Concert Programs 2009

"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. Look for new BackStages by music expert and writer Jon Hartley Fox two appear about two weeks before each concert.

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 (Music in American Life), and has been writing about music, pop culture and the arts for over thirty years.

October 17, 2008

An Irish Homecoming, hosted by Cherish the Ladies with Maura O'Connell, Eddi Reader, bohola, Dermot Henry and Irish step dancers

Irish Homecoming is a special evening of Celtic music. Like a one-night festival or traveling revue of old, Irish Homecoming presents a program of traditional and modern songs and tunes featuring Cherish the Ladies, Maura O’Connell, Bohola, Eddi Reader, a special guest or two and some exceptional Irish step-dancers whose experiences range from Riverdance to touring with the Chieftains.

Cityfolk has been there from the start for Cherish the Ladies, presenting the all-star all-women band on its first national tour in the mid-1980s. Designed to showcase women (mostly first generation Irish-Americans) who were playing traditional Irish music, the group was assembled by musician and folklorist Mick Moloney for what everyone thought would be a one-time tour financed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Twenty-some years later, Cherish the Ladies—group founder Joanie Madden (flute, whistles), Mary Coogan (guitar, mandolin, banjo), Roisin Dillon (fiddle), Michelle Burke (vocals), Mirella Murray (accordion) and Kathleen Boyle (piano)—is the most celebrated Irish-American band in traditional Irish music.

The virtuoso sextet has recorded 11 highly acclaimed albums, including a Grammy-nominated collaboration with the Boston Pops Orchestra. The most recent release, Woman of the House, cracked the Top Ten of the Billboard world music chart and has been hailed by many critics as the band’s best. Named “Best Music Group of the Year” by the BBC in 2002 and “International Group of the Year” at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, Scotland, Cherish the Ladies combines instrumental virtuosity, exquisite singing, captivating arrangements, good humor and energetic step-dancing, resulting in “music that is passionate, tender and rambunctious” (New York Times).

Cherish the Ladies has performed throughout the world in a number of different settings, including performing with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Cityfolk Festival in the last few years. The band has played the major folk and Celtic music festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. And with such distinguished band alumna as Eileen Ivers, Liz Carroll, Winifred Horan, Cathie Ryan and Heidi Talbot, Cherish the Ladies has also established itself as the most important “finishing school” band in modern Irish-American music.

Thirteen years ago, in 1995, Joanie Madden was asked about long-range plans for Cherish the Ladies. “Ten years down the line,” she told Dirty Linen Magazine, “I’ll still be here. People might change…but I’m here for the long run. It’s been a long road. This group started out as a weekend fling…but [now] I can’t see myself doing anything else. I just love what I do, and I’ve made so many great friends, and enjoyed the music. It’s a long road, and you just try to take the right path.”

Maura O’Connell is “just a singer.” Earlier in her career, the Irish vocalist used that phrase ironically in her promo and website materials, ruefully admitting that, no, she didn’t write songs, or play an instrument or dance or anything else. She’s just a singer. But once she starts singing, it’s obvious that she’s in a class by herself. “O’Connell’s dusky Irish alto is a wondrous instrument,” writes noted critic Alanna Nash, “capable of summoning the brooding of the ages, but also brimming with such rich integrity and old-soul wisdom as to nurture the most casual listener.”

Since she began her recording career with the seminal Irish band De Danann in 1981, singer Maura O’Connell has earned an international reputation as a superb, soulful vocalist who transcends genres and styles with ease. A native of County Clare in the west of Ireland, O’Connell has lived in Nashville for nearly 20 years, where she has worked with such Nashville Cats as Jerry Douglas (who has produced several of O’Connell’s albums), Tim O’Brien, Bela Fleck and Russ Barenberg.

O’Connell has never been entirely comfortable wearing the mantle of “Irish singer.” The two years she spent with the traditionally oriented De Danann were especially confining. “I really felt like such a fraud the whole time,” she later admitted. “Even though I was enjoying the gigs, I really didn’t feel it was me that was being represented.”

On the 10 albums she has recorded since her solo debut in 1983, O’Connell has earned a reputation as not only a masterful interpreter of songs, but also an especially astute judge of songwriters. She has never been limited by labels or genres, recording whatever suits the song. “For me, the song is always the main deal,” she states, “rather than the style.” Her latest album is Don’t I Know, released in 2004. Other highlights of her discography include the Grammy-nominated Helpless Heart, Wandering Home, Walls & Windows and Stories.

With the exception of her album Wandering Home, which contains primarily traditional Irish material, O’Connell’s “Irishness” is subtle but nonetheless present on all of her albums. No matter how far afield she may roam stylistically, O’Connell is firmly in the sean nos (“pure drop”) tradition of singing, where the song is the point and the singer is an honored messenger to whom the song is entrusted. The New York Times says “O’Connell brings a clear-eyed realism to everything she sings.” She also brings an absolute master’s touch.

Duos rarely earn the honorific “supergroup,” but Bohola is the exception. A powerful duo comprised of Jimmy Keane, five-time All-Ireland champion on the piano accordion, and vocalist Pat Broaders, who plays a guitar/bass bouzouki hybrid called a “bouzar,” Bohola is based in Chicago and performs what the Chicago Sun-Times calls “Irish music for the new century.”

Irish Voice called the first Bohola album “one of the most impressive debut recordings ever by an Irish traditional music group,” and the critical plaudits have continued. The duo’s two most recent albums are bo-ho-ho-hola, a collection of Christmas and holiday music, and Jimmy Keane and Pat Broaders, released at the beginning of 2008 to widespread acclaim.

Born in England to Irish parents, Jimmy Keane has been hailed as a “savior” of the piano accordion as his virtuosity on the instrument has prompted many younger musicians to pick up the instrument. Keane has recorded and performed with Liz Carroll, Seamus Egan, Mick Moloney and Eileen Ivers, among others, but says that teaming with Pat Broaders has unlocked his sound. “We really started to jell and this big huge raw and powerful sound came out of nowhere,” says Keane. “We were like a glove—instinctively darting in and out of the music as if we were ‘as-one’ playing the same big instrument.”

Pat Broaders, who moved from Ireland to Chicago in the mid-1990s, is one of the most expressive singers in Celtic music and a veteran of many bands and recordings in Ireland and the U.S. Keane has nothing but praise for his partner, saying that Broaders has “this acute sense of music and rhythm that enables him to ‘lock in’ his playing to whatever I might do musically and rhythmically. The synergy that results spurs on Bohola and draws in the audience.

“It is the music that counts,” says Keane. “We are here to serve this great music and bring out what we feel is the best nature in the tunes and songs we play. We try to always play from the heart, and bring to the audience the core and the spirit of the music.”

Born in Glasgow in 1959, Eddie Reader is among Scotland’s most acclaimed singers and songwriters, blessed with “one of those Midas voices that transmutes into gold almost every note it touches” (Entertainment Weekly). She’s been a popular artist in the U.K. since the late 1980s, when she had a number one pop hit, “Perfect,” as a member of the quartet Fairground Attraction. Before that, she recorded as a backing vocalist with the Eurythmics, the Waterboys and the Gang of Four.

Reader launched her solo career in the early 1990s with the albums Mirmama and Eddi Reader, and she’s also recorded such highly regarded albums as Candyfloss and Medicine, Angels & Electricity and the critically acclaimed Simple Soul. Dirty Linen has praised the Scottish singer for “achiev[ing] the perfect marriage between the ancient and the contemporary.”

Her 2003 album, Eddie Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, recorded with friends Phil Cunningham, Kate Rusby, John McCusker and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, won her a prestigious MBE (Member of the British Empire) award “for outstanding contributions to the arts.” The recording was hailed as “a masterpiece” by Irish American News and “fresh and magical” by USA Today. Reader’s most recent album is Peacetime (2007).

Like Maura O’Connell, notions of style or genre are unimportant to Reader. The music, and its message, is all that matters to her. “I never really left the folk world,” she says, “except that I had a pop hit and nobody would talk to me. They thought I was somewhere else, and I was like, ‘No, I’m still here, I’m still on the acoustic guitar, it’s just a pop chart hit, that’s all. I’m still goin’ down to the folk club to have a bit of a jam, you know.”

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October 30, 2008

Brasil Guitar Duo

Considering the important role Portugal played in the development of the modern guitar, it’s not that surprising that Brazil, once Portugal’s primary colony, has long been one of the world’s hottest guitar hotbeds. The South American country has been shaped by a unique blend of African, European and indigenous cultures, giving Brazil a rich and richly diverse national music.

Brazilian music first registered on the U.S. radar screens with the explosion of bossa nova in the 1960s, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Brazil is a country of guitarists—home to such renowned artists as Laurindo Almeida, Luiz Bonfa, Joao Gilberto, Sergio and Odair Assad, Garato and countless others—and it is through guitar music that the soul of Brazil is most clearly illuminated.

The Brasil Guitar Duo—João Luiz and Douglas Lora—is quickly earning a stellar reputation for technique and talent within of the world of classical guitar music. The duo won top honors at the 2006 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and Luiz and Lora have also won major competitions in Germany and Brazil. Paulo Bellinati, a native of São Paulo who is a respected composer and music scholar and one of the most accomplished guitarists in Brazil, places Luiz and Lora in high company: “Brazil has the distinction of producing the best guitar duos. From the legendary Duo Abreu to the amazing Assad Brothers, the tradition continues with the Brasil Guitar Duo.”

João Luiz and Douglas Lora first met when both were guitar students in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. Luiz is Brazilian, and Lora was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Brazil. They have been working together professionally for more than 10 years. Based in São Paulo, the duo regularly tours in both North and South America and has performed as far afield as Austria and Germany. The duo’s performance highlights include recitals for the Tucson Guitar Society, the New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes College, the New York Classical Guitar Society, the Asociacion Nacional de Conciertos of Panama, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the Miami Guitar Festival.

In addition to their duet performances, Luiz and Lora have also performed with the Houston Symphony, the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, the Orquestra Jovem Tom Jobim and the Orquestra Municipal de Braganca. During their stay in Dayton, Luiz and Lora will perform twice with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra (October 29 and 31) in a program that includes compositions by J. S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, Vivaldi and Svoboda.

“We have been playing together for 10 years,” says Lora, who performed at the 2007 Cityfolk Festival as a member of Rob Curto’s band Forró for All and recently earned a master’s degree from the University of Miami. “We have always been committed to creating our own repertoire, with original compositions and arrangements.

“The guitar duo is a perfect combination in terms of guitar ensembles. It allows each guitarist to explore musicality, virtuosity and communication to their maximum potential. The diversity of functions that each one can assume, creates the necessary dialogue between the instruments, but also makes the guitar duo one of the most challenging ensembles.”

The Brasil Guitar Duo performs a wider range of music than do many classical guitarists. Luiz and Lora perform the standard repertoire of classical guitar duets (or works arranged for two guitars) composed by Bach, Scarlatti, Sor, Vivaldi and Haydn. But to that base of classicism, Luiz and Lora have added elements and ideas from such traditional genres of Brazilian music as samba, maxixe, choro and baião, performing works by such South American composers as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jacob do Bandolim and Astor Piazzolla, as well as such contemporary composers as Heraldo do Monte, Paulo Bellinati and Djavan.

“It is natural for a young music student to absorb and research the musical elements of his surroundings, particularly in Brazil due to the richness, sophistication and large variety of styles in Brazilian folk music,” explains Lora. “The Brazilian elements in our music are a natural and honest way of self-expression. The traditional repertoire is of extreme importance, and we will always cherish it as a vital part of our repertoire. We aim to keep our program as eclectic as possible, and strive to play Bach as naturally as choros or sambas.”

The Brasil Guitar Duo made its recording debut in 2000 with João Luiz e Douglas Lora. Classical Guitar magazine praised the duo’s debut recording, noting that “The maturity of musicianship and technical virtuosity displayed is simply outstanding. One would be hard put to think of a finer way to impressively enter the world of recorded music. Highly recommended.” The duo’s second album Bom Partido, released in 2007, showcases the duo’s traditional Brazilian repertoire. The next album by Luiz and Lora features the complete works for two guitars by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968). The two-CD set will be released by Naxos this fall to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the composer’s death. With their mentor Enrique Pinto, Luiz and Lora also perform as the Violão Camara Trio, which recently released a CD containing traditional Brazilian music. Luiz is also a member of the guitar quartet, Quaternaglia.

For their Cityfolk debut, João Luiz and Douglas Lora will perform a program that includes works by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jacob do Bandolim, Zequinha de Abreu, Pixinguinha, Heraldo do Monte, Egberto Gismonti, Djavan, Marlos Nobre and Paulo Bellinati. The program also includes a pair of original compositions by Lora, “Brazilian Fugues” and “Valsa and Preludio.”

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November 13, 2008

Soweto Gospel Choir

“You don’t have to be a believer to be inspired.” That observation from a review in Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper could well serve as a motto for the Soweto Gospel Choir. Not even 10 years old, this award-winning ensemble is a powerful musical juggernaut, making “soulful, profoundly moving music” (Boston Globe) that transcends language and matters of personal theology. The globe-trotting, award-winning group is making its southwestern Ohio debut this evening as part of a three-month, 48-city U.S. tour, the choir’s fourth U.S. tour since 2005.

The Soweto Gospel Choir was formed in 2002 by David Mulovhedzi and Beverly Bryer, experienced choir directors who wanted to establish an all-star South African choir to perform internationally. Mulovhedzi and Bryer held auditions in Johannesburg, choosing the most impressive singers from among the many Christian church choirs in the city. The best singers from Mulovhedzi’s own Holy Jerusalem Choir comprised the core of the ensemble, augmented by singers chosen in the auditions.

Like Ladysmith Black Mambazo—to which this group is often compared—the men and women of the Soweto Gospel Choir sing and dance with a joyous, infectious spirit that appeals to people of all ages and cultures. But while the Soweto singers perform some songs a cappella, they also have a band including guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboards, and percussion providing accompaniment on some songs. The 26-voice Soweto choir has a bit more modern take on the South African gospel tradition than Ladysmith and, thanks to the female voices, a harmonic range and complexity that’s simply not possible with an all-male choir.

Soweto is an urban area, a sprawling township within the city of Johannesburg that has a current population of about 900,000 people. The name Soweto is a contraction of the official name South Western Townships, and the township gained a form of iconic and symbolic status during the long years of apartheid. As a center of anti-apartheid activity, Soweto burst into the international consciousness in 1976, with mass protests that came to be known as the Soweto Uprising. South African police killed nearly 600 protesters, mostly high school and university students, and the violence finally gained the attention of the western world, which responded by imposing a variety of economic, cultural and political sanctions upon the government.

South Africa has 11 official languages and all are spoken in Soweto; the Soweto Gospel Choir sings in most of them—Sotho, English, Xhosa, Venda and others. The fact that the choir members speak different languages, attend different churches, come from different ethnic backgrounds and cultural heritages, yet come together to make such glorious, heartfelt music is a potent image—and maybe a model for the future—for all post-apartheid South Africans to consider.

Just as the choir serves as cultural ambassadors for South Africa when it tours internationally, it serves as an agent of change at home. “I think the Soweto Gospel Choir has played a very important role because most of our local shows [in South Africa] are completely integrated and multi-cultural,” says David Mulovhedzi, director of the ensemble. “There are white people, black people, and a variety of ethnic groups who attend our show. It doesn’t matter where we perform, there is a mixed audience. An important role in the program is bringing people together.”

Since making its recording debut in 2005, the Soweto Gospel Choir has achieved a most impressive track record. The first album, Voices From Heaven, topped the Billboard world music chart and the next two albums, Blessed and African Spirit, won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album. Among the choir’s other prestigious international music awards are the Helpmann Prize (Australia), the Gospel Music Award in the U.S. and the South African Music Award. The choir has also produced a concert DVD, Soweto Gospel Choir — Live in Concert.

That DVD was a worthy addition to the choir’s recorded output because, as exciting as the group’s CDs are, they can only begin to capture the visceral power and energy of the choir in performance. “Nothing can really prepare you for the riot of exuberance and depth of emotion,” noted a critic for The Scotsman when describing a choir performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In addition to the impassioned lead singing and rich vocal harmonies, the choir members conjure up a joyful noise of stomping, clapping, whistling, clicking (a vocal tic characteristic of Zulu music) and high-pitched, keening ululations. The New York Times called one of its performances “a cornucopia of remarkable voices: sharp, sweet, kindly, raspy and incantatory leads above a magnificently velvety blend…the music is both meticulous and unstoppable.”

“Because we’re such a young group, we’ve got energy just oozing in our bodies, and we can never sing a song and just stand,” says singer Sipokazi Luzipo of the group’s physicality. “The rhythm is in our bodies. The minute the drum goes, our bodies go with it. That’s just who we are as young South Africans.”

When the drum goes, their bodies most definitely go with it. Singing is obviously the main focus of any choir, but this choir also dances like there’s no tomorrow, delivering some of the wildest and most ecstatic dancing seen in these parts since the heyday of James Brown and the Famous Flames in the 1960s.

The visual impact of the dancing is heightened by the ensemble’s eye-popping outfits, traditional African costumes featuring every color in the rainbow, and then some. To say that a Soweto Gospel Choir concert is a feast for the senses veers dangerously close to cliché, but it’s the absolute truth. Very few performing ensembles are able to so effectively combine musical power and visual excitement. Most other gospel choirs—from Africa, the U.S. or anywhere else—aren’t even in the same league.

The repertoire of the Soweto Gospel Choir might best be described as Modern African Gospel, a mixture of traditional African music; 19th-century spirituals introduced by Christian missionaries from the U.S. and such pioneering vocal ensembles as the Fisk Jubilee Singers; Caribbean styles; modern gospel; and inspirational pop songs (Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross,” Johnny Clegg’s “My African Dream,” Bob Marley’s “One Love,” for example). A typical concert performance might include such well-known songs as gospel classics “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Amazing Grace,” pop-gospel stalwarts like “Amen” and “Oh Happy Day” and the best-known song to come out of South Africa in the 20th century, Solomon Linda’s immortal “Mbube” (also known as “Wimoweh” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”).

In addition to playing at home in South Africa, the Soweto Gospel Choir has performed in Germany, Greece, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Scotland, England, Bermuda, New Zealand, Lebanon, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Korea, Austria, Norway, Portugal, Finland, Canada, and the U.S. While in the U.S., the choir has appeared on such TV programs as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Artistic collaboration is a hallmark of the Soweto Gospel Choir, now under the musical direction of Lucas Bok. A sign of the choir’s open-minded and flexible approach to cross-cultural collaboration is its recent recording of a song with Robert Plant (the former Led Zeppelin singer who’s currently touring with Alison Krauss) for an album of Fats Domino songs to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. The choir has also performed and/or recorded with such music world luminaries as Bono, Peter Gabriel, Angelique Kidjo, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Clegg and Diana Ross.

Back home in South Africa, the members of the Soweto Gospel Choir put their faith into action, establishing their own charitable foundation, Nkosi’s Haven Vukani, in 2003 to assist AIDS orphans, families dealing with AIDS and organizations trying to eradicate the pandemic disease that has ravaged so much of sub-Saharan Africa. The proceeds from the choir’s international touring and CD sales go to support the foundation’s work. As of April 2008, the choir has raised almost one million dollars for the foundation. The choir has also performed at numerous multi-artist benefit concerts to raise funds for the fight against AIDS.

Back when the choir first toured the U.S. a few years ago, an awestruck writer from the Atlanta Journal Constitution had to go outside the human experience to find the right parallel: “Hearing the full choir harmonize sounds less like a couple of dozen people singing together and more like a pipe organ roaring to life.” That’s an imaginative and evocative image, but it misses the central, essential point of the universal appeal of the Soweto Gospel Choir.

What makes the Soweto Gospel Choir so special is its humanity—its exuberant, optimistic, happy-to-be-alive humanity. The choir is animated by a higher power, to be sure, but the men and women giving it their all on stage possess a mighty power of their own, a uniquely human power that helps the choir connect with disparate audiences despite language, cultural or doctrinal barriers.

No, you don’t have to be a believer to be moved by the Soweto Gospel Choir. You just have to be alive.

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November 15, 2008

Frank Wess Quintet

Flutist-saxophonist Frank Wess has spent a lifetime on the bandstand. He took his place in the first rank of jazz musicians in 1944 and hasn’t relinquished it yet. At 86 years young, Wess is both an elder statesman of jazz and a vital, creative working musician who has performed in Spain, Japan and New York in the past six months. Wess is an NEA Jazz Master, a tireless road warrior and an unsung hero in the history of jazz.

Wess is probably best known for his sterling tenor sax and flute work with the Count Basie band in the late 1950s and early 1960s and his seminal role in establishing the flute as a valid jazz instrument. He’s had a remarkably full career as a sideman and bandleader, working with the best musicians over the past seven decades. Wess won the DownBeat critic’s poll on flute for six consecutive years (1959-1964), and is universally respected as a paragon of swinging, soulful music.

In addition to Wess, the Quintet includes Terell Stafford (trumpet), Ilya Lushtak (guitar), Rufus Reid (bass) and Winard Harper (drums).

Terell Stafford is no stranger to Cityfolk audiences, having appeared here with his quintet and most recently with pianist Bruce Barth last season. Stafford first gained notice in saxophonist Bobby Watson’s band Horizon, and has since worked with McCoy Tyner’s Latin All-Star Band and in bands led by Jon Faddis, Jimmy Heath, Benny Golson and several others, as well as the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and Mingus Big Band. Stafford has made five albums as a leader, the most recent being Taking Chances: Live at the Dakota, recorded with his quintet.

Bassist Rufus Reid has been in the first rank of jazz bassists since his days with saxophonists Eddie Harris and Dexter Gordon in the 1970s. In addition to performing with virtually every major jazz player of the past three decades, he co-led the quintet Tana/Reid with longtime partner, drummer Akira Tana (the two led two Cityfolk sponsored artist-in-residence programs in Dayton in the ‘90s) and now heads up his own critically acclaimed quintet.

Russian guitarist Ilya Lushtak has been active on the New York City jazz scene since the mid-1990s, playing and recording with musicians Charles Earland, Hank Jones and Cedar Walton. His label, Lineage Records, has recorded a series of fine albums featuring a number of veteran musicians, including Hank and Frank, which showcases Wess and jazz piano cornerstone Hank Jones.

Drummer Winard Harper hit the scene in 1982 when he started working with Dexter Gordon. He subsequently spent four years in Betty Carter’s band and later played with Johnny Griffin, Joe Lovano and the Harper Brothers Quintet as well as leading his own band.
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Frank Wess was born in 1922 in Kansas City, but grew up mostly in Oklahoma. He started studying alto saxophone at age 10, playing classical music and traveling with an all-state youth orchestra. Wess moved to Washington, D.C., with his family in 1935, but he had mostly quit playing by then, burned-out and bored.

“But when I moved to Washington, it was a different scene,” says Wess. “I was in high school and during lunch time they used to have sessions down in the orchestra room. Billy Taylor was going to school there, too, and a lot of different fellas. We’d be jamming at noontime and I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ So I got my horn, had it fixed up and started playing again.”

The fledgling jazz musician was influenced by the records of Lester Young, personal interactions with tenor saxophonists Dick Wilson and Don Byas, and listening to Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, the Mills Brothers and Claude Hopkins on the radio. Wess had just started playing in big bands around Washington when his career was interrupted by World War II. He played alto sax and clarinet in an Army band during the war and led a big band that performed for the troops in North Africa and Italy, occasionally with Josephine Baker.

After getting his Army discharge, Wess joined singer Billy Eckstine’s great band in 1944, playing alongside such stellar musicians as Fats Navarro, Art Blakey and Gene Ammons. He also played in the late 1940s in the jazz-tinged R&B bands led by Lucky Millinder and Bull Moose Jackson, but by 1949, Wess was tired of the road. He enrolled at the Modern School of Music in Washington, D.C. to study the flute. He was happily immersed in his studies when Count Basie started recruiting the young sax player.

“Basie had been calling me for a couple of years,” Wess recounts, “and I told him I was busy doing something else and I wasn’t going to quit school to go back on the road, be-cause I had enough of the road. So he just kept calling. And at about the end of my school year, he called again and said he thought he could get me more exposure than I had. That struck a chord in me. I said, ‘Maybe that’s what I need.’”

Wess joined Count Basie’s band in 1953 playing flute and alto sax, shifting to tenor sax later in the decade. Wess enjoyed his years playing in what was called Basie’s “New Testament” band, working with such musicians as Thad Jones, Joe Newman and fellow tenor saxophonist (and Cincinnati native) Frank Foster, with whom Wess formed a long-standing musical partnership heard on such highly regarded albums as Frankly Speaking, Two for the Blues and Two Franks Please.

“Basie let us do what we wanted to do,” Wess remembers. “That’s what was good about him. He never rehearsed the band. He just sat back and listened. Everybody else rehearsed the band—Joe Newman, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, myself. Basie didn’t say nothing. He just sat in the back, listening. And he wasn’t someone who fired people every two minutes either. So all the cats stayed there long enough to know each other and get to be a band. You know, you can’t have a good band in six months.”

After leaving Basie’s band in 1964, Wess played with Clark Terry’s big band from 1967 through the mid-1970s and also played in the New York Quartet with pianist Roland Hanna. He a featured member of the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, co-led a quintet with Frank Foster for almost 20 years and led his own bands, from quartets to big bands.

Wess was first-chair tenor saxophonist in the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band for 10 years, the same length of time he was a staff musician for ABC-TV, playing in the orchestras for The Dick Cavett Show, The David Frost Show and other programs. Wess was also active on Broadway, playing in the pit bands of such shows as Golden Boy (starring Sammy Davis, Jr.) and Sugar Babies (with Mickey Rooney).

Wess has recorded extensively throughout his career. His varied discography ranges from early 1950s albums like Jazz for Playboys with guitarist Kenny Burrell and Wheelin’ and Dealin’ with John Coltrane and pianist Mal Waldron to later albums in the 1990s like Tryin’ To Make My Blues Turn Green, Entre Nous and Surprise! Surprise!, a live double-album featuring guests Frank Foster, Jimmie Heath and Flip Phillips.

One constant in Wess’ music regardless of era or format is that it always swings. Swing is the root for Wess. “It’s important for anybody who wants to play jazz,” he says of swing. “All that other stuff, you can forget it. If you can’t tap your foot or dance to it, you may as well be driving a cab. That’s what it’s all about. When I do clinics, I have the individual instruments play by themselves and I want them to make me dance—make me want to dance, you know. I don’t want them to depend on somebody else for that swing.”

Wess is still earning rave reviews for his playing. In critiquing a performance by the Frank Wess Quintet at the Village Vanguard in May, a critic for All About Jazz wrote, “When Frank Wess plays tenor saxophone his sound can have a delicate, almost courtly veneer. But there’s another player underneath that sound with an almost opposite disposition, brawny and bullish…

“Wess ended by holding a note with wide vibrato. A lot of old bandstand knowledge was compressed in that long tone, as there had been in his entire performance. You can feel something similar with veteran pianists or bassists or drummers, but it’s dealt out more lavishly from players like Wess, who can breathe through their instruments. That last note felt like direct, physical access to the past: like seeing an old picture come to life.”

In 2007, Frank Wess was named an NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest official recognition given to a jazz musician in the U.S. Presented for lifetime achievements, the award noted that Wess was “revered as a smoothly swinging tenor saxophone player in the Lester Young tradition, an expert alto saxophonist, and one of the most influential, instantly recognizable flutists in jazz history.”

A veteran of almost 65 years on the bandstand, Frank Wess just laughed when he was asked about retiring in a 2005 interview. “Retire?” he asked. “To what? I’ve never done anything else in my life. I never had a 9 to 5, or none of that—I wouldn’t even know where to start. So you just do what you know how to do.”

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January 17, 2009

Tim O'Brien and the Dan Tyminski Band

Tim O’Brien
Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien sometimes thinks of himself as a chameleon. Over the course of his career, the native of West Virginia has worked in bands, a duet with his sister and as leader of his own band, the O’Boys, each time adapting his talents to the job at hand, holding back a bit for the collective good. Now that he’s performing as a solo act, at least some of the time, we finally get to see the “pure” Tim O’Brien, working without the net of other bodies on stage. It’s a brave move for an artist at this stage of his career—and a rare treat for his longtime fans.

Tim O’Brien headed west from Wheeling, West Virginia, in the mid-1970s, but not before fiddling on the second album by the Hutchison Brothers, a popular southeastern Ohio bluegrass band. O’Brien worked with the Ophelia String Band in Colorado and recorded his first album, Look Who’s in Town (1977), but his commercial breakthrough came when he joined forces with Pete Wernick, Nick Forster and Charles Sawtelle to form Hot Rize, the most important bluegrass band of the 1980s.

Hot Rize took the bluegrass world by storm with its compelling blend of traditional sounds and sterling original material, most of it written by O’Brien, the band’s lead singer. O’Brien played mandolin and fiddle in Hot Rize and guitar in the band’s “old electric” country music alter egos Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. Hot Rize recorded several critically acclaimed albums, including Traditional Ties, Untold Stories and Radio Boogie. Among the awards won by Hot Rize were Entertainer of the Year (1990) and Song of the Year (1991) for “Colleen Malone” from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA).

Since Hot Rize disbanded in 1990, O’Brien has mostly performed and recorded with his band, the O’Boys, which has included such stellar musicians as Jerry Douglas, Scott Nygaard, Casey Driessen, Mark Schatz and Dennis Crouch. The desire to perform solo, as he did on his newest album, Chameleon, is not so much a new thing for O’Brien as it is a return to an old thing.

“The folksinger with a guitar is a sort of an unassailable icon,” says O’Brien. “And I remember when I heard the first Doc Watson album, I thought, ‘What does he need a band for? This guy has got it all.’

“Every time a recording comes around, I think about doing a solo record,” he says of Chameleon. “But when I get to the time where I really have to decide, I juggle a bunch of concepts around, and when one falls into place the others just fall away, and doing it solo always wound up falling away. On several records, like Fiddler’s Green, I’ve done a solo track or two, but this time I thought, it’s time to finally do it all on one record.”

Writing in Bluegrass Unlimited a few years ago, songwriter Chris Stuart succinctly described the magic behind O’Brien’s music: “His [albums] have not so much blurred the distinction between traditional and modern, northern and southern, black and white, as they have embraced the American songbook in all its complexity. He doesn’t compromise the rich tradition, but adds to it by re-imagining old songs and composing new ones based on that tradition.”

O’Brien is one of the most accomplished songwriters in bluegrass and modern acoustic music. His songs, which have been recorded by Garth Brooks, the Dixie Chicks, Kathy Mattea and countless bluegrass bands, include such modern classics as “Look Down That Lonesome Road” (IBMA’s “Song of the Year” for 2006), “Walk the Way the Wind Blows,” “Nellie Kane,” “More Love,” “Hold to a Dream” and “Untold Stories.”

In addition to his own record-ings, O’Brien has always been an eager collaborator. He’s recorded a handful of albums with his older sister Mollie O’Brien; worked with Irish musicians John Doyle, Karan Casey, Frankie Gavin and Kevin Burke on a pair of superb albums concerning the Irish-American experience (The Crossing and Two Journeys); partnered with old-time musicians Dirk Powell and John Herrmann on Songs from the Mountain; and more. In 2007, he contributed two songs (one with sister Mollie) to Always Lift Him Up, a tribute to the music of Blind Alfred Reed.

Tim O’Brien won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2005 with Fiddler’s Green and has twice won the IBMA Award for Male Vocalist of the Year (1993, 2006). He’s a mainstay of Americana radio and a truly versatile musician. In the past, he’s played such characters as Howdy Skies and Red Knuckles, and that’s been great. Tonight, he’s just Tim O’Brien, and that’s even better.

The Dan Tyminski Band
George Clooney may have been the star, but Dan Tyminski stole the movie. As the singing voice of Clooney’s character Ulysses Everett McGill in the hit film O Brother, Where Art Thou, Tyminski was suddenly ubiquitous in 2000 and 2001 as his version of “Man of Constant Sorrow” took every music award in sight. That experience—as unexpected and surreal as, say, Ralph Stanley winning a Grammy Award for “O Death”—undoubtedly helped prepare the singer, guitarist and mandolinist for his current role, his first as leader of the band.

Since breaking in with the Lonesome River Band (LRB) in the late 1980s at the age of 21, Dan Tyminski has established himself as one of the premier singers in bluegrass. A native of Vermont, Tyminski played mandolin in LRB, sang tenor harmonies and shared the lead singing with bass player Ronnie Bowman. The contrast and interplay between Tyminski’s edgy bluegrass tenor and Bowman’s more relaxed country style gave the band a compelling and highly distinctive sound. Tyminski was with the LRB for such popular and influential albums as Carrying the Tradition (IBMA’s Album of the Year in 1992), Old Country Town and Looking for Yourself.

Tyminski joined Alison Krauss & Union Station in 1994. As that band’s guitar player and tenor harmony (and occasional lead) singer, Tyminski has toured the world, won 13 Grammy Awards, performed on every imaginable television program and enjoyed as high a profile as any “sideman” in bluegrass history. He’s performed on four of Alison Krauss & Union Station’s Grammy-winning albums (Lonely Runs Both Ways, Live, New Favorite and So Long So Wrong), and because Krauss is a generous boss who gives her band members plenty of room to shine in concert and on recordings, Tyminski is a star who has traveled an unconventional path to stardom.

Tyminski had a banner year in 2000. His first solo album, Across the Mountain, was released to widespread critical acclaim. With guests like Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas and Tony Rice, as well as Bales, Steffey and Stewart, Tyminski covered hits by Jimmy Martin and the Louvin Brothers on the album and recorded several new songs by such associates as Ronnie Bowman, Tim Stafford and Ron Block.

That same year saw the release of O Brother Where Art Thou, with its multi-platinum soundtrack album featuring “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Sung on-screen by Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, the record was credited to and performed by the Soggy Mountain Boys—Tyminski, Dayton native Harley Allen, and Pat Enright of the Nashville Bluegrass Band.

Tyminski’s eagerly anticipated second album, Wheels, was released about six months ago. The core band on the album was the five people you see on stage tonight. In addition to Tyminski on guitar and lead vocals, the Dan Tyminski Band includes Adam Steffey (mandolin), Ron Stewart (banjo, fiddle), Justin Moses (fiddle, resophonic guitar) and Barry Bales (bass).

Justin Moses is a relative newcomer on the national bluegrass scene, but the other three musicians are award-winning veterans. Adam Steffey, IBMA’s Mandolinist of the Year seven consecutive years (2002–2008), was a member of Alison Krauss & Union Station from 1991–1998 and later spent three years with the Isaacs and almost seven years with Mountain Heart. IBMA’s Bass Player of the Year in 2008, Barry Bales has been a member of Alison Krauss & Union Station since 1990.

Local bluegrassers with long memories will remember Ron Stewart, IBMA’s Fiddler of the Year in 2000, from his days as Fiddlin’ Ronnie Stewart, fronting his Indiana-based family band. Now one of the most highly skilled pickers in bluegrass on fiddle, banjo and guitar, Stewart recently completed a lengthy stint fiddling with J.D. Crowe and is currently working with the all-star ensembles Longview and the Bluegrass Album Band. As Lynn Morris put it, “Ron Stewart has Flatt and Scruggs in his deepest roots, the feel of a Mississippi blues man in his soul, and the power of a lightning storm in his touch.”

A three-time winner of IBMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year Award (2001-2003), Dan Tyminski decided to take advantage of a hiatus by Alison Krauss & Union Station by getting some friends together to do some picking. “This is a [band] that was born out of opportunity,” he says, “out of having the free time to do it. I knew I wanted to make music in this configuration, with these people. We’ve threatened to do this for a long time. We finally made it happen.”

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March 5-6, 2009

Rhythm In Shoes and Dallas Chief Eagle

Rhythm in Shoes
It came as a shock a couple of months ago to hear that Rhythm in Shoes, the internationally acclaimed traditional dance and music ensemble from Dayton, would be “heading for the barn” at the end of its 2009–2010 season. The Shoes have become such a central part of the artistic zeitgeist of the Miami Valley that the troupe’s absence will leave a hole that will be hard to fill. But, as the Shoes point out, the sunset is still a long way off, with many a show between now and then.

Now is the time to celebrate Rhythm in Shoes and what the innovative company has accomplished during its long run.
Rhythm in Shoes was founded in 1987 by dancer and choreographer Sharon Leahy and musician and composer Rick Good. A native of New Jersey, Leahy had danced with the Green Grass Cloggers, a traditionally-rooted ensemble that performed at many of the leading bluegrass, folk and old-time festivals of the day. Dayton native Good had been a member of the Hotmud Family, a popular bluegrass and old-time country band based in Spring Valley.

The Hotmud Family and the Green Grass Cloggers had performed many shows together, so the idea of combining dancers and a band into one self-contained performing and touring ensemble must have seemed logical—and logistically appealing—to Leahy and Good. Rhythm in Shoes clicked from the beginning, with the company touring on a regional basis before expanding to the national and international level. RIS has now performed in 47 states and in Canada, Japan and Ireland.

The ensemble’s melding of swing tunes and old-time country music with tap and clog dancing has been a hit with critics as well as audiences. Writing in The Village Voice, dance critic Deborah Jowitt approvingly noted that, “Choreographer/director Sharon Leahy, who works stylishly and lovingly with traditional material, takes the spirit and rhythmic foot-work of clogging and tap and sets them in inventive, whistle-clean musical and spatial configurations. Really smart stuff.”

To Boston Globe critic Karen Campbell, this is “a company of first-rate dancers and superb musicians [that] presented a cohesive, yet varied program that was a delight from end to end…Leahy has created a whole new language by combining straightforward step-dance moves with intriguing shifts, turns, jumps and ensemble pattern…the musical and spoken interludes combined with the dance to weave a colorful, tightly knit tapestry…”

Rhythm in Shoes has performed numerous times for Cityfolk over the years in concert and at festivals. The company’s other local highlights include performing at Dayton’s Centennial of Flight Celebration and Holiday on Thin Ice, an annual sold-out Christmas show at Gilly’s that became an eagerly anticipated holiday tradition in the Miami Valley. And who can forget Banjo Dance, the Shoes’ tribute to the music and dance of the southern Appalachians; the absolutely brilliant physical comedy of audience favorite Nate Cooper (who’s now performing with Cirque du Soleil); the ADD Duet; the annual Shuffle Ball; and my personal favorite, the Boomwhackers?

Rhythm in Shoes is currently planning a 2009–2010 Celebration Season and Sharon Leahy says the Shoes will spend “the next year and a half celebrating all the work we’ve done, the people we’ve worked with and the community we’ve built.” While acknowledging that the ensemble was “a vision born in a time when the performing arts were flourishing and innovation was valued,” Leahy takes pains to stress that the current economic downturn was not behind the decision to hang up the Shoes. “This has been an incredible run,” she says. “We just decided that now’s the time to try something else.”

The cross-cultural collaboration tonight between Rhythm in Shoes and Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner is nothing new for the Shoes. The company has a long history of collaborating with other like-minded ensembles and some of the Shoes’ best work has come in this context, including Brother Wolf, a recent collaboration with the Human Race Theatre Company and Rambleshoe, created with the Red Clay Ramblers, a multi-dimensional stringband from North Carolina.

Rhythm in Shoes has also been an active participant in Culture Builds Community, Cityfolk’s neighborhood-based arts program that uses residencies by traditional artists to bring community residents together for a variety of cultural and educational activities. The Shoes have worked in this program with Santiago Jimenez, Jr., the legendary Tejano accordionist, and Rwandan singer and musician Jean-Paul Samputu. The presentation tonight with Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner is just the most recent example of Rhythm in Shoes once again transforming traditional music and dance into something wondrous and new.

Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner
Dancing is more than entertainment for Dallas Chief Eagle, more even than a way of life. For this visionary member of the Rosebud Lakota (Sioux) Nation and world-champion hoop dancer, dancing is the way to keep ancient traditions alive, to keep the Lakota ways from fading out and to keep balance in his life, both on the individual level and on the universal. He has dedicated his life to hoop dancing and using hoop dancing to change the world, one young dancer at a time.

Dallas Chief Eagle grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in south-central South Dakota and now lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Dallas knew of several hoop dancers when he was growing up on the reservation in the 1950s and 1960s, but one particular dancer caught his attention and inspired him at age 13 to take up hoop dancing and learn as much about it as he could.

Dallas’ grandparents helped him get started. His grandfather helped him make his first hoops. His grandmother looked after the spiritual side, telling him to go into the forest, find a tall pine and climb it, so that he could be held in the tree’s embrace. To honor that tree, Dallas has danced in a costume representing the Tree of Life ever since—an eagle feather and porcupine roach on his head represent animals in the branches, while fur on his legs and dragonfly beadwork on his chest signify the tree’s trunk.

After four decades of dancing, Dallas Chief Eagle is now recognized as a master. He has won first place in the Reno Red Cloud Memorial Hoop Dance Contest and in 1996, he won the Senior Division of the World Hoop Dance Championships in Phoenix. He’s now teaching and training future champions at the Hoop Dance Society he started on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Hoop dancing is found throughout the western U.S. and Canada. Dancers in the southwest tend to use fewer hoops and dance slower, while dancers from the northern U.S. and Canada dance faster and use more hoops. Modern dancers generally use more hoops than dancers did in the past. The dancer who inspired Dallas, for example, used five hoops in his dances; Dallas uses as many as 27 in his signature dance, “Nurturing the Tree of Life.”

Hoop dancing has traditionally been the exclusive province of men, but Jasmine Pickner is changing that. A member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe, Pickner is Dallas’ stepdaughter and she’s been dancing almost since she could walk, doing traditionally female forms like fancy shawl dancing and jingle dress dancing, as well as hoop dancing. Jasmine was encouraged to hoop dance by her grandmother, and she admits that people were skeptical at first about her motives and her talent. But after she broke the gender barrier in 2001 and became the first girl to win the teen division of the World Hoop Dance Championships, even the skeptics acknowledged that Dallas Chief Eagle’s daughter had the gift.

Pickner has served two formal apprenticeships with her father (funded by the South Dakota Arts Council), during which they refined her dancing and developed a joint performance and educational presentation. Education is a major priority for the duo. Dallas has earned two degrees, including a master’s in counseling, from the University of South Dakota, and Jasmine is currently studying elementary education at Black Hills State University.

Dallas and Jasmine appear regularly at reservation schools throughout South Dakota, community festivals, tribal gatherings and public schools in South Dakota and neighboring states. They have also performed at the National Folk Festival, the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

In their work with youth, particularly on the reservations, Dallas and Jasmine demonstrate and teach dancing but also use the hoop dance to promote a sense of balance, harmony and respect between men and women. Their message about dancing applies to life as well. “Whatever happens,” Dallas tells them, “just keep dancing. Pick up your hoops and start again. We are not counting mistakes. We are looking to see who keeps dancing.”

The hoop dancing done by Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner portrays the world view of the Plains Indians. The hoop represents life. Their hoops are different sizes and colors, reflecting both the variety of trees in the forest and the diversity of people in the modern world. Their dance—especially their collaboration tonight with Rhythm in Shoes—is a bridge between worlds, between cultures and between individuals. It ties everything together.

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March 7, 2009

Paddy Maloney and the Chieftains

It may seem hard to believe, but there was music in Ireland before the Chieftains. After 47 years and almost as many albums, the Chieftains symbolize Irish music for many people. Modern “Celtic music” was jump-started in the early 1960s by this band, which rejected the bland status quo of contemporary Irish music and created a new sound by looking to the past for inspiration. The Chieftains gave Irish folk music back to the folk.

The Chieftains have been touring North America for 35 years now, with an annual winter tour of the U.S. and Canada the norm for the last couple of decades. This year’s model, dubbed the Celtic Connection Tour, offers a musical “connection” that might surprise a few fans. “Beyond the Celtic-Scottish connection that we focused on last year,” explains Chieftains leader Paddy Moloney, “we plan on giving everyone a taste of the overall influence Celtic music has had internationally. In particular, we’ll be previewing our upcoming project related to the Celtic-Mexican connection.”

In the beginning, the Chieftains sound existed only in the mind of Paddy Moloney. The young Dublin musician had been hearing this sound since the mid-1950s, and it was a sound that bore little resemblance to the music Moloney heard all around him. It was an old sound, archaic even, played on folk instruments like fiddles, pipes, flutes and harps. “The beginning of all music is folk music,” Moloney says, and he was convinced the music in his head was important.

Moloney took a giant step towards realizing his vision when he met and began playing music with composer and musician Seán Ó Riada, the single most influential individual in the revival of Irish folk music. In the late 1950s, Ó Riada was writing scores for plays and films in which he used traditional Irish folk tunes and “sean-nós” (“old style”) songs in orchestral settings, somewhat similar to what Ralph Vaughan Williams had done with English folk songs or Aaron Copland had done in this country.

Between 1960 and 1969, Ó Riada led Ceoltóirí Cualann, a band that played traditional Irish songs and tunes arranged for piano, fiddle, flute, pipes, accordions, bodhrán, whistles, bones and harpsichord (which Ó Riada used to approximate the sound of the clarsach, an Irish harp). It sounds simple enough today, but the effect on audiences was nothing short of electrifying. It was the first time most people in Ireland had ever heard these old songs and tunes arranged and performed by an ensemble of musicians.

Encouraged by the success of Ceoltóirí Cualann, several of the musicians in the group, including Paddy Moloney, began experimenting with smaller configurations—duos, trios, quartets—and new voicings for traditional tunes. These early experiments had evolved by 1962 into a group called the Chieftains.

The band has had remarkably few personnel changes in its half-century run. Some early members—Peader Mercier, Michael Tubridy, Seán Potts, Martin Fay and David Fallon—left the fold and harpist Derek Bell died in 2002 after 30 years in the band. Otherwise, the roster of the band has been unchanged since 1979: Paddy Moloney (Uilleann pipes, tin whistle), Matt Molloy (flute), Seán Keane (fiddle) and Kevin Conneff (bodhrán, vocals). Unfortunately, Seán Keane is not on this tour; the fiddling duties will be shared by guests Jon Pilatzke and Deanie Richardson.

Paddy Moloney, the founder of the Chieftains, is the world’s most famous master of the uilleann pipes. A native of Dublin, Moloney started playing tin whistle at age six. He switched to the uilleann pipes four years later, his first performances coming as the mascot of the marching Ballyfin Pipe Band. Before the Chieftains signed with Island Records in 1970, the band released two albums, its 1962 debut and The Chieftains 2 (1969); both albums were released by Claddagh Records, a label Moloney ran out of his house.

Seán Keane was born in Dublin into a family of fiddlers. He studied classical violin and played the pipes in his childhood, and even spent some time at the Dublin College of Music, but by the time he was a teenager, he was heavily into traditional fiddling. A victory in a regional fiddle competition earned Keane an invitation from Seán Ó Riada to join the seminal band Ceoltóirí Cualann. Keane joined the Chieftains in 1968, making his recording debut with the group the following year on The Chieftains 2.

Matt Molloy is the “new guy” in the band, with only 30 years of service. A native of County Roscommon, Molloy is the only band member from a rural background, a key factor in his musical development according to Moloney. “The music was kept so much alive as a source of entertainment,” says Moloney of County Roscommon. “It took longer for radio and television to make it out there, so people used to go to each other’s house and play music. Matt comes from that area that has wonderful music.” Now recognized as the premier flutist in traditional Irish music, Molloy was a founding member of the Bothy Band and played briefly with Planxty before joining the Chieftains in 1979.

Kevin Conneff joined the Chieftains in 1976 and introduced singing to the band’s sound. “Before Kevin joined the band we only performed instrumentals in our concerts,” says Paddy Moloney. “Kevin loved singing, [so] each show I began to add songs into the set list so Kevin could sing. Of course, that has continued, with many guests also singing in our shows and on our albums.” Born in Dublin, Conneff also plays the bodhrán, a goatskin-covered hand-held frame drum.

The Chieftains’ commercial breakthrough came in 1975, when the band provided the music for Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon. The band won an Academy Award for the soundtrack (which contained the hit single “Women of Ireland”), gaining enough international attention and additional work that Paddy Moloney quit his day job as an accountant, ending the band’s semi-professional days. The Chieftains continue to do film work, contributing music to such films as Treasure Island, Tristan And Isolde, The Grey Fox, The Year of the French and Far and Away.

The band’s discography is vast, numbering more than 40 albums since the band recorded its first album in 1962. The Essential Chieftains (2006) is a good place for newcomers to start, as it contains such fan favorites as “O’Sullivan’s March,” “Boil the Breakfast Early,” and “Santiago de Cuba” and covers the band’s whole career. The band has won Grammy Awards for its albums Long Journey Home, Santiago, The Celtic Harp, An Irish Evening and Another Country.

Other highlights from the catalog include The Chieftains 2, which contained the first recording of a tune by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738), the blind, itinerant harpist and composer who is now considered a national treasure; The Long Black Veil, Down the Old Plank Road and Further Down the Old Plank Road, three albums examining the intersection of Irish music and American country music; Film Cuts and Reel Music: The Film Scores; and The Chieftains in China, documenting the band’s historic early 1980s tour in China.

When harpist Derek Bell died in 2002, the band decided against trying to replace him with a single musician, touring instead with a regular troupe of musicians and dancers as well as guest stars. The ensemble for this tour includes traditional Irish step-dancer Cara Butler, a veteran of 17 years with the Chieftains and the winner of six national titles at the U.S. Irish dance championships; renowned Irish harpist Triona Marshall, formerly chief harpist of the RTE Concert Orchestra and a Chieftains associate since 2003; Scottish vocalist Alyth McCormack, who first toured with the band last year; and Canadian brothers Jon and Nathan Pilatzke, outstanding exponents of Ottawa Valley step-dancing who have been performing with the Chieftains since 2002. Jon Pilatzke also plays fiddle with the group.

The final two guests this evening come from the country/bluegrass world. Singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeff White, who’s played with Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Tim O’Brien and Lyle Lovett and recorded two solo albums for Rounder, has worked with the Chieftains since 2000 in concert and on the band’s two “greengrass” albums. Fiddler Deanie Richardson has long been regarded as one of country and bluegrass music’s most soulful fiddle players, best known for her work with Patty Loveless, Vince Gill and the New Coon Creek Girls.

Paddy Moloney started the Chieftains with two goals in mind: to keep traditional Irish instrumental music alive and to demonstrate the variety and versatility of that music. After 47 years, the flame still burns brightly within Moloney. He still gets excited about each new project, each new album, each new tour, and he’s happy to keep spreading the word about the glories of his beloved Irish folk music. “We’re still unique,” says Moloney. “A lot of bands have come and gone, but we’re still here.”

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March 27, 2009

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill

Call it the power of two. The duo is the smallest performing ensemble in music but it can sometimes be the most powerful. From the banjo and fiddle combination of old-time country music to the harmonica and guitar combo of the blues to the fiddle and guitar approach favored by Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, two people on stage just seems right. Not as lonely as performing solo, not as crowded as three or more. It’s enough for counterpoint and harmony, but not enough for chaos. Harnessing the power of two can be tricky, but when it’s done right, the results are spectacular. Nobody in modern Celtic music does it better than Hayes and Cahill.

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill have been making music together, on and off, for more than 20 years. Their first musical venture together was in the 1980s in a band in Chicago called Midnight Court, a jazz/rock/fusion outfit. It was after returning to traditional Irish music that the duo found its artistic groove and distinctive, soulful sound, deeply rooted in the history of Irish fiddling but re-imagined with the subtlety and sophistication of improvising jazz masters.

The traditional fiddle music of County Clare that is at the core of the duo’s music is known for slower tempos, beautiful melodies and an austere, almost stately feel. As defined over the last few decades by such influential County Clare fiddlers as Junior Crehan, Paddy Canny, Frank Custy, Patrick Kelly, Bobby Casey, Peadar O’Loughlin, John Kelly, Jack Mulcaire and P. Joe Hayes, it’s a style where emotional expression and the fiddler’s authority are valued more than speed and flash.

Martin Hayes was born in the town of Feakle in County Clare, a rural county in the west of Ireland. He heard great fiddling from the very beginning of his life, as his father was P.Joe Hayes, a renowned fiddler best known for his work with the popular and long-lived Tulla Ceili Band. Martin began playing fiddle at the age of seven and was touring with his father’s band by the time he was 13. He won six All-Ireland fiddle championships before he turned 19. Hayes has lived in the U.S. for almost 25 years and now lives in Connecticut after several years in Seattle.

Hayes is one of the most celebrated Irish musicians of his generation. He’s won major awards on both sides of the Atlantic, including the prestigious Gradam Ceoil, the Musician of the Year award from the Irish-language television station TG 4 in 2008; Man of the Year honors from the American Irish Historical Society; Folk Instrumentalist of the Year from BBC Radio; and a National Entertainment Award, Ireland’s equivalent of the Grammy.

Dennis Cahill was born in Chicago to parents from County Kerry. Cahill is a sought-after record producer and guitarist who has recorded and performed with such esteemed fiddlers as Liz Carroll, Eileen Ivers and Kevin Burke. It is his work with Martin Hayes, however, that has established Cahill as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists in Celtic music.

It’s a mistake to view Cahill as a “rhythm” guitar player, as the term is generally understood. Cahill has done to his guitar playing what Hayes has done to his fiddling—stripped it down to the essentials and then created a new style that has no precedent in Celtic music. His playing transcends its rhythmic function—“There’s no reason to keep shouting the rhythm out, when it really is there already,” he says—and operates more as an elegant counterpoint to the fiddle, almost a parallel melodic voice.

“A lot of people, I think, believe that I’m just really good at tracing Martin,” says Cahill. “They just think I can follow him really well. In truth, it’s basically both of us meeting in the middle. I’ll be going into a certain area, and Martin just follows me in there. Or I’ll get this feeling that he’s building into another phrase, and I just go over with him, or sometimes I go completely apart. You never really quite know what’s going to happen. We really don’t. It could go anywhere.

“I think the ideal thing is to have a conversation, where you’re both meeting at the tune. It’s almost like two hands on a piano; [Martin is] one hand, you’re the other. You’re setting a groove that the tune player can play within, and this has to correspond with what the tune player wants to do. It really is a matter of doing what you can to make the whole thing sound better instead of just trying to make yourself sound better.”

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill have recorded three albums together, the most recent of which is Welcome Here Again (2008). Before teaming with Cahill, Hayes recorded two albums (Martin Hayes in 1993 and Under the Moon in 1995) with Irish and American musicians Randall Bays, John Williams, Jim Chapman, P. Joe Hayes and Steve Cooney. From the first album, Hayes has been lionized by the international press for his magnificent touch, feel and soul. An Australian critic spoke for many when he wrote, “Hayes redefines your concept of excellence and reveals levels of beauty and artistry that previously hadn’t existed in your frame of reference” (Sydney Morning Herald).

What sets Hayes and Cahill apart from other such contemporary fiddle-guitar duos in Irish music—Liz Carroll and John Doyle or Kevin Burke and Ged Foley, for example—is the apparent simplicity of their approach. Hayes and Cahill are both virtuoso players but they are instrumental minimalists, playing what’s necessary and not a bit more.

But, as Cahill points out, playing less isn’t easier, regardless of how it may appear. “It’s very difficult to make a statement playing very simply,” he says, “because everything has to be placed exactly right in order to make a statement. It takes an enormous amount of concentration.”

In concert, Hayes and Cahill are the absolute masters of dynamics, possessing an uncanny ability to surf the audience’s energy like a wave. Most instrumentalists in Irish music today play “sets” of two or more tunes linked together in a medley, and Hayes and Cahill follow this pattern, though they stretch it almost to the breaking point with an 11-tune, 28-minute set on Live in Seattle.

Their sets of tunes start slowly, so soft at times the audience has to strain to hear. Each tune is treated respectfully and explored fully, each time through different from the last. As the tunes roll by, the volume, tempo, intensity and audience excitement all increase, almost imperceptibly. By the last part of the last tune, the tension is palpable—the musicians rocking back and forth, audience members leaning forward in their seats holding their breath, as if everyone present is in a trance. The explosion of energy at the end of the tune is something to behold.

Hayes and Cahill have put a lot of work and thought into transforming a home-based traditional art form into performance-based concert music without compromising the integrity of the tunes. “Informal gatherings of musicians in the form of sessions and dances are still the main outlet for traditional Irish music,” explains Hayes. “Whereas sessions and dances have a clear link with the past, formal concerts have a less definite role…Detail and nuance are often the losers when it comes to performance in larger-scale listening situations, where separation between musician and listener is increased. In our performances we try to retain as much intimacy and detail as possible.”

They succeed to a remarkable degree, “transport[ing] listeners back in time and place to rural County Clare on an evening in mid-winter when family and neighbors gather to share the music of their ancestors” (The Record). Like playing simply, reducing that distance between musician and listener is much harder than you might think and it’s a tribute to the gifts of Hayes and Cahill that they not just pull it off but make it look easy.

As is clear from the liner notes he’s written for the duo’s albums, Martin Hayes thinks more about traditional music than do most traditional musicians. He’s particularly interested in the ways in which individual musicians relate to traditions and how traditions evolve over time. “Tradition in music is not frozen at a point in time,” says Hayes, “but is a process in motion that is undergoing constant change and refinement. It is a reflection of people’s lives.

“In Irish music today there is much debate and division on the issues of continuity versus change and tradition versus innovation. I think it is a mistake to divide these issues, as the music is capable of containing all of these parts at once.
“The real battle is between artistic integrity and the forces that impede creative expression. Traditional Irish music has always experienced change and been enriched by innovation, while at the same time maintaining continuity. The issue that is of utmost importance is that innovation, change, tradition and continuity be tempered by integrity, humility and understanding.”

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March 31, 2009

Lo Cor de la Plana

This is a strange world we inhabit. While most of the planet’s musicians and artists worship at the church of the new, Lo Cor de la Plana, a six-person male vocal ensemble from the La Plaine quarter of Marseilles and one of the hottest acts on the world music circuit, has found success by turning the clock backward a few hundred years. Singing in the nearly dead language of Occitan, Lo Cor de la Plana has created a unique, compelling sound that’s as captivating and powerful as anything you’ve heard before, but also completely unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.

Formed in 2001, Lo Cor de la Plana (the name means The Heart of La Plaine, the bohemian section of Marseilles) is Denis Sampieri, Sebastien Spessa, Manu Theron, Benjamin Novarino-Giana, Manu Bathelemy and Rodin Kaufmann.

Accompanied only by hand drums—the bendir, a North African frame drum similar to an Irish bodhrán, and the tambourine-like tamburello and pandeiro—and “picaments” (foot stomping) and “bataments” (hand clapping), the group whips up a swirling torrent of “dance songs that take you away into a smiling trance” (Le Monde).

The sound of Lo Cor de la Plana (pronounced loh cooar day la plahn) boasts a complex recipe of ingredients. Start with bits and pieces drawn from Gregorian chant, add a bunch of modern choral polyphony, throw in a touch from other world music a cappella vocal ensembles (from Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Finland’s Varttina), add a dash of radical politics and off-the-wall humor, stir in call and response vocals from Africa and long keening vocal lines from Arabic music, and then mix in ideas from hip-hop, reggae, Bela Bartok and who knows where else.

Lo Cor de la Plana was the surprise hit of GlobalFest in New York in 2008, earning a rave review from Jon Pareles of The New York Times: “Six male singers, four of whom also played hand drums and tambourine…sang in a disappearing language, Occitan, and in an old style that once was church music…And with just those voices and percussion, they did remarkable things. They sang rich chordal harmonies and joyfully ricocheting counterpoint. There were drones and dissonances akin to Eastern European music, sustained solo vocal lines related to Arabic music and Gregorian chant, and percussive call-and-response hinting at Africa. The music was equally robust and intricate, a local sound ready for export.” It’s also worth mentioning that Lo Cor de la Plana was hired for this evening’s concert based on that GlobalFest performance.

The group has also performed at major world music and vocal festivals in France, Germany, Israel, Belgium, Spain, Croatia and the Czech Republic, and while critics haven’t always understood what they were hearing, they have responded warmly to the ensemble. “Their intricate, overlapping harmonies form roaming, obscure Occitan labyrinths with a humorous trail laid down for the adventurous listener to follow,” observes Froots, while Le Point offers this: “The vocals…are sharp and rough, with an arid beauty. You enter into the dance and end up dumbfounded before all that controlled energy, power, [and] sense of rhythm. That dissonance, leading to a remarkable harmony of fragility and sensitivity.”

Occitan, the language in which Lo Cor de la Plana sings, is a Romance language native to the south of France (a region that encompasses such important cities as Marseilles, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice), Monaco and small parts of Italy and Spain. It was the common spoken language of rural people in the south of France until early in the 20th century, but it is today a dying tongue. It’s difficult to enumerate precisely, as some Occitan speakers are defensive about it and don’t admit to knowing the language, but it’s estimated that there are fewer than 500,000 speaker of Occitan left in France. (There is also, oddly enough, a pocket of Occitan speakers in Valdese, North Carolina.) As is the case with most dying languages, the majority of Occitan speakers are elderly, with almost no one learning the language to replace those who die.

Reasons for Occitan’s precipitous decline abound. Though it was the language of European poets and troubadours in the 12th and 13th century, the French government has since the mid-1500s discouraged the use of Occitan in favor of French. The biggest decline in Occitan speakers came during and right after the French Revolution (1789-1799), when speaking regional dialects or languages was seen (and punished) as a threat to the republic. The nail in the coffin came during the First World War, when soldiers from the south of France had to speak French to be understood by their comrades.

By American standards, Marseilles is an unbelievably old city, founded by the Romans in 600 BC. Situated on the Mediterranean, Marseille, the second largest city in France, has always been a crossroads of culture and commerce. Manu Theron, the leader of Lo Cor de la Plana, calls Marseilles the “northernmost city in Africa.” Marseilles today is a melting pot of people from France, northern Africa, Italy, Greece, Spain, Corsica, Turkey, China, Vietnam and elsewhere, and the music of Lo Cor de la Plana reflects the city’s cosmopolitan energy.

The revival of Occitan culture and language are closely tied to a political movement in the south of France that blends Marxist theory, rejection of what might be called domestic colonialism (the suppres-sion of a region by the central govern-ment), ethnic pride, anarchy and a sense of the absurd. In his on-stage introductions and between-song patter, Manu Theron seems to be equal parts political rabble-rouser and stand-up comedian. “I do not belong to that school that separates cultural demands from the political and social context,” stresses Theron.

Manu Theron grew up in the French colony of Algeria and that experience shaped his musical worldview. “The rhythms of eastern Algerians have always stayed with me,” he says. “I grew up in a very composite musical landscape: there were lots of reggae bands, rock, traditional music and much more learned music like Andalouci.” After returning to France as an adult, he began working in radio and started meeting Occitan activists, many of whom were involved in Occitan-inspired hip-hop; the hip-hop ensemble Massilia Sound System helped launch the Occitan revival in the 1980s.

Theron co-founded a vocal group called Gancha Impega, but when that ensemble splintered, he went looking for singers to form Lo Cor de la Plana. “I found five musicians,” recalls Theron, “who’d all been involved with different kinds of music, from reggae to techno, but all of them could sing and were involved in the rediscovery of the Occitan language.”

Lo Cor de la Plana has recorded two albums. The group made its debut in 2003, with Es lo Titre, an album of religious music from the 14th and 15th centuries. Theron was quick, however, to dispel any notions that this was a religious album. “Most of the songs were not performed in church, so it’s not sacred music,” he says. “It’s popular music with spiritual or religious themes. And the texts are not orthodox at all; they have nothing to do with the official religion. For example, Jesus Christ is seen as a Marxist character rather than a religious one…Most of the saints are very violent; they fight against the power, against kings or the symbols of power. It’s quite obvious that these texts were written by poor people for poor people.

“We are on a kind of didactic mission. We want to teach people the various functions of our popular music, one of which was to give a spiritual dimension to the lives of an entire singing community. This function still exists today [even though] the religious sentiments practically no longer exist.”

The group released its second album, Tant Deman (Maybe Tomorrow), in 2007. On this album, the group recorded secular dance music, drawn from an ancient Occitan songbook that contains more than 20,000 songs. The group’s appreciation of absurdity is closer to the surface on this release, starting with the two-legged chair depicted on the album cover and an Occitan inscription that translates as “I have always a little felt myself the child of geometric abstraction.”

Lo Cor de la Plana is in the middle of its second U.S. tour, on which it will perform in eight cities. As the group is not visiting Valdese, North Carolina, it’s quite likely that not a single audience member on this tour will understand the lyrics the group is singing. Not that it will matter. All it takes to enjoy the utterly transcendent singing of Lo Cor de la Plana is ears.

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April 11 , 2009

Bill Charlap Trio

A song could not ask for a better friend than Bill Charlap. The renowned jazz pianist thinks like a singer, treating each song (and its melody) as if it were a rare jewel, rather than a framework on which to hang flashy solos. Charlap is widely regarded as today’s foremost instrumental interpreter of what’s called the Great American Songbook. As part of Cityfolk’s “Celebrating Billy Strayhorn” festivities, Charlap and his superlative trio will present a concert of works composed by Duke Ellington and Dayton native Billy Strayhorn.

In an article about Charlap, Time took the concept of being a song’s “friend” to another level: “Bill Charlap approaches a song the way a lover approaches his beloved. He wants to know its origins, its shape, its moods. He wants to view it from every angle—melody, harmony, lyrics, verse. When he sits down to play, the result is an embrace, an act of possession.”

As the son of Broadway composer Moose Charlap and pop singer Sandy Stewart, Bill Charlap has been around music—and intelligent people talking about music—all of his life. Young Bill and formal piano instruction never hit it off that well, but he was a sponge when it came to absorbing music from friends and family, especially the noted jazz pianist Dick Hyman, a distant relative who Charlap credits as one of his primary influences.

“I don’t ever remember not playing the piano,” says Charlap. “Everything was by ear at first, and I’d pick out everything I heard. When a teacher came to the house, I’d charm my way through the lesson. It was very painful and slow for me to learn to read music…My classical piano was not authentic. I was speaking classical piano with a jazz accent. A teacher I had asked me why I played everything with street rhythms.”

Charlap attended college for two years, but dropped out to pursue music as a career. “I found studying chamber music and vocal accompaniment valuable,” he says, “but I didn’t have enough time to study people like Bud Powell. So I dropped out to study harder.”

Charlap was a good student, a fact highlighted by critic Whitney Balliet in an admiring—and, to some degree, career-making—profile in The New Yorker: “Unlike many of the younger pianists, whose tastes tend to be parochial, Charlap has absorbed every pianist worth listening to in the past fifty years, starting with Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Rowles, Erroll Garner, Nat Cole, and Oscar Peterson, then moving through Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, and Bill Evans, and finishing with Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Kenny Barron.”

A friendship with pianist Bill Mays led to Charlap’s professional breakthrough, when he replaced Mays in the band of baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. His next big break was being hired to be the musical director of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Celebration of Johnny Mercer as a part of the JVC Jazz Festival in New York. After taking the revue on a national tour, Charlap joined Phil Woods’ quintet in 1995.

Charlap made quite an impression on his new boss. “What struck me was his depth,” says Woods of Charlap. “A lot of young players have university credentials but have lost touch with the street. They all sound the same. Not Bill. He really gets down deep into it.”

Charlap made his solo recording debut in 1994 with Along With Me. After another couple of albums, Charlap really hit his artistic stride in 1997 with All Through the Night, the first album on which he worked with the rhythm section of drummer Kenny Washington and bassist Peter Washington. Charlap solidified his reputation with such popular and critically acclaimed albums as Bill Charlap Plays George Gershwin, Somewhere: The Songs of Leonard Bernstein and Stardust (which presented the songs of Hoagy Carmichael).

Charlap’s latest album is Live at the Village Vanguard, the first live recording by Charlap’s trio and an outstanding example of the group’s incredible cohesion and collective genius. In addition to his own well-received albums, Charlap has recorded with Houston Person, his mother Sandy Stewart (Love Is Here to Stay), Brian Lynch, Conrad Herwig, the New York Trio, Warren Vache and Ruby Braff.

Charlap’s working trio is one of the best small ensembles in jazz. Bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington (the two aren’t related) have been working together with Charlap for more than 10 years and during that time the three have developed a musical relationship so tight it appears the men are telepathically linked. This threesome is already ranked among the greatest trios in jazz history and, according to DownBeat, “this trio is the best at casting spells. There is a magic peculiar to piano trios; the coming into being of an inner-directed world within a triangle upon which the listener eavesdrops, an atmosphere so rapt that even up-tempo pieces feel like ballads.”

“We really started on the CD called All Through the Night,” says Charlap of his trio coming together, “which was recorded a day or two after Christmas in 1997. We got together, played the material through once or twice, and we went into the studio. We had immediate rapport. I knew that this was the trio I wanted to focus on. Kenny, Peter and I all have an understanding…I think we bring that knowledge to what we like to do without really talking about it. We never sat down and powwowed about the music. Our deepest conversations about music happen when we’re playing music.

“I’ve always loved the harmonic acuity in Peter Washington’s playing and the rhythmic precision in Kenny Washington’s work, as well as their ensemble playing. They’re wonderful when they play in combination with each other, and I knew that they were ideally suited to the kind of music I wanted to do. They’re both very well educated in the history of the music. We have similar perspectives on small-group playing. Also, we have similar ideas about the purity that we like to hear in music. We have a sense of brevity and we try to make what we play mean something without wasting any notes. We try to leave some space for reflection as well.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1964, bassist Peter Washington came out of a classical music background. He began his national career in the mid-1980s with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, first recording on the group’s album Hard Champion (1985).

Washington is one of the busiest musicians in jazz; he’s recorded with a dizzying array of musicians in several settings, including Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Stanley Cowell, Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Jon Faddis, Freddie Hubbard, Andy Bey, Cedar Walton, Phil Woods and dozens more. Washington currently works in the Tommy Flanagan Trio as well as the Bill Charlap Trio. He recently toured and recorded with Charlap as part of the Blue Note 7, an all-star ensemble celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of Blue Note Records, the seminal jazz record label.

Drummer Kenny Washington hit the New York jazz scene in the late 1970s as a teen-aged member of the Lee Konitz Nonet. A hard bop revivalist from Brooklyn, Washington has played with many major jazz artists, including Betty Carter, Johnny Griffin, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Tommy Flanagan and Milt Jackson, and amassed a huge and highly varied discography as one of the most recorded jazz drummers of the past 30 years. Washington is also a respected educator who has taught jazz drumming at the New School in New York City and written liner notes for historic jazz reissue albums.

“There’s nothing generic about these guys,” Charlap says of his band mates. “They’re both the extensions of the players they love. Peter Washington is a modern-day George Duvivier and Paul Chambers. Kenny Washington is a modern-day Jo Jones and Philly Joe Jones. And they’re extensions of those people—not anachronisms. They’re not antiquarians by any means; they are extensions of a certain tradition of playing.”

Charlap’s latest musical adventure is serving as pianist and musical director for the Blue Note 7, a band of stars that includes trumpeter Nicholas Payton, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, alto saxophonist/flutist Steve Wilson, guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash. The septet, in the midst of a 51-city North American tour, was assembled to pay tribute to Blue Note Records, the legendary jazz label celebrating its 70th birthday in 2009.

That gig was fun, but Bill Charlap is happy to be back with his trio. “I see us being together for a very long time,” he says. “I don’t see any reason to change. One of the most important goals for our trio is that we want to be part of a continuum, and not a rebellion against what’s been here. Fashions come and fashions go, but some things never go out of style. That’s how music works. It just goes on and on. I hope to be part of that continuum.”

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April 18, 2009

Terell Stafford Quintet and Stivers Jazz Orchestra

Presented as the culminating event of “Celebrating Billy Strayhorn”, tonight’s concert features the Terell Stafford Quintet and the Stivers School for the Arts Jazz Orchestra performing a program of compositions by Billy Strayhorn (1915–1967), a Dayton native and one of the greatest composers and arrangers in jazz history. Best known for his long and productive artistic collaboration with Duke Ellington, Strayhorn created such timeless jazz classics as “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Lush Life,” “Something to Live For,” “Johnny Come Lately,” “Raincheck” and “Blood Count.”

Tonight’s concert not only caps a week of activities designed to throw a light on Strayhorn’s profound gifts but a chance to hear Terell Stafford and his band extend their collaboration with the Stivers School for the Arts Jazz Orchestra (a partnership that began in 2001 during Cityfolk’s JazzNet project).

Terell Stafford was born in 1966 in Miami and raised in Chicago and in Maryland. He first picked up the trumpet at age 13 and studied classical music for the next several years. Stafford was first introduced to jazz while he was a student at the University of Maryland, and it was love at first listen. “One of my first and most profound musical influences was Clifford Brown,” says Stafford. “When I heard him play ‘Cherokee’ I was in total awe of his playing.”

Stafford launched his professional career while he was pursuing his master’s degree in music at Rutgers, joining Horizon, one of the foremost acoustic jazz bands of the 1980s and early 1990s, led by saxophonist Bobby Watson. During his seven years with Horizon, playing alongside Watson, drummer Victor Lewis, pianist Edward Simon and bassist Essiet Essiet, Stafford quickly got up to speed on jazz history and became part of the unbroken chain of jazz musicians and tradition—learning the ropes from Bobby Watson, who learned them from the peerless bop drummer Art Blakey, who learned from Chick Webb, who learned from Duke Ellington.

“I learned a lot from studying Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan,” says Stafford. “But there were still things that were missing. I needed to go back and study the legacy. Louis Armstrong, Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart. All the masters. So I did that. And then I had a whole new understanding about the trumpet and where the history had come from…When I went back and did the homework, I saw that there is so much to absorb.”

After Horizon, Stafford joined McCoy Tyner’s Latin All-Star Band, where he played alongside such superb musicians as trombonist Steve Turre, flutist Dave Valentin and percussionist Jerry Gonzalez. Stafford has since played with such groups as Benny Golson’s Sextet, McCoy Tyner’s Sextet, the Kenny Barron Sextet and the quintet led by sax and flute master Frank Wess, who performed this past November in a Cityfolk-sponsored concert.

In addition to leading his quintet, Stafford is a member of the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and drummer Matt Wilson’s band Arts and Crafts. He has also performed and recorded with such larger ensembles as the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Mingus Big Band.

Stafford’s most recent album is Taking Chances: Live at the Dakota, and features his current working band that you are hearing this evening.

In addition to Stafford on trumpet and flugelhorn, his quintet consists of Tim Warfield (saxophone), Bruce Barth (piano), Derrick Hodge (bass) and Dana Hall (drums). Award-winning saxophonist Tim Warfield played in the bands of Christian McBride (1994-1999) and Nicolas Payton (1999-2005) before joining Stafford’s quintet in 2006. One of the premier tenor saxophonists of his generation, Warfield has recorded five critically acclaimed albums as a leader, the most recent of which is One for Shirley, (which also showcases Stafford) and performed and recorded with such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Isaac Hayes, Danilo Perez and Donald Byrd.

Pianist Bruce Barth is a masterful musician, composer and producer who has played on nearly 100 albums, including nine as a leader. In addition to his own groups and Stafford’s quintet, Barth keeps busy working with Luciana Souza, Steve Wilson and many others. He just released his first concert DVD, Live at Café Del Teatre.

Bassist Derrick Hodge, a former student of Terell Stafford’s at Temple, has forged a solid reputation over the past few years in both jazz, where he’s played with Terence Blanchard, Mulgrew Miller and Clark Terry, and hip-hop, where his credits include Kanye West, Common, Andre 3000, Mos Def and others. Drummer Dana Hall, a former member of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, has also worked with a distinguished array of musicians, including Ray Charles, Branford Marsalis, Horace Silver, Frank Wess and James Moody.

Located in east Dayton, Stivers School for the Arts has been described by the Dayton Daily News as “the crown jewel in the Dayton Public Schools system.” Stivers offers a unique six-year program (grades 7-12) that offers students majors in band, orchestra, choir, piano, dance, creative writing, theater and visual arts.

The Stivers School for the Arts Jazz Orchestra, an 18-member big band directed by Claude Lucien Thomas, was named “the best high school jazz band in the country” after winning the Berklee College Jazz Festival competition in Boston in 2004. The orchestra won the competition again in 2008, sweeping the awards and beating 220 student ensembles for the top honor. Two individuals also won awards—sophomore alto saxophonist Tyrone Martin for “Most Outstanding Soloist” and senior Marselleus Farmer winning for “Outstanding Performance.”

The ensemble is known and admired for the ambitious, challenging material it performs, delving deeply into the repertoires of such composers as Oliver Nelson and Maria Schneider. The competition in Boston last year was no exception. While virtually all of the other bands used arrangements crafted for students, the Stivers band used professional arrangements, impressing the judges with the ensemble’s superior musicianship.

According to Claude Thomas, who started the orchestra in 1993, “The festival is kind of like the Super Bowl for high school jazz ensembles. These students are the cream of the crop.” And don’t rule out more Berklee awards in the near future.

In addition to hearing Stafford’s quintet perform an all Strayhorn/Ellington set, you will have the rare opportunity to hear the Stivers band performing a number of complete Billy Strayhorn scores which have been brought to light by Dutch musicologist Walter van de Leur. Those pieces include “Anatomy Of A Murder”, “Flame Indigo”, “Swing Dance” and “Fol-de-Rol-Rol” and have been generously provided by Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc. Additional music composed by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington music has been provided by Terell Stafford through the Temple University jazz program where he is currently a professor of music and Director of Jazz Studies.

With Billy Strayhorn an important part of Dayton’s music legacy, it’s fitting that much of the music you hear tonight will be a permanent part of the band book at Stivers for years to come. The legacy of Billy Strayhorn is in good hands at Stivers and in the hands of skilled musican/educators like Terell Stafford and his quintet.