnette, John Blackwell and Terri Lyne Carrington.
Berklee says the festival, originally called the New England High School Stage Band Festival, is the oldest and largest competition of its kind in the United States. That longevity is remarkable - and laudable.