Musical impacts linger in jazz and beyond

If you’ve ever experienced a musical epiphany, you know of what I write.

It’s about those special encounters with music – not necessarily jazz – where you walk away with goose bumps from the experience. The memories linger for a long time. Perhaps it was the band’s chemistry and musical conversation, perhaps some other intangibles, something that leaves you almost speechless, beyond saying “wow.”

I was reminded of that impact of music last weekend in western Massachusetts at Mass MoCA, the sprawling contemporary art museum in North Adams, housed in a 250,000 square-foot former mill complex.

Mass MoCA’s many exhibits include Dawn DeDeaux and Lonnie Holley’s collaborative installation, Thumbs Up For The Mothership. 

Their multi-faceted installation consists primarily of found objects that were recrafted and are exhibited in ways designed to provoke serious thinking about the issues facing our planet.

The Strength of Music.....

Holley’s portion of the exhibit space included the folk artist and musician’s installation called Vox Humana III: The Strength of Music Lives After the Instruments Are Destroyed.

Detail

This Alabama-born artist, now based in Atlanta, combined a wide range of junked/destroyed musical instruments into a visual commentary. To me, it said, the best musical experience lingers long after the notes ebb into the night.

Other viewers may have different takeaways. That's just fine. That's art's purpose. Right?

Artful jazz with a few twists

Bill Buchman

Sarasota-based Bill Buchman is an artful guy. He's a renowned painter and art teacher. The several places he teaches these days include the Venice FL Art Center. On Thursday, January 22, he set his brushes aside and wore a different hat - as a very fine jazz pianist. Buchman teamed up with bassist Don Mopsick and drummer Chuck Parr in the South County Jazz Club's  matinee performance series in the Art Center's main gallery.

Jazz and its makers link to other artistry

Many musicians aren’t one-trick ponies when it comes to artistry. Trumpeter Miles Davis, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, bassist John Heard and singers Tony Bennett, Kate Westbrook and Meredith d’Ambrosio are just a few who have had solid reputations as painters.

Louis Armstrong took his off-the-bandstand creativity in a slightly different direction when he was on the road. The many hours he spent in his hotel room or dressing room while waiting for concerts provided the time and motivation to create more than 500 collages that were crafted from a variety of inspirations: newspaper articles, photos, his mail and even telegrams.

An exhibit of his art, called A Little Story of My Own: Louis Armstrong’s Collages, opened today at The Louis Armstrong House Museum at 34-56 107th Street in the Corona section of Queens, N.Y., and runs through July 12.

A Little Story of My Own provides the public a rare opportunity to view the collages. Except for several that were loaned to a national traveling exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution in the early 1990s, Armstrong's collages have never been exhibited outside of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, in large measure because they are so fragile. All but one of the collages in this exhibit are on view for the first time.

Museum Director Michael Cogswell likens Armstrong’s collages to his jazz improvisations. “Found material is divided and then rearranged to create new meanings. Many of Louis’s collages display multiple layers of meaning which are more intuitive than deliberate,” he said. Armstrong felt the same way, writing a friend in 1953: “My hobbie (sic) is to pick out the different things … and piece them together … making a little story of my own.”

The exhibit coincides with the release of an art book of Armstrong's collages, "Satchmo: The Wonderful World and Art of Louis Armstrong" (New York: Abrams, 2009), and an exhibit this month of reproductions of Armstrong's collages at Jazz at Lincoln Center.