Backstage 2005

"Backstage" gives you the background and expertise that makes the music and dance CITYFOLK presents come alive in so many dimensions -- historical, societal, musical, personal and emotional. As concerts come near, look for stories on this page by music expert and writer Jon Hartley Fox.

Jon Hartley Fox, a Dayton native now living in California, has finished his first book, King Of The Queen City: The Story of King Records, to be published next year by the University of Illinois Press. He has been writing about music, pop culture and the arts for over thirty years.

April 19, 2005

Wynton Marsalis Quintet

Like jazz itself, Wynton Marsalis came roaring north out of New Orleans, brash, exciting and demanding to be heard. The young trumpeter had tons of talent--that was immediately obvious to anyone with ears--but the doubters wondered if the outspoken kid had the chops, the ambition, the grit and the nerve to truly walk the walk. Those questions, and others like them, were soon put to rest. Wynton Marsalis was the real deal.

Today, almost 25 years since he made his debut in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Wynton Marsalis has scaled the peaks of American culture. He is the most celebrated, popular and influential jazz musician of his generation, known to millions of people in all parts of the world. He's the only jazz musician to ever win the Pulitzer Prize in Music and, as the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, wields as much cultural clout as any musician on the landscape. It's probably not an exaggeration to call him the single most important jazz musician in the world.

Wynton Marsalis was born in 1961 in New Orleans, the second of six sons in an extraordinarily musical family. His father, Ellis Marsalis, is a talented jazz pianist (who has been featured twice on the CITYFOLK Jazz Series), a renowned music educator and the patriarch of a musical clan that includes not just Wynton, but also his siblings Branford (saxophone), Delfeayo (trombone) and Jason (drums).

Life in the fast lane began for Marsalis in 1979, when he moved to New York to attend the Juilliard School of Music. He joined Blakey's band the following year and not long after that, signed a solo recording deal with Columbia and toured with pianist Herbie Hancock. His debut recording, Wynton Marsalis, was released to glowing reviews in 1982 and won a Grammy Award. He's recorded extensively since then, in both the jazz and classical fields, and sold more than seven million albums.

Marsalis made his opinions and aesthetic preferences known right from the start, in a damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead kind of way. There would be no fusion, funk or R&B in his music. He had little use for the avant garde of the 1960s, and, to him, jazz from the 1970s, especially what was called jazz-rock fusion, was mostly worthless. Marsalis would play acoustic jazz in the way he thought it should be played and that was that.

While some in the jazz world bristled at Marsalis' comments, others hailed him as the savior of "pure" jazz. What is indisputable is that Marsalis had a significant impact. Not the least of it was the fact that Marsalis--young, supremely talented and black--chose to make his living playing jazz, a relatively rare career choice at the time. That Marsalis was signed by a major recording company, another rarity in jazz, was not lost on other musicians.

Following in Marsalis; footsteps, a group of like-minded jazz musicians, dubbed the "Young Lions" by some critics, emerged on the scene. These musicians, players like Terence Blanchard, Roy Hargrove, Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Roberts and others, looked to the past for their inspiration but were more than mere revivalists. Again following Marsalis' example, the music the Young Lions played was emotionally intense, technically dazzling and highly improvisational, rooted but not retro. Jazz was back in the spotlight and Wynton Marsalis was the main reason why.

As a jazz player, Marsalis was initially influenced by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. He then adapted the sound of another trumpet icon Miles Davis' mid-1960s quintet as his template. By the late 1980s, however, Marsalis had clearly arrived at his own distinctive sound--heard for the first time on the soundtrack he composed for the film "Tune In Tomorrow", released in 1990. Miles Davis was still part of the mix, to be sure, but Marsalis had broadened his worldview by exploring the music of earlier trumpeters like Louis Armstrong, studying the composing and arranging of Duke Ellington and, on a technical level, mastering the mute.

Since launching his recording career in 1982, Marsalis has recorded more than 40 albums in a variety of styles and formats. His most recent recordings are The Magic Hour and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (the soundtrack for Ken Burns PBS documentary about the legendary boxer), both released last year on Blue Note. He has won nine Grammy Awards in four different categories: "Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist," "Best Classical Performance - Instrumental Soloist or Soloists (With Orchestra)," "Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Group" and "Best Spoken Word Album For Children."

In a dramatic display of the depth and breadth of his musicality and musical vision, Marsalis has enjoyed a long and successful parallel career as a classical musician. Marsalis recorded his first classical album in 1983, a collection of trumpet concertos that won a Grammy Award, and he was immediately recognized as a major talent. He has recorded several subsequent solo, chamber and orchestra albums, as well as a duet album with vocalist Kathleen Battle. Classic Wynton (1998) is a good starting point for jazz fans curious about this side 'f Marsalis'; career.

Marsalis has also earned international acclaim as a classical composer and a composer for ballet and modern dance. His major works in this area include At the Octoroon Ball, A Fiddler's Tale, Reel Time, Sweet Release and Ghost Story, All Rise and his epic oratorio on the subject of slavery, Blood on the Fields, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1997.

Marsalis serves as the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, a program he co-founded in 1987. This innovative and far-reaching project presents New York concert performances, including the popular Jazz for Young People series, produces radio and television programs, hosts a variety of educational outreach activities and conducts high school music competitions. It now also includes the Julliard Institute for Jazz Studies and its gleaming new residence at the corner of Broadway and 60th street in Manhattan is the institutional home of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and its various touring ensembles.

Appearing with Marsalis tonight is his Wynton Marsalis Quintet, which consists of pianist Dan Nimmer, bassist Carlos Henriquez, drummer Ali Jackson, saxophonist Walter Blanding Jr. and vocalist Jennifer Sanon. A native of Cleveland, Blanding is a long-time associate of Marsalis who has recorded such albums as Tough Young Tenors and The Olive Tree. Nimmer is a Wisconsin native who studied with Chicago keyboard great Willie Pickens. Blanding, Jackson and Henriquez are all veterans of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

The newest member of the band, Sanon is a young singer just out of high school who vaulted into the spotlight when she joined the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on its European tour in 2004. "I first heard Jennifer Sanon at our 2003 ‘Essentially ' Ellington'; high school jazz band competition," says Marsalis. "We were all amazed at the elegance of her voice accompanied by her poise, dignity and maturity. She has performed with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and during our family gala, and in each instance she brought an excitement that attends great artistry."

No longer the young rebel with a cause, Wynton Marsalis is part of the cultural mainstream of this country. Marsalis was the first musician in history to win Grammy Awards in both jazz and classical fields in the same year, which he did in 1983. Astoundingly, he repeated the feat the next year. He's won a Peabody Award for his four-part television series Marsalis On Music and was a prominent part of' Ken Burns' PBS mega-hit series Jazz.

Wynton Marsalis is too young to be an "elder statesman" of jazz, but he remains an articulate spokesman--still opinionated, still occasionally controversial, still passionately committed to the music he loves and still preaching the message. Twenty years ago, Marsalis was seen as the future of jazz. Today, for millions of people around the world, he is the music's face, its public persona, its public conscience and sense of integrity. He has come to represent jazz itself for many fans, a mixed blessing for any creative and evolving musician.

Marsalis has called jazz the "ultimate American music of the twentieth century," but it's time to update his definition. If Marsalis' hard-swinging band is any indication of the future, bop-based improvisational jazz would seem to be in pretty healthy shape for this century as well. Marsalis deserves a lot of the credit for the music's renaissance. He's composed and played some great music over the past quarter century, and he's inspired many younger musicians to re-examine their ideas about jazz and musical tradition.

Life is a lot fuller and more complex than young Wynton Marsalis could ever have imagined as he sat at home in New Orleans practicing scales on his first trumpet, a gift from a protege of his father, Al Hirt. Wynton Marsalis has come a long way, but on one level at least, it's still pretty simple. His motivation is the same as when he first started playing: I want to make somebody feel like John Coltrane made me feel."

For more information, visit Wynton Marsalis' website.

April 16, 2005

Kotchegna Dance Company

Back in the days when the governments of Europe ruled the continent of Africa, the West African country known as the Ivory Coast was a colony of France, Cote d'Ivoire. French was the official language of state, though it never really supplanted the dozens of regional dialects spoken throughout the country. The relatively small, heavily forested nation, about the size of New Mexico, was one of the more prosperous of the tropical African countries. It was also one of the last to be colonized.

After gaining its independence from France in 1960, the Ivory Coast wrestled with the same daunting challenges other newly independent African countries were facing. For symbolic and psychological reasons, one of the most basic needs was creating a sense of national identity and culture around which people from many different tribes and regions could unify. This was no small task, as Ivoirians had no tradition of self-rule on a national basis. They had been under French control since 1899 and before that, governance--and life itself--was organized on a much more localized and tribal model.

Among the most creative attempts at creating a national consciousness was a movement to establish traditional dance and music ensembles that would synthesize regional traditions into national ones. Les Ballets Africains, formed in 1952 by Guinean choreographer Keita Fodeba, was one of the first of these ensembles and it has served as a model for many subsequent troupes.

Kotchegna Dance Company, founded sixteen years ago by choreographer Vado Diomande, is a sterling example of such an ensemble, successful on both an artistic level and in its aim of promoting--and thus preserving--the traditional music, dance and folkloric culture from the Ivory Coast. Kotchegna means "messenger" in Mahou, Diomande's native language, and the company's name is most appropriate. This exciting dance and drum ensemble, considered the premier West African dance company in the world by many critics, hopes to do more than just entertain its audiences. Kotchegna wants to spread the word about the Ivory Coast and its rich artistic traditions.

Vado Diomande was born in Cote d'Ivoire, in the small farming village of Toufinga. His father, Sogbeti Diomande, was a master dancer and he taught Vado both dancing and drumming in the local styles. Vado's formal training began at age fourteen when he joined the Ballet National de Cote d'Ivoire, with which he spent more than fifteen years as principal dancer, master choreographer and teacher. During this time he also learned the sixty or so regional dance and drumming traditions found within the Ivory Coast, probably the first time anybody in the country had undertaken that enormous job.

As a dancer, Diomande is best known for a work in which he acts as the intermediary for the spirit of a nine-foot-tall mask called Gue-Pelou, the God of the Sacred Forest. In this "sacred mask" role, the mask dances and performs acrobatic feats while on stilts, and serves as a bridge between the world of the living and the spirit world of the ancestors. Diomande takes no personal credit for the astounding stilt-dancing; he says he is merely "channeling" the benevolent forest spirit Gue-Pelou, who is said to protect everyone he encounters.

These sacred masks are an important part of the spiritual culture of the Ivory Coast. No country in Africa produces a wider variety of masks, which are used for a number of ceremonial occasions from births to harvests to funerals. Masks tend to be associated with a specific village and only specially trained dancers are allowed to wear the masks. The traditional belief is that it is very dangerous for anyone but the specified dancer to wear a sacred mask, as each mask possesses a soul and putting the mask on transforms the wearer into the represented deity or spirit.

Diomande formed his own company, L'Ensemble Kotchegna D'Abidjan, in 1989. Diomande and a few of the dancers in the troupe moved to the U.S. in 1994; since then, the New York-based ensemble has been known as Kotchegna Dance Company. The multi-racial, multi-cultural company, which usually tours with around fifteen performers, has members from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, West Guinea, Jamaica and the U.S. "I had to start again," says Diomande, "because I couldn't get everyone here from my country."

The company's male dancers and drummers are African, and include Ivoirians Tra-Bi Lizie, Justin Kafando and Vado's nephew, Sogbeti Diomande. Kotchegna's lead drummer, Lizie was something of a drum prodigy; by the time he was twelve, he was already lead drummer for two sacred mask dances, Zaouly and Zambie. He first performed in the U.S. with The Mask Company in 1997. Lizie also serves as the musical director of Ancestral Messengers Dance Company.

Sogbeti Diomande, who also drums with The Mask Company, is from the same Ivory Coast village as his uncle Vado. He began training with Vado at a very young age and has been stilt-dancing since he was ten. Since moving to the U.S. in 1997, he has twice toured the Pacific Northwest with programs showcasing the mask culture of the Ivory Coast. He's also toured with Jimmy Buffett and spent most of 2001 in residence at Disney World in Florida, performing with the acclaimed Ivoirian quartet Kobake.

Other touring members of Kotchegna Dance Company include dancers Kenya Calixte and Mellisha McKitty.

Kotchegna Dance Company has performed at dozens of venues and festivals in the New York City area, including the "Arts of the Manding Heritage" at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Symphony Space. Further afield, the company has performed at colleges, universities and performing arts centers throughout the country, as well as at the Pittsburgh Children's Theatre, the International Children's Festival 2003 in Philadelphia, and in August 2004, the National Folk Festival in Bangor, Maine.

A performance by Kotchegna Dance Company is a visually spectacular explosion of color, sound and movement. There's a lot going on at any given moment on stage. The members of the company, all of them dressed in authentic, vividly colored traditional costumes, use dancing, drumming, chanting and pantomime storytelling to bring to life an array of legends and folktales from the Ivory Coast portraying ancestral spirits, folk heroes and mythic animals.

Jon Pareles, an influential music critic for the New York Times, was most struck by the company's drumming. In his review of a Kotchegna performance, he had special praise for the "nonstop, high-speed, feverishly intricate rhythms and cross-rhythms from a team of drummers who knew countless ways to subdivide a beat and make it jump."

The rolling thunder that so moved Pareles is produced on a staggering variety of percussion instruments, including the djembe, tambourines, rattles, claves, all manner of drums--nungu, tabor, doun doun, goblet and kalengo, to name just a few--and the balafon, a kind of wooden xylophone, played by Mohamed Kouyate, a native of West Guinea.

In addition to his work with Kotchegna Dance Company, Vado Diomande dances with other companies when time permits. He is a member of the Urban Tap and Ballet d'Afrique Djoniba ensembles and dances as a guest artist with several others, including Les Ballets Africains de Papa Ladji Camara, Afro-Brazil Arts, Mamadou Dahoue and the Ancestral Messengers, Seven Principles and S.P.I.R.I.T.S. S.O.A.

Vado Diomande is passing on the traditions of dance and drumming the same way he learned: by oral instruction from an older master. Though he has many students, his primary pupil is his apprentice and nephew, Sogbeti Diomande. Vado teaches West African dance to the public, as well, at the Alvin Ailey Dance School and the Djoniba Dance and Drum Center in New York. Diomande is also an expert drum maker, a skill he learned in childhood. Many professional West African drummers use instruments made or restored by Diomande.

Diomande and his Kotchegna Dance Company have managed something very difficult--taking traditional dance and music out of their historic, spiritual and functional contexts and presenting them on performance stages for the entertainment of audiences from vastly different cultures. It's a tricky balancing act, doing this without debasing or otherwise trivializing the content or the people from which it comes.

Vado Diomande takes his art very seriously. He requires at least twenty minutes of solitude and meditation before donning the Gue-Pelou mask. But when he finally puts the mask on, he is calm and ready to dance. Gue-Pelou is in control now. He'll protect and inspire the dancers and drummers of Kotchegna Dance Company. All they have to do is let the spirit flow.

For more information, visit Kotchegna's website.

April 8, 2005

ALTAN

Loch Altan is in the far northwestern part of Ireland, in County Donegal. The deep, mysterious lake lies in the shadows of the mountains Errigal and Musckish in a region that has close geographical, historical, cultural and social ties with Scotland. This picturesque area is both home and inspiration to the band Altan, one of the most popular traditional Irish bands of the past twenty years.

The roots of the band date back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Frankie Kennedy, a marvelous flute and whistle player from Belfast, and Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, a fiddler and singer from Gweedore, began attracting attention for their repertoire of obscure Donegal fiddle music and flute tunes from the northern regions of Ireland. The two honed their music in countless late-night music sessions in pubs, folk clubs and around kitchen tables, and recorded a pair of albums for the Gael-Linn label, Albert Fry and Ceol Aduaigh.

Kennedy and Mhaonaigh made a couple of brief concert tours of the U.S., playing in such cities as New York, Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland. Frankie and Mairead were so pleased by the American reaction to their music they decided to go full-time with their music making. They resigned their jobs as primary school teachers in Dublin and never looked back.

The duo grew into a band with the addition of bouzouki player Ciaran Curran and guitarist Mark Kelly. This was the grouping that recorded Altan in 1987, technically a Kennedy-Mhaonaigh duet album, but the first to feature the fuller sound of the four-piece band. In later years, Altan added the brilliant guitarist Daithi Sproule, accordion virtuoso Dermot Byrne and fiddler Ciaran Tourish, a specialist at crafting memorable harmonies.

Though inspired by such great bands as De Danann, Planxty and the Bothy Band, Altan has had its own distinctive sound from the start, thanks to its unusual repertoire and Mhaonaigh's haunting vocals. At the time Altan began recording, the exciting traditional fiddle music of Donegal (which bears some striking similarities to that of Cape Breton in Canada) was little known beyond the county's borders, so Altan's fiddle tunes seemed fresh and faintly exotic. The band's sound also included a healthy dose of Scottish influence, reflecting a long tradition of Donegal people having to move to Scotland for jobs, which has guaranteed a fluid cultural interchange between the two Celtic communities.

The heart of the Altan instrumental sound is the twin fiddling of Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh and Ciaran Tourish. Both are from the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area) of Donegal and both have deep roots in the local fiddling tradition. Mairead learned fiddling and many little-known tunes from her father, Francie O'Maonaigh, who in turn learned from his mother, Roise. Tourish is a protege of the great Dinny McLaughlin, who also instructed Mairead in his frequent visits to her family's home.
The two fiddles, such a key part of the Altan approach, is both innovative and traditional according to Mhaonaigh. "That was very definitely part of the Donegal tradition," she says, "and also in Kerry. It was mainly a solo tradition, but two fiddles were used to augment the sound and complement the main fiddle, but one of the fiddles would always play harmony, or octave. What we do is basically a variation on that idea, where the second fiddle will play around a bit more with the melody. It's very spontaneous, and I think it keeps it exciting."

Accordion player Dermot Byrne, another Donegal musician, joined Altan in 1994 after making guest appearances on the band's albums The Red Crow and Island Angel. His primary musical influence was his father, Tomas O Beirn, but he also absorbed the fiddling that surrounded him in his youth. Byrne was an accomplished accordionist before he even reached his teens.

Ciaran Curran, a native of County Fermanagh, had two major musical mentors: his uncle, the highly skilled fiddler Ned Curran, and Cathal McConnell, the renowned flute player with the Boys of the Lough. Curran is one of the foremost players of the mandolin-like bouzouki, a relatively new addition to traditional Irish music.

Guitarist Daithi Sproule was born and raised in Derry, but has lived for many years in Minneapolis. He's a long-time friend of the band, having performed with Kennedy and Mhaonaigh on their first trips to the U.S. in 1984 and 1985. Sproule was among the first Irish musicians to adapt traditional music to the guitar and he has recorded with dozens of prominent musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, including Liz Carroll, Peter Ostroushko and Tommy Peoples.

The final element that sets Altan apart from other traditional Irish bands is the sublime singing of Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh. Whether singing in English or her native Irish, Mairead is one of the best in the business. Less New Age-y than Maire Brennan of Clannad or Enya (both Donegal women themselves), Mhaonaigh is the band's trump card. Singing a lullaby, a sad air or an ancient ballad about supernatural beings, Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh sounds like the soul of Ireland.

A dark cloud descended upon Altan in 1991 when Frankie Kennedy was diagnosed with cancer. Kennedy performed with the band throughout his treatment, when chemotherapy would let him, and constantly encouraged his band-mates to keep going and to look to a future without him.

Frankie Kennedy died in September 1994. His loss was felt by all fans of Celtic music. Kevin Myers, writing in The Irish Times, expressed it nicely: "I know it's all very well saying that the dead live on, when it is quite obvious that they don't. But in Frankie's case it is true at one manifest level, that in his music, of Mairead's, and of Altan's, he has not left us."

Having lost both her musical partner and her husband of thirteen years, Mhaonaigh must have at least considered hanging it up, though she denies it. She decided she owed it to Kennedy to press on and so rallied the troops. She has taken Altan to even greater heights, touring the band around the world and signing a recording contract in the mid-1990s with Virgin Records--a major accomplishment for a traditional band. The band recorded a pair of albums for Virgin before moving to the Milwaukee-based Narada Records.

"We were on the road fairly soon after Frankie died," says Ciaran Curran, "and that was basically Mairead's choice. Looking back on it, she said it was the best thing she ever did. The point being that the longer she waited before going back on the road, the less likely she'd feel like doing so, the harder it would've been to face it again.

"It was always Frankie's wish that we should continue on. In fact, I could nearly say he left orders for the band to do so. We haven't tried to replace Frankie in any way, and we haven't consciously taken any new direction. Altan is pretty much the same as it always was. The core, the feeling, is still the same."

Altan's eleventh album, Local Ground, was released March 1 by Narada. The album, the band's first in three years, includes the trademark Altan blend of lively dance tune medleys ("Is The Big Man Within/Tilly Finn's Reel," "Tommy Peoples/The Road to Cashel/The Repeal of the Union/Richie's Reel") and songs featuring Mairead's exquisite singing ("Dun Do Shuil," "Adieu, My Lovely Nancy").

The greatest accomplishment of Altan--besides surviving the kind of personal tragedy that ends many bands--is successfully presenting the authentic traditional music of Ireland and Scotland without diluting the sound or compromising its cultural meaning. That's much harder than it might seem. There's a natural tendency to smooth the rough edge or adorn the unadorned if those actions might make a band more successful or make it easier to sell more albums. To its immense credit, Altan has resisted those temptations and found success with the straightforward, unvarnished traditional music of its home regions.

Ciaran Tourish says that while Altan tries "to push the boundaries just a bit" to keep it interesting for the band and its audiences, Altan's success is due to the fact that "we stick to what we know best." There's more to it than that, of course. Even when collaborating with American country stars Dolly Parton, Vince Gill or Ricky Skaggs, Altan remains resolutely Altan. No matter where the band plays, or in what setting, the pure sound of Donegal is always there, lovingly presented and expertly performed.

Part of that is the legacy of Frankie Kennedy, who always felt the traditional music of Donegal and the northern counties of Ireland could stand on its own with any music anywhere. Part of it is the undeniable strength and appeal of the music itself. And part of it, the biggest part, is the commitment by Mairead and her colleagues in Altan to honor Kennedy's vision by making it come true. They know that life goes on and that playing traditional music is one hell of a good way to make sure that it does.

For more information, visit Altan's website.

March 31, 2005

DOC WATSON

Now that he's past eighty, Doc Watson has heard all the superlatives, all the lofty praise and other nice things people have said about him and his music. That he's an American original, a national treasure and an inspiration to millions. Doc accepts such compliments graciously, but he's a humble man who has never paid much attention to his own importance. Making music was a way he could support his family, so he played music. Supporting his family was what mattered to Doc Watson.

Arthel "Doc" Watson was born in 1923 in western North Carolina near the town of Deep Gap. Doc was born into a musical family in an extremely musical community and began playing harmonica and a home-made banjo at an early age. The banjo was a gift from Doc's father, General Dixon Watson, who also gave his blind son something far more valuable: a sense of self-worth.

"Making that banjo and encouraging me into music, knowing that it was a trade I could learn, was a mighty fine thing he did for me," says Doc. "The best thing my dad ever did for me in my life, though, was to put me at one end of a crosscut saw. He put me to work and that made me feel useful. A lot of blind people weren't ever put to work."

Blinded by an eye disease in infancy, Doc Watson was playing electric guitar in a country dance band when he was "discovered" by musician and folklorist Ralph Rinzler in 1960. Rinzler and fellow folklorist Eugene Earle were in the area to record old-time musician Clarence "Tom" Ashley for a Folkways album and were stunned when they heard Ashley's neighbor, Doc Watson, sing and play guitar.

Rinzler wanted to share their discovery with the world and he subsequently arranged important appearances for Watson at leading folk music clubs in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and 1964. Those led to Doc's solo recording debut, Doc Watson, released in 1964 by Vanguard. This album had a profound impact upon all who heard it.

It's no exaggeration to say that "Black Mountain Rag," a short instrumental from the album, revolutionized the playing of the acoustic guitar. The solo tour de force showcased Doc playing a fiddle tune note-for-note, astonishingly fast, in a style that came to be called "flatpicking." People had never heard anything like it before. Ambitious young guitarists--including Clarence White, Norman Blake, Tony Rice and Dan Crary--began studying the style with the passion and intensity of monastic scholars. The sound of lead guitarists in bluegrass today follows a short path straight back to Doc Watson.

From 1964 through 1985, Doc was joined on stage, on records and on the road by his son, Merle. Doc had come home from an extended tour in 1964 to find to his surprise that 15-year-old Merle had learned to play guitar. Merle first mastered the lilting fingerpicking style of Mississippi John Hurt, but he quickly matured into a first-rate flatpicker, slide guitarist and banjo player. Merle Watson made his recording debut on Doc Watson and Son, also released in 1964.

Doc and Merle recorded extensively throughout the rest of the 1960s and 1970s, their albums ranging from simple duet affairs to Nashville-style country albums. They recorded eight albums together for Vanguard after Doc's solo debut. A personal favorite from this era is Ballads From Deep Gap (1967), a more traditionally oriented album than some of the others. They also recorded for United Artists, Poppy and Flying Fish after leaving Vanguard.

Doc and Merle also toured heavily during this time, playing all of the major folk and bluegrass festivals, folk clubs, coffeehouses and concert venues in the country. Their virtuoso instrumental interplay, coupled with Doc's rich baritone voice and encyclopedic repertoire, made Doc and Merle a top concert draw.

In 1971, Doc was invited to join the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for a history-making triple-album called Will The Circle Be Unbroken, on which the Dirt Band paid tribute to some of its country music heroes. Doc was given plenty of room to shine, and he made the most of the opportunity. Playing blistering versions of the tunes "Black Mountain Rag" and "Down Yonder" and singing a pair of his signature songs, "Tennessee Stud" and "Way Downtown," Doc was one of the high points of this extraordinary album. Its success elevated Doc Watson to the summit of the acoustic music world, where he has resided ever since.

Doc and Merle won their first Grammy Awards in 1973 and 1974, with back-to-back wins for "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording" for Then and Now and Two Days in November. Subsequent Grammys have come for the tune "Big Sandy/Leather Britches" ("Best Country Instrumental Performance," 1979) and the albums Riding The Midnight Train (1986), On Praying Ground (1990) and Legacy (with David Holt, 2002), which won for "Best Traditional Folk Recording."

Tragedy struck the Watson family in October 1985 when Merle Watson was killed in a tractor accident on his North Carolina farm. It was a devastating blow for Doc. Think of it--in an instant, Doc lost his son, his musical partner of twenty years, his traveling companion and road manager, his very "eyes" on the endless highway. Many people thought Doc might retire, as he was already 62 and had been on the road for essentially two decades.

But Doc wasn't ready to quit yet, so he pressed on, with North Carolina guitarist Jack Lawrence as his new musical partner. Doc and Jack took the Watson sound to new corners of the world through widespread touring and several acclaimed and popular albums. In recent years, Doc has also worked with singer and banjo picker David Holt and will be accompanied tonight by his longtime guitar partner Jack Lawrence and another guitar accompanist, his grandson, Richard Watson, Merle's son.

Doc is still playing selected concerts, but has cut back on his touring schedule. The centerpiece of his year is now MerleFest, the annual music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, Doc started to honor Merle's memory. MerleFest has grown into one of the nation's premier music festivals, drawing more than 50,000 fans each year to listen to the top names in bluegrass, country, folk, world music and beyond.

From his first appearance on record on Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's in 1960, Doc Watson has made more than fifty albums, including collaborations with Flatt & Scruggs, Chet Atkins, David Grisman, Del McCoury and Mac Wiseman. Doc has touched all the bases in his albums--old time country, blues, folk, bluegrass, western swing, 1950s rock and roll and rockabilly, gospel, shape-note singing, honky-tonk country, Tin Pan Alley, swing, traditional jazz, children's music, and more. Doc Watson is the embodiment of musical Americana.

Looking back over the 45 years of Watson's career, his impact has been truly monumental. He has exerted a tremendous influence upon generations of musicians. His influence as a guitarist has been noted, but his singing--and especially his vast repertoire of American music--has been equally studied and copied.

Dozens of songs and tunes associated with him have become standards--"Tennessee Stud," "Way Downtown," "Talk About Suffering Here Below," "Down In The Valley To Pray," "New River Train," Black Mountain Rag," "Deep River Blues" and "Country Blues," to name just a few. Doc didn't write a single one of them, but all are widely identified as "Doc Watson songs."

Doc Watson is the most important traditional American musician of the past fifty years. He's won a National Medal of the Arts, a National Heritage Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. More telling, he is universally admired and respected, by critics, by fans and by other musicians.

Doc has often said that if he hadn't been blind, he probably would have been an electrician and he no doubt would have been an outstanding one. But his blindness steered him to the guitar, to the immense and enduring benefit of the rest of us. "A good guitar is like a friend," Doc once said. "Sometimes when you're lonely or depressed, you pick that guitar up and all at once it's gone. It's like a conversation with a good friend. You play an old song and you remember all kinds of wonderful things."

Speaking about his first appearances in New York in 1960, Doc was still surprised at the reception after forty years. "I could not believe the attentiveness of the audiences there," he said. "I was under the impression that a man had to be able to see and put on a big act on stage to get people's attention. In those days, I never really thought that I would become an entertainer. It was the most amazing thing in the world, when people applauded and hollered and yelled for more. I thought ‘Did I really do that good?'"

That question has been answered for several decades now. Songwriter Guy Clark put it best: "I have seen the David/I've seen the Mona Lisa too/I have heard Doc Watson/Play ‘Columbus Stockade Blues.'"

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit Doc Waton's website.

March 12, 2005

CELTIC FIDDLE FESTIVAL

It sounds like the set-up to an old joke: An Irishman, a Frenchman and a Scot walk into a bar…In fact, it was pretty much how the first American tour of Celtic Fiddle Festival was planned. Kevin Burke from Ireland and Johnny Cunningham from Scotland, two of the finest fiddlers in modern Celtic music, had played a gig together in New York and enjoyed it. They decided to go back for a proper tour in 1992, and invited fiddler Christian LeMaitre from Brittany to join them for the fun.

The idea was to take three different fiddlers from three different Celtic lands, throw them together for a tour and see what happened. The tour was a hit and a "live" album compiled from concert recordings was released in 1993 by Green Linnet. The album was so successful the group toured the U.S. a second time in 1994. Subsequent tours included return trips to the U.S. as well as forays throughout Europe.

A 1996 tour dubbed Celtic Fiddle Festival II, featuring Martin Hayes, Natalie MacMaster and Brian McNeill, was a more than worthy successor, but Burke, Cunningham and LeMaitre kept busy, too. The original trio of fiddlers, augmented by Breton guitarist Soig Siberil, released another "live" album, Encore, in 1998. The group's first studio album, Rendezvous, was issued three years later.

Tragedy struck Celtic Fiddle Festival late in 2003. The group was by now one of the most popular touring Celtic music ensembles on the circuit. As plans were being finalized for a January 2004 tour, Johnny Cunningham died suddenly in December from a heart attack. His death was a shock to all who knew him.

The founder of Silly Wizard, Cunningham was a leading figure in the revival of traditional Scottish music. Besides Silly Wizard, he also toured and recorded with his brother Phil Cunningham, and with the bands Relativity, Nightnoise and the Raindogs, and collaborated with Solas and Cherish the Ladies. He will be missed by Celtic music fans worldwide.

With no illusions about "replacing" Cunningham, Burke and LeMaitre turned to Andre Brunet of the red-hot Canadian band La Bottine Souriante to complete their trio. Brunet, the fiddling foot-stomping engine that drives the popular Quebecois ensemble, has been a good fit. As you will hear tonight, and on Celtic Fiddle Festival's brand-new album Play On, Brunet can definitely pull some bow.

"Once the tour got under way it became quickly evident that inviting Andre along was an inspired decision," Kevin says. "There was great excitement in the music, we enjoyed each other's playing immensely and it was evident from the audience response that they too felt they were witnessing something special."

Kevin Burke, here last season with the Irish music all-star band Patrick Street, is one of the most renowned Irish fiddlers of his generation. A master of the highly ornamented fiddle style of County Sligo, Burke made his recording debut as a guest on Arlo Guthrie's 1973 album, The Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys. Kevin next spent two years in Dublin playing with Christy Moore, the founder of Planxty and Moving Hearts. From there, he was recruited by Donal Lunny and Matt Molloy to join the Bothy Band.

The Bothy Band was a groundbreaking group that spearheaded the Celtic folk music revival of the 1970s. Burke was featured on the band's most popular albums, including Old Hag You Have Killed Me, Out of the Wind into the Sun and After Hours (Live in Paris). After the Bothy Band broke up at the end of the 1970s, Burke worked as a duo with Michael O Domhnaill for a few years, recording a pair of well-received albums, Promenade and Portland.

The title of the second album referred to Burke's new home, Portland, Oregon, to which he moved in the early 1980s. He's lived there ever since. Burke launched his solo recording career while still in the Bothy Band. His debut was If The Cap Fits (1978), a wonderful showcase for his fluid and highly expressive fiddling. His subsequent solo recordings include Up Close and In Concert, a recording from 1998 featuring guest Martin Hayes.

In the mid-1980s, Burke formed the band Patrick Street with Jackie Daly, Andy Irvine and Arty McGlynn. The group, which now includes guitarist Ged Foley, has been an audience favorite on both sides of the Atlantic from its inception. The band has recorded a number of outstanding albums, including Street Life, Live from Patrick Street, Made in Cork, Irish Times and No. 2 Patrick Street.

As Patrick Street is, by design, a "part-time" band, Burke had time in the 1990s to form another group, Open House. An interesting group that included percussive dancer Sandy Silva (now with La Bottine Souriante), Open House toured widely and recorded three albums, Open House, Second Story and Hoof and Mouth.

Kevin Burke is widely acknowledged as the greatest Irish fiddler in the world. Even so, he remains open and accessible, always up for an interesting project or collaboration. In addition to those already mentioned, Burke has also recorded a duo album with accordion player Jackie Daly (Eavesdropper) and worked with Tim O'Brien on O'Brien's "Crossing" project, a pair of albums celebrating the shared roots of Irish and American traditional music.

Burke's many contributions to the folk arts of both his native and adopted countries were formally recognized in 2002 when the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Burke one of its prestigious National Heritage Fellowships. In announcing the awards, the nation's highest for traditional and folk artists, the NEA said Kevin Burke and the other Fellows were "chosen for their artistic excellence, authenticity and contributions to their field [and] honored for their achievements as artists, teachers, innovators and guardians of traditional art forms." It was a well-deserved honor.

How and why there came to be a Gaelic-speaking Celtic enclave in the northwest part of France is beyond the scope of these brief notes, but there it is: the province of Brittany, or Bretagne in French. It's a region rich in traditional music that has produced such noted musicians as Dan Ar Bras, Alan Stivell and Soig Siberil and such popular bands as Gwerz, Malicorne and Bleizi Ruz.

Fiddler Christian LeMaitre, one of the first to adapt the traditional Breton music--historically played on such reed instruments as the bombard and the biniou--to the fiddle, is an expert at the rhythmic dance music from the region. He's internationally recognized as the foremost fiddler working within the Breton tradition, which also includes elements from central and southern European music.

After learning the intricacies of the hypnotic fiddle style playing at festou-noz (evening barn dances with food and drink), LeMaitre launched his professional career in the early 1980s with the band Kornog, arguably the most talented instrumental group to emerge from Brittany. He toured the U.S. four times and appeared on a pair of critically acclaimed albums by Kornog.

LeMaitre later formed the popular dance band Pennou Skoulm. He's also fiddled with such groups as Archetype, Kemia, Storvan and Tantad. When not touring or recording with Celtic Fiddle Festival, LeMaitre plays in a duo with Kornog singer Jamie McMenemy and tours with the Breton singer-songwriter Gilles Servat.

Andre Brunet has made quite a name for himself in Celtic music circles since 1997, when he joined the French-Canadian ensemble La Bottine Souriante, once dubbed "the best band in the world" by Dirty Linen magazine. Though considerably younger than Burke or LeMaitre, Brunet holds his own in Celtic Fiddle Festival, thanks to his virtuoso fiddling and engaging stage presence.

Brunet's first instrument was guitar, but he's been playing fiddle for almost 20 years. His first performing experience was working as a duo, Les Frères Brunet, with his older brother Rejean. With Rejean backing him, Andre entered and won numerous fiddle contests throughout Canada. He won the Junior National Championship in Quebec when he was 12, the youngest competitor ever to win the contest.

Brunet joined "the smiling boot" eight years ago and has appeared on the award-winning band's albums Xième, Cordial, Anthologie and J'ai jamais tant ri. His fiddle style, like the traditional music of Quebec in general, is a compelling blend of Irish, French, Scottish and European influences mixed with various indigenous styles of dance music.

The superb English guitarist Ged Foley, who now lives in southeastern Ohio, is no stranger to CITYFOLK audiences, having appeared here with Patrick Street and the House Band, which he co-founded. A former member of the Battlefield Band, Foley is known for his work with fiddlers and has worked with Celtic Fiddle Festival since 2001. A gifted singer and producer, Foley is an active session musician as well, appearing on albums by such artists as Liz Carroll, Kevin Burke and Tommy Peoples.

This concert tour and the new album by Celtic Fiddle Festival are both dedicated to the memory of Johnny Cunningham, fiddler and friend. One of the great attractions of playing traditional music is the sense of being part of something bigger than oneself, part of a musical chain rooted in the past and bequeathed to the future. That's also one of the great comforts offered by traditional music on a night like this, when the absence of Johnny Cunningham will be keenly felt by the many friends he made in the Dayton area on his many visits to perform for CITYFOLK.

Kevin Burke speaks for many when he says, "We miss our dear friend Johnny Cunningham terribly but we'd like to think he's still out there somewhere, grinning down on us, wishing us well and exhorting us to play on." That's a good thought. Let's not keep him waiting.

FEBRUARY 5, 2005

RAHIM ALHAJ STRING QUARTET

Two years of prison and torture couldn't break the spirit of virtuoso oud player Rahim AlHaj, but the prospect of a job in the fast-food industry came close. Shortly after gaining political asylum and being settled by the United Nations in New Mexico, AlHaj--one of the greatest Iraqi musicians of his generation--was visited by four government agents from the INS. The suits from immigration had fantastic news: They had a job for AlHaj! At McDonald's!

"What is this McDonald's?" he politely asked. A restaurant, he was told. It's a great opportunity for you, they added. Taken back a bit at the very idea, he patiently explained to the men that as one of the leading musicians in the Arab world, he did not as a rule perform in restaurants. The rest of that conversation must have been a little awkward. If going home had been an option, AlHaj would have considered it.

Home was Baghdad, where Rahim AlHaj was born thirty-eight years ago. He became fascinated at an early age with the oud, an ancient lute-like string instrument that has been part of Arabic music for centuries, and began teaching himself to play the oud at age nine. He made such remarkable progress on the instrument that he was admitted at 18 to Baghdad's Institute of Music, where he studied with Salim Abdul Kareem and Munir Bashir, considered by many critics the all-time master of the oud.

AlHaj graduated from the conservatory in 1990 with a degree in composition; he also earned a degree in Arabic literature from Mustensaria University. Though he was becoming well known as a musician and composer, AlHaj put himself in harm's way by criticizing the oppressive government of Saddam Hussein. "I used my poetry to speak out against the regime and the Iraq-Iran war," he says. He suffered the predictable consequences of the outspoken in Iraq--imprisonment and torture. He describes the torture as "random, creative, excruciating and seemingly endless," but he says his worst fear while it was going on was that his fingers would be broken. Fortunately, they remained intact.

When an opportunity to leave Iraq presented itself, AlHaj took it, though it meant leaving his family behind. Carrying forged identification papers and risking death if caught, AlHaj made it out, but without his cherished oud, which was confiscated at the border. He describes losing his instrument as the lowest point of his life.

After escaping from Iraq in 1991, AlHaj lived for several years in Syria and Jordan, where he taught at the Institute for Arabic Music. He performed extensively during this period in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain and Egypt, and as far afield as France. AlHaj moved to the U.S. in 2000, and is now an American citizen living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

AlHaj recorded his first CD, The Second Baghdad, in 2002. A thoughtful and delicate mix of traditional and contemporary oud music, the album contained nine original compositions, many on the themes of loss, hope, freedom and longing. The title song is a somber reflection on AlHaj's once-grand hometown. "I knew Baghdad when it was a great city. I loved Baghdad," he says. "It was beautiful. I saw it in ruins, after it was bombed--the second Baghdad."

His second CD, Iraqi Music in Time of War, is a poignant and powerful recording of a concert in New York in April 2003. It was an emotionally charged performance. "When I arrived in New York," he explained, "I was witnessing Iraq's third war during my lifetime. But this time the war was very different for me. I was not there with my family, and I had no news from them. Yet day to day life for me was as excruciating as if I was in Baghdad. So I wanted to communicate to my audience my experience of war, the pain and misery one feels in a hopeless situation where chaos reigns and loved ones die.

"I found New York a bustling city, but when I was there I did not see people smiling. I sensed that my audience that night felt the despair that I was feeling, and when we came together, it was a catharsis. To play music in a time of war is to connect, to feed people with hope, and to hold onto my hope of someday seeing my mother's beautiful face once again. Her last words to me were, "I hope your cruise missiles don't kill me before I see you again."

AlHaj's first two CDs and many of his concert performances are solo performances on the oud, a forerunner of the guitar that has been around for at least 5,000 years, making it perhaps the oldest string instrument in the world. The oud sounds something like a cross between a steel-string guitar and a harp. First used to accompany the poetry of itinerant Arab minstrels, the oud became the central instrument in Arabic music after the arrival of Islam. It was the instrument of court, ceremony and musical composition, similar to the piano in the Western world.

AlHaj has recently been collaborating with a string quartet, creating a unique East-West musical synthesis that is stately and beautiful. "There is no difference between Eastern and Western music," AlHaj says. "In the big picture, it is all music, and this is what will lead us to express ourselves." His original compositions have been arranged for oud and string quartet by cellist Catherine (Katie) Jean Harlow and will be performed at this CITYFOLK concert by a group that includes Harlow, violinists Daniel Brandt and Joanna Pettitt, and Jason Parris on viola.

This new music is somehow exotic and familiar at the same time. The quartet creates an austere backing for the jagged clarity of AlHaj's plucked oud, the sound occasionally resembling minimalist works by John Cale or Philip Glass, but mostly steering through uncharted sonic territory. AlHaj and the quartet have recorded an album of his compositions, Friendship, which is scheduled for release within the next six months on VoxLox, the label operated by eminent ethnomusicologist Steven Feld.

AlHaj returned to Baghdad for a month last year after more than a decade away, and what he witnessed saddened him. "I was heartbroken," he says. "The city has just collapsed. Kids don't even have a place to play." He returned to Iraq to disperse more than $15,000 he had raised at benefit concerts in the U.S. AlHaj was in an odd position on that trip--a survivor of Saddam's torture chambers who outlasted the dictator, but also a U.S. citizen questioned by angry friends and relatives about the war. He had no answers for them when they asked why the bombs kept falling.

Since coming back to the U.S., AlHaj has resumed his busy schedule of benefit concerts. He hopes there will be more trips to Iraq to deliver money he raises in his adopted home. "I have a great opportunity to help American people understand this kind of music," AlHaj said in a recent interview. "It's important for me as a composer to make a bridge between Western and Eastern music, so we can present our culture, our passion and our story."

A new audience has discovered AlHaj's virtuoso playing through the frequent use of his music on "Democracy Now", a syndicated radio and television program hosted by Amy Goodman, and aired in Dayton on public access television. Goodman's reports on Iraq are often accompanied by some of AlHaj's music, which has led many listeners to seek out his CDs, which are readily available online.

"My music isn't just for entertainment, but for communicating my world to others," says AlHaj. "I have a mission for my music, and that is to bring the spiritual meaning that lies behind the notes to everyone. I want them to experience something they haven't experienced before. I believe that music is a universal language. Music joins people in their souls, and when this connection happens, peace, love, and compassion can fill the hands of humanity."

It is vitally important in a time of war that we never de-humanize any of the participants. The people of Iraq are not our enemy. Nor are they merely victims. They are just people, like us in most regards, who are caught in the middle of a horrific situation not of their making. They do their best to survive, to endure, to keep hope alive despite the death and destruction that surround them.

Rahim AlHaj is not just making a musical bridge between two cultures, he is a bridge himself. He has won awards for both his music and his humanitarian work, but his most outstanding contribution might be giving U.S. audiences an appealing and accessible window into Iraqi music, culture, traditions and, ultimately, the Iraqi soul. Blessed be the bridge-makers, for they point the way out of the current quagmire. Understanding is the first step toward peace, and the first step toward understanding is more bridges. Rahim AlHaj is doing his part.

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JANUARY 22, 2005

LATIN SIDE OF MILES DAVIS

Miles Davis spent most of his early life in East St. Louis, not exactly a hotbed of Latin music then or now. But when the gifted young trumpeter moved to New York in 1944, ostensibly to study at Juilliard, he entered a new universe. Jazz held more interest for Davis than did Juilliard, and as the trumpeter found his place among such musicians as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he was exposed to a world of music that excited his creative sensibilities.

The pianist Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton spoke often of "the Spanish tinge" in jazz, by which he meant, essentially, the influence of Afro-Caribbean musicians and styles of music upon the development of jazz. Morton himself contributed to this Latinization of jazz, but the cross-cultural pollination began in earnest in the years right after World War II.

It started with Latin percussionists hired to bring rhythmic spice to jazz bands playing the New York clubs. Dizzy Gillespie added the brilliant Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo to his band and Cuban bandleader Machito worked with such jazz players as Stan Kenton and Charlie Parker. The interplay between Afro-Cuban and bebop jazz musicians became so prevalent, it earned its own hip nickname, "Cubop."

The Latin Side of Miles Davis is an idea, a Grammy-nominated album and a band. The album is Another Kind of Blue: The Latin Side of Miles Davis, recorded live at New York's Blue Note in 2003 and released last year. Masterminded by renowned trombonist Conrad Herwig, the album is a companion to Herwig's Grammy-nominated 1996 recording, The Latin Side of John Coltrane.

In many respects, The Latin Side of Miles Davis tour and album are rooted in Herwig's belief that "anything that can be played, can be played on the trombone." He's bucked musical convention early and often. "When I was a kid," he says, "I wanted to play John Coltrane tunes on the trombone. I remember when I was 18 or 19, practicing 'Countdown' and having a jazz teacher tell me, 'There's no way anyone will ever play "Countdown" on the trombone. You might as well just give up.'"

Fortunately, Herwig ignored that advice and forged ahead with his experimentation. He began playing cumbia--a rhythmic genre native to Colombia--while in college, and he's been hooked on Latin music ever since. The jazz-Latin fusion made perfect sense to him. "Latin musical influence on jazz has been happening over the decades," he says. "Charlie Parker and Machito, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo--the connection is undeniable. It's a very organic thing...Some people look for the differences in styles of music. I look for the connections."

A product of the famed jazz program at the University of North Texas, Conrad Herwig made his name playing in the big bands led by Clark Terry, Buddy Rich, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Mel Lewis and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as in the Mingus Big Band and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. Herwig also worked his trombone magic in smaller bands led by Joe Lovano and Joe Henderson (in fact, he performed with Henderson on his last appearance in Dayton in 1998). Herwig has recorded several albums as a leader, including Shades of Light, Unseen Universe and Heart of Darkness.

Herwig cultivated his interest in what he calls "the crossroads where Latin music and jazz meet" working in groups led by Eddie Palmierei, Tito Puente, Paquito D'Rivera and Mario Bauza, the Cuban-born musician Herwig feels deserves much of the credit for the connections between jazz and Latin music.

It was while playing in Palmieri's band that Herwig formed a lasting musical partnership with bandmate Brian Lynch, a trumpeter and fellow Latin music fanatic. The two have worked together in a number of situations and now officially share leadership of The Latin Side of Miles Davis. "There's such a strong feeling of collaboration between us," says Herwig, "and it goes way back. Over the years, Brian and I have done about a thousand gigs together."

A native of Illinois, Brian Lynch grew up in Milwaukee. Since moving to New York in 1981, Lynch has earned an enviable reputation as a player, arranger and composer in both the jazz and Latin fields. His jazz resume includes stints with Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Phil Woods. On the Latin side, he's worked with numerous important artists, including Angel Canales, Hector La Voe and Eddie Palmieri. Lynch has recorded seven albums as a leader since making his recording debut in 1986 with Peer Pressure. His latest is Tribute To The Trumpet Masters.

Herwig showed in 1996 that he had moxie to spare by reinterpreting the music of one of the most exalted jazz icons, John Coltrane. Following up on an idea he and Lynch had discussed in the Palmieri band, Herwig decided to approach Coltrane's music from a Latin perspective in an attempt to bring something new to the familiar tunes. "Coltrane is probably my biggest role model," says Herwig. "He was a student of world music. He dug everything. And not only did he dig it, he understood it and integrated it into his own playing."

The success of the Parker album led to the Miles Davis album. Though the Latin elements in much of Davis' music are subtle, they are indeed present. "During Miles' fusion era," Herwig explains, "he used Latin percussionists and got that Afro-Caribbean influence directly. But in his other music, there's a less obvious connection--unless you go back to the roots of jazz in African rhythms. As Eddie Palmieri once said, 'It's the 40,000-year history of the rhythmic patterns that's the foundation.'

"So because Miles' music is so strong rhythmically and the inherent characteristics of those rhythms exist in many styles of Afro-Caribbean music we found a way to deal with the connections. Miles' music provides a great structure for improvisation. Miles wanted his musicians to have a lot of freedom to improvise, and encouraged them to create their own musical ideas. There's a natural freedom in the music that allows us to try to find something fresh in it from our perspective."

Another Kind of Blue: The Latin Side of Miles Davis is Herwig and Lynch's reconceptualization of Davis' 1959 album Kind of Blue, one of the hallmarks of recorded jazz and arguably Davis' finest work. Herwig and Lynch and their fine supporting cast put their Latin stamp on the five tunes on the original album plus "Petits Machins" from Davis' album Filles de Kilimanjaro.

The album was greeted with rave reviews. It even satisfied Herwig and Lynch. "We are all just very pleased with the music," says Herwig. "Miles is such an influence, the project was embarked upon with respect and humility. It is not an easy task to interpret something so classic." That comment echoes Herwig's earlier statement about making the Coltrane album. "If you approach it casually, then you're messing with something that's sacred. It's dangerous to your musical psyche."

But when approached with respect, intelligence, chops and musical integrity--as Herwig and Lynch have approached the Coltrane and Davis projects--the results can be truly wonderful and illuminating, helping us to admire familiar music in a new way. With Grammy nominations for both albums, Herwig and Lynch have been encouraged to continue their cross-cultural interpretations. A second album of Latinized John Coltrane tunes, Que Viva Coltrane, was released in November. A second album of Miles Davis' music is scheduled for release later this year. Tentatively titled Sketches of Spain Plus Seven, the recording will offer a Latin take on Davis' landmark 1960 album Sketches of Spain.

Appearing with Conrad Herwig and Brian Lynch for this performance by The Latin Side of Miles Davis are five of the hottest musicians on the New York Latin jazz scene. Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber is widely acknowledged as one of the best baritone players in history. He's performed and recorded with just about everybody--from George Benson, Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Lee Konitz and the Mingus Big Band in jazz, to Eddie Palmieri, Mario Bauza and Mongo Santamaria in Latin music, to Dr. John and Aretha Franklin in the pop-rock field.

Pianist Edsel Gomez, a native of Puerto Rico, has been crafting a sterling career in Latin jazz since graduating from the Berklee School of Music in the mid-1980s. Working both in Brazil and in New York since then, Gomez has recorded with such leading musicians as Raul de Souza, Don Byron, and David Sanchez and cut a handful of albums as a leader, most notably Cubist Music. The rhythm section of Carlito Del Puerto (bass), Robby Ameen (drums) and Pedro Martinez (hand percussion) is the cream of the crop, with extensive collective experience rocking the beat for New York's leading Latin musicians.

There are inherent risks in "messing with" beloved music. Conrad Herwig and Brian Lynch recognize that, but accept the challenge anyway. As Herwig admits, "It is scary, but also rewarding, like a veil being lifted. The only thing I can say is [we] made an honest effort. [We] made a sincere effort, and that's all you can do."

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November 6

Luciana Souza and Romero Lubambo

The term "multi-cultural" doesn't really do justice to Luciana Souza. "Omni-cultural" might be a better description of this musical dynamo. The Brazilian singer, musician and composer defines versatility. In the span of a single month in the Big Apple, it's possible to see and hear just how amazingly versatile she really is.

One night finds Souza, perhaps at one of her regular New York haunts like Joe's Pub, singing in Portuguese, lovingly and expertly caressing the bossa nova, samba and forro standards of her youth, the remarkable guitarist Romero Lubambo will be accompanying her. The next weekend she could be at another of the city's many jazz clubs with a piano trio, putting her unique stamp on "All of Me," "Never Let Me Go" and other classics of the jazz repertoire.

On another weekend she could be found at Avery Fisher Hall-Souza the "serious" singer eloquently delivering the powerful arias of an Osvaldo Golijov opera. Or back at a club such as at Birdland, singing the big-band compositions of jazz modernist Kenny Wheeler. Souza says that people always call her "eclectic." In the bustling music scene of New York City, she may define the word.

A native of São Paulo, Luciana Souza has been at the heart of the Brazilian music scene since the day she was born. Her parents, Walter Santos and Tereza Souza, were successful bossa nova songwriters and musicians, and their house was full of music. Luciana was profoundly influenced by her early exposure to such major Brazilian artists as Milton Nascimento, Hermeto Pascoal, Joao Gilberto and Elis Regina during visits and jam sessions at her family home.

The youngest of five children, Souza made her recording debut at the tender age of three on a radio commercial, the first of some 200 she would record over the next several years. She was a first-call studio veteran by the time she was sixteen. She also taught for a few years at Unicamp State University in Brazil.

Souza first came to the U.S. in 1985 to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. "I came as a guitarist," she says, "but I became a singer…I wanted to be a jazz singer. Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae--that's what I wanted to do. I've always wanted to sing standards." After graduating from Berklee with a degree in jazz composition, Souza returned to Brazil to teach voice for four years. She also performed locally and worked on her composing.

She then headed back to Boston, armed with a scholarship to the New England Conservatory, to pursue a graduate degree in jazz studies and composition. Souza started teaching at Berklee in 1994 and began a long-running musical association with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez; Souza has appeared on both of Perez' Grammy-nominated albums and toured with his Pan-American jazz revue, the "Motherland Project." She moved to New York in 1999 and has lived there since. "New York is such a welcoming city," she says. "I found the musicians to be very supportive."

Since making her recording debut as a leader in 1999, Souza has recorded five critically acclaimed albums. An Answer to Your Silence established Souza as a singer to watch, but it was her next two albums, The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop and Other Songs and Brazilian Duos, that focused a new level of attention on Souza. Both albums made many critics' "best of the year" lists and Brazilian Duos, recorded with guitarists Romero Lubambo, Marco Pereira and proud father Walter Santos, earned a Grammy nomination for "Best Jazz Vocal Album."

Brazilian Duos was a special album for Souza. "It's a record I've always wanted to do," she says, "because my life was exactly that, sitting in my living room with my father playing the guitar. I would like to do more of those. It's a project that lends itself to many, many volumes."

Souza's fourth album, North and South, was a blend of Brazilian and American jazz standards performed with a piano trio backing. It also was nominated for the "Best Jazz Vocal Album" Grammy. Her newest album, Neruda, is her most ambitious. As she has done with poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Octavio Paz, Souza took ten poems by the celebrated Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (in English translations) and set them to music she had composed for voice, piano and percussion. Her songs were then woven in and around occasional musical themes by the Andalusian composer Federico Mompou.

Released earlier this year to coincide with the centennial of Neruda's birth, the album has been met with tremendous reviews--Billboard called it "the sublime realization of an inspired artistic vision" while The New York Times saw it as Souza's arrival "as a quite serious composer." Souza spent several years setting these poems to music, and while she was initially apprehensive about what kind of reception the song-cycle might receive, she was clear about her goal.

" What I wanted to do," she explained, "was for the voice to soar. It's the same relationship I have with poetry. I open the book and the words lift from the paper. And it's my job as a reader to really make sense and interpret that poetry. As a composer and singer, I wanted to have that same relationship: one instrument and a voice, like the paper and the ink."

Souza has made frequent guest appearances on albums by other jazz, Latin and world music artists. Among those she has worked with in the studio are Steve Kuhn, Bob Moses, John Patitucci, Kenny Wheeler, Cyro Baptista, Fred Hersch, Danilo Perez, Miguel Zenon and the Maria Schneider Orchestra. She has appeared at most of the major jazz festivals and will appear this season to help inaugurate the new jazz performance venue of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

As if her work in the Latin and jazz idioms were not enough, Souza has also been a featured soloist in two new operas by avant-garde Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov, La Pasion Segun San Marcos (The Passion According to St. Mark) and Oceana. She has performed these two works with the Bach Akademie Stuttgart, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Symphony. She has also performed excerpts from Manuel de Falla's ballet El Amor Brujo with the New York Philharmonic and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Renowned Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo accompanies Luciana Souza in concert tonight, just as he did at their previous CITYFOLK appearance at Gilly's in 2002. Besides being one of Souza's partners on the Brazilian Duos album, Lubambo has toured extensively with Souza, though not enough to suit the singer. "It's so hard to tour," she says, "because we can't find more than a week at a time. He is an amazing guitarist, so he stays very busy. I look forward to doing these concerts with him."

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1955, Lubambo graduated from that city's prestigious Villa-Lobos School of Music. After moving to New York in 1985, Lubambo became an in-demand session musician, working with both jazz and Brazilian artists, including Dianne Reeves, Wynton Marsalis, Kathleen Battle, Astrud Gilberto, Diana Krall, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Farmer.

Besides his session work, Lubambo regularly performs and records with his highly acclaimed Trio Da Paz; the trio's albums include Cafe, Partido Out, Black Orpheus and Brazil From The Inside. Lubambo's "solo" albums as a leader include Brazilian Routes, Love Dance and Lubambo.

Luciana Souza and Romero Lubambo make for a formidable duo. Reviewing a concert there last year, the Seattle Times was enthusiastic in its praise: "Singing mostly in Portuguese but also in English, Souza negotiated staccato, wordless vocals of jaw-dropping speed, as Lubambo braided orchestral lines around her pure, light voice. No mere virtuoso, Souza came across as natural and musical on the fast numbers; on ballads, her emotional transparency brought people to tears. "

Luciana Souza is a true citizen of the world musically, straddling national and stylistic boundaries with ease. Currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, Souza is quite happy to have settled in New York and considers herself a full-fledged New Yorker. "I love it here," she says. "It's so big, people think it won't be hospitable, but it was. It's not competitive here, not in that bad, backstabbing way. In Brazil, I was constantly being compared to other singers, and I didn't fit in."

"Here, there are several little boxes that I fit in, and that's great--the more, the merrier. It's easier to do sessions here. You're more available to people here. People can hear you live, anywhere, any week. There's a nightlife here that's really exciting."

"It's nice to play with as many people as possible, because it feeds your creativity. Working with high-caliber musicians on different projects makes me feel more inspired. Sometimes I wish I'd come sooner, but mostly I think I came at the right time for me. I wanted to take a shot at it."

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OCTOBER 15, 2004

NEA JAZZ MASTER JAMES MOODY
with the Phil DeGreg Trio

Tonight's concert celebrates one of the most beloved musicians in all of jazz and someone for whom Dayton audiences have had tremendous affection for decades: James Moody. For Moody, the past few years have found him basking in the glow of his role as elder statesman while his craft has been polished to a deep, burnished radiance.

Though not as well known among the general public as he should be, James Moody has long owned a solid-gold reputation among his peers and among serious jazz fans and critics. He was one of the first bebop sax players to add the flute to his sound and his tasteful and distinctive playing has influenced countless younger musicians.

At seventy-nine-years young, Moody is still going strong, still exploring his muse. He's an eloquent champion of the music of Dizzy Gillespie and arguably the last great tenor player from the bebop era. As a multi-instrumentalist, he is peerless. He has moved effortlessly between tenor, alto and soprano saxophones, while his soulful flute playing has now influenced two generations of musicians.

After serving in the Air Force during World War II, James Moody launched his career as a professional musician in 1946 by joining the acclaimed big band led by Dizzy Gillespie. Moody and Gillespie had a warm and enduring musical and personal relationship that lasted until Gillespie's death in 1993. Even though the pioneering bebop trumpeter was just a few years older than Moody, Gillespie played a huge role in Moody's life.

"Diz influenced me from every standpoint," says Moody. "He was a friend, a father, a confidant, just everything to me. I'm still realizing how much he affected me-I'm thankful to him every day for giving me a chance have seen something in me to let me be in the band for a minute."

Gillespie did see something special in Moody; he thought very highly indeed of the young multi-instrumentalist. "Playing with James Moody," Gillespie once said, "is like playing with a continuation of myself."

James Moody was born on March 26, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Reading, Penn-sylvania, and Newark, New Jersey. He started playing music at sixteen, when his uncle gave him an alto saxophone. Moody's first musical inspiration was his father, a trumpet player who worked in the jumping jazz/R&B band of Tiny Bradshaw. His other early influences included Don Byas and Buddy Tate, tenor sax players with the Count Basie Orchestra.

His natural musical talent polished by the technical training he received in the Air Force Band, Moody was an inventive, powerful player when he joined the Gillespie band. He played a pivotal role in Gillespie's big band at the same time the trumpteter was fusing modern jazz to Cuban music. Moody's own debut as a leader for Blue Note records in 1948 featured a core of musicians from Gillespie's band, including Cuban percussion giant Chano Pozo.

Moody moved to Paris the following year and recorded, at a session in Stockholm, the song that made his name a household word (in hip households) back in the States. Playing a borrowed alto sax, Moody recorded an old Tin Pan Alley standard, "I'm in the Mood for Love," completely reinventing the song in the process. A short time later, singer Eddie Jefferson took Moody's solo from the record, set lyrics to it, and began performing it as "Moody's Mood for Love." Another singer, who recorded as King Pleasure, nicked the song from Jefferson, recorded it himself, and was rewarded with a huge hit in 1952.

When Moody returned to the U.S. later that year, he was surprised to find that his profile had increased during his absence. "It was amazing," he says of the time, "because I had no idea what a hit [King Pleasure's record] was. So when I went to play a gig somewhere, I'd be shocked at how packed the place would be. Suddenly I was being treated like a star or something."

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Moody led his own bands and worked in such cooperative ensembles as a three-tenor sax band featuring Moody alongside Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. Rebounding from a devastating series of personal mishaps in the late 1950s, he recorded the classic album Last Train from Overbrook