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Jazz Inside Magazine ISSN: 2150-3419 (print) • ISSN 2150-3427 (online)

May-June 2017 – Volume 8, Number 5

Cover Photo (and photo at right) of Louis Hayes

by Eric Nemeyer

Publisher: Eric Nemeyer Editor: John R. Barrett, Jr. Marketing Director: Cheryl Powers Advertising Sales & Marketing: Eric Nemeyer Circulation: Susan Brodsky Photo Editor: Joe Patitucci Layout and Design: Gail Gentry Contributing Artists: Shelly Rhodes Contributing Photographers: Eric Nemeyer, Ken Weiss Contributing Writers: John Alexander, John R. Barrett, Curtis Daven-port; Alex Henderson; Joe Patitucci; Ken Weiss.

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CONTENTSCONTENTS CLUBS, CONCERTS, EVENTSCLUBS, CONCERTS, EVENTS

13 Calendar of Events, Concerts, Festi-vals and Club Performances

22 Clubs & Venue Listings

FEATUREFEATURE 4 Louis Hayes

INTERVIEWSINTERVIEWS 20 Kahil El’Zabar—Putting the Renais-

sance in Renaissance Man by Ken Weiss

10 Dion Parson 30 Barry Harris 33 Sonny Fortune

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Feat

ure Louis HayesLouis Hayes

Interview by Eric Nemeyer LH: Philly Joe Jones more or less adopted me as being his man, and Papa Jo Jones was my mentor. All these people were here in New York at the time. You’re exposed to all these great people. JI: How was working with Cannonball Adder-ley different than working with Horace Silver? LH: Cannon was a lot different than Horace. Horace would rehearse his music and we would play it before we went into the studio. Cannon was more spontaneous. Our first job was in Phil-adelphia, at Pep’s, and then we went to the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. We drove out

there—which was another different experi-ence—driving all the way out there. With Can-non, we all got along so well. It was a real fami-ly feeling with the group. Bobby Timmons was the first pianist. He wrote “Dis Here” which was one of the tunes that got the group established. Barry Harris was also marvelous. But, when Joe Zawinul got there, the group was more com-plete—because Joe fit in on a very high level. He wrote tunes also. The piano chair was chang-ing until Joe got there. We just made so much history and played so well together. I was there from 1959 to 1965. Eventually, Yusef [Lateef] came in, and then Charles Lloyd. We recorded with Nancy Wilson. Miles [Davis] used to come to me and ask me to join his group. This was about 1961, before Tony Williams—who I got to know very well after he joined Miles. I think

when Miles contacted me, Joe [Philly Joe Jones] was still in the group and Miles was trying to make a change. Arthur Taylor played with Miles for a little bit before Jimmy Cobb. But I couldn’t do it. Much as I would have loved to make some history with Miles, I couldn’t do that. I was with Cannon. Stan Getz used to call me and we used to talk. He wanted me to join his quartet. I loved Stan too. But I couldn’t leave Cannon. It was amazing during that time—that you could get that kind of experience, and be in groups and learn with those kinds of musicians and learn on that high level. It all changed later, and there was no possibility for bands to be able to do that. In 1965 Sam Jones and I made a decision that we would go with Oscar Peterson.

(Continued on page 6)




JI: What kinds of direction or suggestions did Oscar Peterson offer when you worked with him in the mid 1960s. Was it quite different than the dynamics you experienced when you worked with Horace Silver and then Cannonball?

LH: It sure was. It was much different. I was used to being a free spirit. Horace never told me how to approach the instrument, or how to play. All he was interested in was whether I knew the arrangements and the feeling. If everything is moving and swinging, and everybody is having a great time—that was what was important. And, that was the same way with Cannon. Everybody had their own way of being creative. So no one was saying anything to stop your creativity or your direction. Everyone was very much in tune with everyone’s else’s direction in the group. So nobody would say anything to anyone about how they approach the music on their instru-ment. But with Oscar, it was completely differ-ent playing with the trio. I was there for a certain period of time while Ray Brown was still in the trio. They played a lot different in terms of the beat and their concept of time than the way I actually felt it. I could play like that but I wasn’t comfortable doing it. That was a big adjustment for me. Also, for me, playing drums, physically it wasn’t as demanding as playing with horns. I was just playing with piano and bass. But men-tally it was more demanding because the smaller the group is the more you have to concentrate … and everybody has to be more together, tight. Oscar was a perfectionist all the way. His facili-ty was on the highest level. JI: Was it more restrictive because his reper-toire called for more strictly adherence to ar-rangements instead of it being a more interactive situation? LH: Exactly right. I was more or less listening and accompanying rather than establishing my own sound—which I was doing with Cannonball and Horace. My own first recording date was on VeeJay around 1960. That was with Cannon’s band, except on saxophone. They asked me who

I’d like to have and I said Yusef [Lateef], and we recorded. I enjoyed it, and I enjoy listening to it now. As far as with Oscar, I had to be very conscious of the dynamics and different things that occurred in the trio. JI: Was he playing “Tricotism” and using that as the drum feature. LH: I can’t recall the name of those tunes we were performing at the time. But I had a feature,

whatever it was called. I enjoyed Oscar as a person and I respected his musical ability com-pletely. I’m just not the kind of person, the drummer, that can follow too well. I can play arrangements. But I have my own way of doing things. That’s the way I’m comfortable. I more or less play music because I enjoy it and want to have fun and do what I want to do. If I can’t express myself the way I really want to express myself, then I’m not going to be there for too long. Much as I respected his musical ability, I could only do that for a certain period of time. So after that Freddie [Hubbard] and I were doing some things. As time goes on and you do certain things, you have no choice. You have to become a leader. Eventually I got together with McCoy [Tyner] in 1985. Avery Sharpe was already with him. The trio took off. We were very busy. We all got along just great. I didn’t know it was going to last as long as it did—over three years. JI: Could you talk about your own group in the 1970s before your work with Dexter Gordon. LH: What had happened was that Cedar Walton lived around the corner from me. He went to Europe to do something with the promoter Wim Wigt form Holland. He wanted me to come over and bring a group. But I didn’t have a group at the time. So I got Junior Cook and Woody Shaw, and Ronnie Mathews, and Stafford. So it was the Louis Hayes-Junior Cook Quintet fea-turing Woody Shaw. We went to Europe quite a bit. That was a very strong group. We did that for two or three years. Rene McLean took Jun-ior’s place and we recorded A Real Thing on Muse Records. Around that time I was down at the Village Vanguard to see Thad Jones and Mel Lewis’ Big Band. Mel said I ought to go see Norman Schwartz. So I called him and we struck a groove right away. Norman liked to

do big things. So he added congas, and Leon Thomas sung a couple of tunes. I wrote a tune for my wife, and he put the words to that and to a Freddie Hubbard composition. So we did that date for Gryphon Records. That recording got five stars. JI: Could you talk about the Cannonball Legacy Band? LH: The group includes Vincent Herring, Vi-cente Archer, Rick Germanson [piano]. We’re still doing quite a bit. The CD on High Note that came out did very well. I’m still doing that but I also have some other things coming up. Curtis Fuller and myself are teaming up to make some history together. We go back all the way to the beginning in Detroit. We put together a band called the Curtis Fuller-Louis Hayes Rising Stars, and we’re traveling around with that.

Background Louis Hayes left Detroit for New York City at age 19 and quickly began associations with lead-ing artists including: Horace Silver’s Quintet (1956–1959), the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (1959–1965), and the Oscar Peterson Trio (1965–1967). Hayes and bassist Sam Jones, both with Adderley and Peterson, eventually joined Oscar Peterson’s trio. Hayes worked with Yusef Lateef and Curtis Fuller from 1955 to 1956, moved to New York in August 1956 to replace Art Taylor in the Horace Silver Quintet and in 1959 joined the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, with which he remained until mid-1965. After replacing drum-mer Ed Thigpen in the Peterson trio, Hayes con-tinued for three years in that seat. In 1967, he formed a series of groups, which he led alone or with others; among his sidemen were Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, and James Spaulding. He returned to Peterson in 1971. From 1972 to 1975 he co-led the Louis Hayes-Junior Cook Quintet and the Woody Shaw-Louis Hayes Quintet. In 1976 Dexter Gor-don returned to the United States after leaving for Europe in the early 1960s and Hayes’ group became the foundation for Gordon’s return. Af-ter Shaw left the group in 1977, Hayes continued to lead it as a hard-bop quintet. Hayes has ap-peared on numerous recordings as a leader and sideman (see discography ahead) - performing with with John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Timmons, Hank Mobley, Booker Little, Tommy Flanagan, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Ray Brown, Joe Henderson, Gary Bartz, and Tony Williams. His recordings ap-pear on record labels including Vee-Jay (1960), Timeless (1976), Muse (1977), Candid (1989), Steeplechase (1989–1994), and TCB (2000–2002). After being a member of McCoy Tyner’s trio for over three years, Hayes has led his own bands and together with Vincent Herring formed the Cannonball Legacy Band.

(Continued from page 4)


Louis Hayes

“Miles contacted me, Joe [Philly Joe Jones] was still in the group and Miles was trying to make a

change. Arthur Taylor played with Miles for a little bit before Jimmy Cobb. But I couldn’t do it. Much as I would have loved to make some history with

Miles, I couldn’t do that. I was with Cannon.”


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Discography As leader/co-leader Louis Hayes (Vee-Jay, 1960) Breath of Life (Muse, 1974) Ichi-Ban (Timeless, 1976) with Junior Cook The Real Thing (Muse, 1977) Variety Is the Spice (Gryphon, 1979) Light and Lively (SteepleChase, 1989) The Crawl (Candid, 1989) Una Max (SteepleChase, 1989) Nightfall (SteepleChase, 1991) Blue Lou (SteepleChase, 1993) The Super Quartet (Timeless, 1994) Louis at Large (Sharp Nine, 1996) Quintessential Lou (TCB, 2000) The Candy Man (TCB, 2001) Dreamin’ of Cannonball (TCB, 2002) Maximum Firepower (Savant, 2006) Return of the Jazz Communicators (Smoke Ses-

sions, 2014)[2] As sideman

With Cannonball Adderley In San Francisco (1959, Riverside) Them Dirty Blues (1960, Riverside) Nancy Wilson/ Cannonball Adderley (1961, Capitol) Nippon Soul (1963, Riverside) Sextet in New York (1964, Riverside) Phenix (1975, Fantasy) With Nat Adderley Work Song (1960, Riverside) Naturally! (1961, Jazzland) With Gene Ammons Goodbye (Prestige, 1974) With Kenny Burrell K. B. Blues (Blue Note, 1957 [1979]) Bluesin’ Around (Columbia, 1961 [1983]) With James Clay A Double Dose of Soul (Riverside, 1960) With Al Cohn Son of Drum Suite (RCA Victor, 1960) True Blue (1976, Xanadu) with Dexter Gordon

Silver Blue (1976, Xanadu) with Dexter Gordon With John Coltrane Lush Life (1958, Prestige) The Last Trane (1958, Prestige) Coltrane Time (1958, United Artists, Blue Note) The Believer (1963, Prestige) With Richard Davis Muses for Richard Davis (MPS, 1969) With Kenny Drew Undercurrent (1960, Blue Note) With Victor Feldman Merry Olde Soul (Riverside, 1961) With Tommy Flanagan, John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, and Idrees Sulieman The Cats (1957, Prestige) With Curtis Fuller New Trombone (Prestige, 1957) Curtis Fuller with Red Garland (New Jazz, 1957

[1962]) Jazz ...It’s Magic! (Regent, 1957) Curtis Fuller Volume 3 (1957, Blue Note) With Terry Gibbs Take It from Me (Impulse!, 1964) With Dexter Gordon Ca’Purange (Prestige, 1972) Tangerine (Prestige, 1972) With Bennie Green Back on the Scene (1958, Blue Note) With Grant Green Gooden’s Corner (1961, Blue Note) Oleo (1962, Blue Note) With Barry Harris At the Jazz Workshop (Riverside, 1960) With Joe Henderson The Kicker (1967, Milestone) Tetragon (1968, Milestone) With Johnny Hodges Blue Hodge (Verve, 1961) With Freddie Hubbard The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard (Impulse!, 1962) Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969 (Blue Note) With J. J. Johnson A Touch of Satin (Columbia, 1962) With Sam Jones The Soul Society (Riverside, 1960) The Chant (Riverside, 1961) Changes & Things (Xanadu, 1977) Something in Common (Muse, 1977)

With Clifford Jordan Cliff Craft (Blue Note, 1957) Inward Fire (Muse, 1978) With Yusef Lateef Jazz for the Thinker (Savoy, 1957) Stable Mates (Savoy, 1957) Jazz Mood (Savoy, 1957) Before Dawn: The Music of Yusef Lateef (Verve,

1957) With Johnny Lytle Nice and Easy (Jazzland, 1962) With Jackie McLean Strange Blues (Prestige, 1957) With Phineas Newborn, Jr. A World of Piano! (Contemporary, 1962) The Great Jazz Piano of Phineas Newborn Jr.

(Contemporary, 1963) With Freddie Redd Shades of Redd (1960, Blue Note) With Woody Shaw The Woody Shaw Concert Ensemble at the Berliner

Jazztage (Muse, 1976) With Horace Silver 6 Pieces of Silver (1956, Blue Note) The Stylings of Silver (1957, Blue Note) Finger Poppin’ (1959, Blue Note) Blowin’ the Blues Away (1959, Blue Note) With Sonny Stitt 12! (Muse, 1972) With Idrees Sulieman Roots (New Jazz, 1958) with the Prestige All Stars With McCoy Tyner Uptown/Downtown (1988, Milestone) With Cedar Walton A Night At Boomers, Vol. 1 (Muse, 1973) A Night At Boomers, Vol. 2 (Muse, 1973) Firm Roots (Muse, 1974 [1976]) Pit Inn (East Wind, 1974) With Roosevelt Wardell The Revelation (Prestige, 1960) With Phil Woods Four Altos (Prestige, 1957) - with Gene Quill, Sahib

Shihab, and Hal Stein With The Young Lions The Young Lions (1960) Vee-Jay With Joe Zawinul Money in the Pocket (Atlantic, 1967) With Rein de Graaff New York Jazz (Timeless,1979) - with Sam Jones

[3]


“In times of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned find

themselves beautifully equipped to succeed in a world that

no longer exists.” — Eric Hoffer, American Philosopher

Louis Hayes




xxxxxxxxxxx

Hear Dion Parson ar Dizzy’s Club, June 9-11 Interview by Eric Nemeyer JI: What are the elements that contribute to the unique sound, styles, repertoire, personnel? DP: The members of the 21st Century band are all from the US Virgin Islands, except Carlton Holmes on Piano and Alioune Faye on Percussion. The musical culture of the VI is very unique because we are an American territory, but we are located in the heart of the Caribbean. The musical culture of the VI ranges from Calypso, Soca, Jazz, Latin,

Zook, Brazilian, Quelbe, Reggae, R&B, Pop, Soul, Hip Hop, Country and Western and Classical Mu-sic. All of these styles of music is what makes the VI a unique place to visit and a unique culture in the Caribbean. 21st Century Band plays a variety of musical styles from the Caribbean and combines it with traditional Jazz harmonies, melodies and improvisational nuances that allows us to be a fully functioning Jazz group that plays music with a Caribbean flare. All the members of the 21st Cen-tury band have music degrees and are employed at universities and teach privately. The members of the21st Century band were picked to be in the band based on their musicality and professionalism. Ron Blake and I started the band in 1998 and the first thing we did was to call upon Reuben Rogers to joins us on bass. Rashawn Ross was in college at that time, but we knew that he would eventually join the band upon the completion of this degree from Berkley College of Music in Boston. Victor Provost came along years later. I was introduced to Victor through a mutual friend from St. Thomas by the name of Roan Creque. Roan new Victor’s fa-ther and one day Roan called me a told me about a steel pan player from St. John that was amazing so I went to Virgina and looked up Victor and we have been having a good time since then. Victor just graduated from George Mason University with his Master’s Degree in Jazz Studies. Carlton is from New Mexico, but has been with the band for the past 12 years and we consider him to be an honorary West Indian because he has spent a lot on time with us in the VI and has studied the music

and culture over the years. Alioune is from Dakar Senegal and he plays Sabor, Djembe, Talking Drum and various per-cussion instruments. Alioune is a Griot (a Master Drummer from his tribe) and he brings a natural percussive element to the band that I first heard during my first trip to Senegal in 1998 with the guitarist Ernest Ranglin from

Jamaica. I was in Africa doing a recording with Ernest Ranglin and Baba Mal for the new Palm Pictures record label at that time. We had a great time doing that recoding and I learned so much about the origins of american music and foundation of modern drumming. JI: How did your association with Jazz At Lincoln Center develop and how has it grown over the years? DP: The first time 21st Century Band performed at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola was in 2008 for Father’s Day weekend. As you know, June is Caribbean

Heritage month and we are a band with our roots based in Caribbean music, therefore, we were invit-ed to come and perform our style of Jazz for the wonderful audience at JALC. We worked hard to make that first gig and all the other gigs successful, and it was. 21st Century band has been performing at JALC ever since then and we have recorded two live CD’s there—Dion Parson and 21st Century Band Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Volume 1 and Volume 2. I also work for JALC presenting and performing their Jazz For Young People education programs throughout the different boroughs in NYC. JI: Could you talk about your association with saxophonist Ron Blake and how that developed and plays an integral part of your musical pursuits? DP: Ron and I grew up together on St. Thomas. He is a couple of years older than me though. When I attended high school in 1982, Ron actually trans-ferred to Interlochen music academy in Ann Arbor, Michigan for high school. However, during our high school breaks, we would spend our Christmas and summer breaks hanging out , teaching summer band and going around the island trying to find jam sessions to play at. We eventually just hung out playing duets together for years. That was the foun-dation of our relationship, playing duets. I moved to New York City after finishing up my bachelor’s degree at Rutgers University in 1990 and Ron moved to NYC couple years after. We became roommates for about seven years. We would prac-

tice all day and hang out all night going from ses-sion to session and we would have sessions of our own at the apartment we lived in, or upstairs at our friend Marc Cary’s (the piano player) apartment. During that time we really worked on putting a band together and that’s when 21st Century band was formed in 1998. JI: What is the United Jazz Foundation? DP: United Jazz Foundation is a Non-For-Profit 501C3 Music Education organization that I co-founded with my wife Nicole Koerts-Parson. Ni-cole and I decided to start this organization based on the education work that I was doing in the Vir-gin Islands over the pass 20 years. All of the mem-bers of 21st Century Band work with us to execute the programs through out the Virgin Islands. We also have a partnership with the local government of the Virgin Islands as well as other music organi-zations in New York City to help educate the young musicians of the Virgin Islands. We help these young and talented students get into Colleges and/or Universities and in return we ask them to return back to the Virgin Islands to help educate the next generation of music and to perform at our free community concerts which helps promote them as up and coming Jazz artists and to build cultural awareness in the Virgin Islands. JI: What are the key activities of “Mentoring Through the Arts of Music” an organization which you founded? DP: Mentoring Through the Arts of Music pro-vides music workshops, clinics, master classes and private lessons to students in the public and private schools of the Virgin Islands. We also do free com-munity concerts during our visits to the schools on St. John, St. Croix and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. JI: Could you share some of the highlights and or inspiring conversations you may have had with some of the notable musicians with whom you have developed associations - and how they may have made an impact on you? Milt Jackson? DP: I met Milt Jackson through my association with Bob Cranshaw. Milt always made it clear that the music came first and to always get to the point. I really enjoyed working with him and he treated me like family from the first day I met him. JI: Monty Alexander? DP: I met Monty Alexander through the great bass-ist Ira Coleman. I had been in New York City for about three years and I got a call to play at a club call Cleopatra’s Needle, however, what I didn’t realize was that a snow storm was about to hit New York City that afternoon. By the time the snow started to come down I could not get a taxi to the gig, so I started to walk with my drums strapped on my back. After about ten blocks a gypsy cab stopped for me, I got into the cab told the driver where I was going, only to have him tell me that he wasn’t leaving Harlem, so I had to get out and walk the rest of the way to the gig. Now at that time I lived on 156th street and St. Nicolas Ave and the


Dion Parson Perseverance

InterviewInterview

“a snow storm was about to hit New York City that afternoon, so I started to walk with my drums

strapped on my back ... I lived on 156th street and St. Nicolas Ave and the gig was on 94th and Broad-

way. That’s a long walk! Well, I got to the gig…”



gig was on 94th and Broadway. That’s a long walk! Well, I got to the gig and met Ira Coleman and we had a lot of fun playing that night. Ira was kind enough to drive me home and I spent the next two weeks in bed sick. But during those two weeks while I was sick, I got a call from Monty saying that Ira recommended me for the gig and he wanted me to join his band. I worked with Monty for about three and a half years and we did one recording together called “Steamin’ with the Monty Alexanter Trio”. I learned a lot from Monty. There were three musicians that steered me in the direc-tion of perusing my Caribbean musical heritage. The first one was Donald Harrison, then Monty Alexander and then Ernest Ranglin. All three of these amazing musicians gave me the opportunity to experiment with my Caribbean musical heritage while I was working with then. However, Monty’s influenced me a bit more because I worked with him longer. His sense of rhythm is amazing. But, I feel that what I walked away from his gig with was a better understanding of arranging music. He is a master of arranging, and, on the spot arranging, mind you. I have seen him do it and I have been part on his impromptu on the spot arrangements. Its great! JI: Jon Faddis? DP: I first got introduced to Jon Faddis by my late best friend and bassist, Mr. Dwayne Burno in 1994. Jon called me one day and asked if he could stop by my apartment to talk to me about a gig he had coming up that weekend and he said that Dwayne had recommended me for the gig. I knew of Jon from his work with Dizzy Gillespie and also my good friend and brother Ralph Peterson, use to play with Jon, so I immediately got excited and said sure, you can come by. So Jon came by my place and we talked for a while and he auditioned me on the spot, left me some CD’s and said I’ll see you on Saturday. We drove up to Rhode Island and per-formed that night. It was the Jon Faddis Quartet. with Cyrus Chestnut, Dwyane Burno and Dion Parson. After that gig Jon asked me if I wanted to join his band and I said yes. I have been working with the Jon Faddis quartet for the past 20 years. I also performed with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band under his direction between 1998 and 2000. Imag-ine, having a gig for 20 years these days is unheard of. I’ve learned a lot from Jon. He is a great educa-tor and businessman. Just being around him is a lesson. I have watched trumpet players come up to Jon at gigs with different issues, and he is always cordial, supportive and giving. Jon Faddis is a true Master and I’m blessed to be able to support his music with my drums. JI: Steve Turre? DP: I first me Steve Turre in 2000 while I was doing a performance with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band plus an Orchestra. We were doing a presenta-tion of Duke Ellington’s music at Carnegie Hall. During one of the rehearsals Steve asked me for

my phone number and as they say the rest is histo-ry. I have enjoyed working with Steve over the years, mainly because I grew up playing the trom-bone. It’s a voice that I can hear and I can follow and support that instrument well. Steve has 5 bands that I perform in. He has his quartet, his quintet with sax, his quintet with trumpet, his trombone group and his shell choir. Each one of these groups are unique from each other and the repertoire is very different. Steve have motioned to me in the past that he hires me because of my versatility when it comes to the different styles of music that he likes to play—music that ranges from Louis Armstrong to Woody Shaw, Ray Charles to McCoy Tyner and Latin music to conch shell music. I en-joy the challenge and the creative process that goes along with figuring out all of the particulars that goes along with his gig. JI: Gary Bartz? DP: Gary Bartz was that first professional saxo-phone player that I was focused on playing with. I met Gary on St. Thomas in 1987 at the Virgin Is-lands Jazz Festival. I was still in college at the time and was trying to figure things out musically. Gary Bartz connected with Ron Blake during that time on St. Thomas and I got a chance to build a rela-tionship with Gary because of Ron. I worked a couple of gigs here and there with Gary when I first came to New York City, but it wasn’t until I stated working with Steve Turre in 2000, that I really got a chance to play with Gary on some of Steve’s gigs. Steve Turre has a Rahsaan Roland Kirk trib-ute band that I’m a part of and Gary works in that band also. JI: You’ve taught at Rutgers University and con-ducted workshops around the world. How has your work as an educator and the strictures and struc-tures of the academic environment helped and or hindered your artistic pursuits? DP: I have always considered my self to be a per-former as well as an educator. I love doing both and I feel that I can continue to do both. I just had to find the right balance. I can tell you this, I know I could not sit in a classroom everyday just teach-ing students. My brain doesn’t work like that. I need a balance life of performing and teaching. Being able to go on the road and perform brings another set of lessons and energy to your teaching experience, both as a teacher and a student. You can teach with a more hands on approach because you have lived it. Now, I’m not talking about be-ginning or even intermediate level of teaching mu-sic. I’m talk about the advance/professional level. Rutgers offered me my first teaching opportunity. At that particular time in my life I had just finished my undergraduate degree and was starting my mas-ters degree when my drum teacher at that time [Keith Copeland] decided to leave Rutgers Univer-sity for a teaching job in Germany and the Depart-ment Chair at Rutgers University asked me to step in and take over his responsibilities, so I did for one year, then I relocated to Cheyenne University in Pennsylvania and taught there also. I also taught for eight years at New Jersey Performing Arts Cen-ter Wachovia Jazz for Teens program in Newark, New Jersey. I am now teaching at the University of the Virgin Islands as an Artist in Residence for the

past three years. JI: Given the nature of the niche that jazz is, the current reality of this being a contracting market, what kind of vision do you have for yourself about experiencing some of your hopes and goals in the next five or even ten years? DP: I’m not sure what is going to happen in the Jazz scene right now as far as contracting yourself out to perform with different bands. There are a lot of new musician on the scene in New York City every year and not that many gigs. You just have to be smart about what you want to do these days. How does the old saying goes, been there and done that. I have a great opportunity to develop quality music in the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean in general and I feel that that is my calling for now. Also, to continue to promote and work the 21st Century Band so that we can continue to create a market for Virgin Islands musicians as well as other Caribbean musicians to promote their music on a high level. At the same time trying to create an exchange of musical culture. JI: What do you do to decompress outside of mu-sic and the stresses of daily life in contemporary society? DP: Well, I have a [young] son, so decompressing is not part of my daily life right now. However, I like to cook. That does for me. Preparing a really good home cook meal for my family and friends is my way of relaxing when I’m off the road. JI: Is there anything you’d like to discuss for which I haven’t prompted you? DP: I would like to thank Michael Carvin (Each One Teach One) for all his support he has given me over the 14 years that I have studied with him. Also for being the first producer to have worked with the 21st Century Band to develop our unique style and sound. Thanks Michael for your time , wisdom and ears! Finally, to all the musicians that have worked with the 21st Century band over the years, thanks for your great musicianship! Gary Bartz, Terell Stafford, Bobby Thomas, Stephen Scott, Clifton Anderson, Myron Walden, Reginald Cyntji, Jeremy Pelt, Marcus Printup, Jimmy Basch, Yosvany Ter-ry, Kenny Davis, Desron Douglas, Mamado Ba, Ira Coleman, Xavier Davis, Helen Sung, Daniel Sa-downick, Renato Thom


“It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing

that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable

within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.”

- Sydney J. Harris

Dion Parson

13 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 May-June 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com

Monday, May 15 Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Jazzmeia Horn, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Cen-

ter Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard Chucho Valdés Quartet 75th Birthday Celebration, Blue Note Jim Caruso's Cast Party, Birdland Randy Ingram Quartet, Ari Hoenig Trio, Jonathan Michel - After-

hours Jam Session, Small’s

Tuesday, May 16 Anat Cohen & Trio Brasileiro, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Ruben Fox, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Keyon Harrold & Friends ft Special Guests, Blue Note Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Village Vanguard New York Voices Sings the Great American Songbook, Birdland Steve Nelson Quintet, Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s

Wednesday, May 17 Anat Cohen & Trio Brasileiro, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Ruben Fox, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Keyon Harrold & Friends ft Special Guests, Blue Note Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Village Vanguard New York Voices Sings the Great American Songbook, Birdland Alex Wintz Quintet, Harold Mabern Trio, Jovan Alexandre - After-

hours Jam Session, Small’s

Thursday, May 18 Regina Carter: Simply Ella, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Ruben Fox, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola The Manhattan Transfer 45th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Village Vanguard Ronny Whyte CD Release: Shades of Whyte, Birdland Phil Markowitz Trio, Carlos Abadie Quintet, Sarah Slonim Project -

After-hours Jam Session, Small’s

Friday, May 19 Regina Carter: Simply Ella, Jazz Standard Count Meets The Duke, Wynton Marsalis, Vincent Gardner

and Rodney Whitaker are joined by the next generation of jazz greats to perform the music of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, 8PM, Rose Theatre, Jazz At Lincoln Center, 60th & Broadway

Cecile McLorin Salvant & The Aaron Diehl Trio, 7PM & 9:30 PM, The Appel Room, Jazz At Lincoln Center, 60th & Broadway

Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center

Ruben Fox, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola The Manhattan Transfer 45th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Village Vanguard New York Voices In Brazil, Birdland Dave Stoler Quartet, Mike Rodriguez Quintet, Lawrence Leathers -

"After-hours", Small’s

Saturday, May 20 Regina Carter: Simply Ella, Jazz Standard Count Meets The Duke, Wynton Marsalis, Vincent Gardner

and Rodney Whitaker are joined by the next generation of jazz greats to perform the music of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, 8PM, Rose Theatre, Jazz At Lincoln Center, 60th & Broadway

Cecile McLorin Salvant & The Aaron Diehl Trio, 7PM & 9:30 PM, The Appel Room, Jazz At Lincoln Center, 60th & Broadway

Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center

Ruben Fox, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola The Manhattan Transfer 45th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Village Vanguard New York Voices Sings Paul Simon, Birdland Robert Edwards - Afternoon Jam Session, Ralph Lalama & "Bop-

Juice", Mike Rodriguez Quintet, Philip Harper Quintet, Small’s

Sunday, May 21 Jazz For Kids, Jazz Standard Regina Carter: Simply Ella, Jazz Standard The Manhattan Transfer 45th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Village Vanguard New York Hot Jazz Camp All-Stars, Birdland Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings, Murakami Trio feat.

Sacha Perry, Johnny O'Neal Trio, Ari Ambrose Quintet, Jon Beshay - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s

Monday, May 22

Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Chris Cheek Berklee Quintet, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At

Lincoln Center Inspired: Celebrating Jim Hall w/ Juris, Bernstein, Micic & Lund,

Blue Note Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard Glenn Close and the Cast of Sunset Boulevard In “Vintage Holly-

wood”, Birdland Matt Pavolka's Horns Band, Jonathan Michel Group & After-hours

Jam Session, Small’s

Tuesday, May 23 David Kikoski Trio, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Dan Chmielinski 4 By 4, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Stanton Moore, Blue Note Gerald Clayton Trio, Village Vanguard "Four Generations of Miles" Jimmy Cobb, Mike Stern, Buster

Williams, Sonny Fortune, Birdland Theo Hill Birthday Celebration, Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s

Wednesday, May 24 Gil Gutierrez, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Dan Chmielinski 4 By 4, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Stanton Moore, Blue Note Gerald Clayton Trio, Village Vanguard "Four Generations of Miles" Jimmy Cobb, Mike Stern, Buster

Williams, Sonny Fortune, Birdland Christopher McBride & Whole Proof, Jimmy O'Connell Sextet,

Aaron Seeber - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s

Thursday, May 25 Gil Evans Project, Directed by Ryan Truesdell, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center (Continued on page 14)

CALENDAR OF EVENTSCALENDAR OF EVENTS How to Get Your Gigs and Events Listed in Jazz Inside Magazine

Submit your listings via e-mail to [email protected]. Include date, times, location, phone, tickets/reservations. Deadline: 15th of the month preceding publication (May 15 for Jun)

(We cannot guarantee the publication of all calendar submissions.)

ADVERTISING: Reserve your ads to promote your events and get the marketing advantage of con-trolling your own message — size, content, image, identity, photos and more. Contact the advertising department:

215-887-8880 | [email protected]

http://www.jazz.org


Dan Chmielinski 4 By 4, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Larry Harlow & The Latin Legends, Blue Note Gerald Clayton Trio, Village Vanguard "Four Generations of Miles" Jimmy Cobb, Mike Stern, Buster

Williams, Sonny Fortune, Birdland Loren Stillman Quintet, Behn Gillece Quartet, Sarah Slonim Pro-

ject - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s

Friday, May 26 Gil Evans Project, Directed by Ryan Truesdell, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Dan Chmielinski 4 By 4, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Larry Harlow & The Latin Legends, Blue Note Gerald Clayton Trio, Village Vanguard "Four Generations of Miles" Jimmy Cobb, Mike Stern, Buster

Williams, Sonny Fortune, Birdland Russ Nolan Quartet, Michael Dease Sextet, After-hours Jam

Session with Corey Wallace, Small’s

Saturday, May 27 Gil Evans Project Presents Miles Ahead 60th Anniversary, Di-

rected by Ryan Truesdell, Jazz Standard Bill Charlap Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Dan Chmielinski 4 By 4, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Larry Harlow & The Latin Legends, Blue Note Gerald Clayton Trio, Village Vanguard Eric Comstock and Sean Smith, Birdland Michael Bond - Afternoon Jam Session, Oliver Lake Organ Quar-

tet, Michael Dease Sextet, Brooklyn Circle, Small’s

Sunday, May 28 Gil Evans Project Presents Miles Ahead 60th Anniversary, Di-

rected by Ryan Truesdell, Jazz Standard Larry Harlow & The Latin Legends, Blue Note Gerald Clayton Trio, Village Vanguard Fleurine Featuring Boys From Brazil and Special, Birdland P, Shapeshifter (Brooklyn) Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings, Ai Murakami Trio feat.

Sacha Perry, JD Walter Quintet, Jerry Weldon Quartet, Hillel Salem - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s

Monday, May 29

Jazz Standard Louis Hayes, Serenade For Horace Silver, Dizzy’s Club Coca

Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola A Beautiful Night Of Jazz feat. Julie E. & Alex Blake, Blue Note Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard Christina Bianco, Birdland John Chin Quintet, Jonathan Barber - After-hours Jam Session,

Small’s

Tuesday, May 30 Helen Sung’s Sung With Words, Jazz Standard Louis Hayes, Serenade For Horace Silver, Dizzy’s Club Coca

Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola McCoy Tyner, Blue Note Javon Jackson Quartet, Village Vanguard Ravi Coltrane, Birdland Lucas Pino Nonet, Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s

Wednesday, May 31 Glenn Zaleski, Jazz Standard Louis Hayes, Serenade For Horace Silver, Dizzy’s Club Coca

Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Javon Jackson Quartet, Village Vanguard McCoy Tyner, Blue Note Ravi Coltrane, Birdland Melissa Aldana Quintet, Adam Birnbaum Quintet, Jovan Alexandre

- After-hours Jam Session, Small’s

Thursday, June 1 Sean Jones Quartet, Jazz Standard World Of Monk, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton

Marsalis and special guests Baqir Abbas and Hamilton de Holanda, 8PM, Rose Theatre, Jazz At Lincoln Center, 60th & Broadway

Gabe Schnider & Friends Celebrate Monk, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center

Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Dirty Dozen Brass Band 40th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Javon Jackson Quartet, Village Vanguard Emmet Cohen, Birdland

Friday, June 2 Sean Jones Quartet, Jazz Standard World Of Monk, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton


Monk’s Dream: Russell Hall Plays Monk, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center

Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Dirty Dozen Brass Band 40th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Javon Jackson Quartet, Village Vanguard Ravi Coltrane, Birdland

Saturday, June 3 Sean Jones Quartet, Jazz Standard World Of Monk, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton


Monk’s Dream: Russell Hall Plays Monk, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center

Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola (Continued on page 16)

http://www.jazz.org/dizzys


http://www.jazzstandard.com


Dirty Dozen Brass Band 40th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Javon Jackson Quartet, Village Vanguard Veronica Swift, Birdland

Sunday, June 4

Sean Jones Quartet, Jazz Standard Monk’s Dream: Russell Hall Plays Monk, Dizzy’s Club Coca

Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Micah Thomas, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Javon Jackson Quartet, Village Vanguard Dirty Dozen Brass Band 40th Anniversary Celebration, Blue Note Vanessa Racci, Italiana Fresca, CD Release, Birdland

Monday, June 5 Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Jazz At Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra with Justin Robinson,

Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center The Hot Sardines, Blue Note Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard

Tuesday, June 6 Sasha Masakowski & New Orleans Art Market, Jazz Standard Paul Nedzala, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alphonse Horne, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Mark Turner Quartet, Village Vanguard Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda Duet, Blue Note Troy Roberts Tales & Tones Record Release, Birdland

Wednesday, June 7 Charnett Moffett’s Nettwork, Jazz Standard Chico Freeman, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Cen-

ter Alphonse Horne, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda Duet, Blue Note Mark Turner Quartet, Village Vanguard Nicki Parrott, Birdland

Thursday, June 8 Etienne Charles Creole Soul, Jazz Standard Chico Freeman, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Cen-

ter Alphonse Horne, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Mark Turner Quartet, Village Vanguard Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda Duet, Blue Note David Finck, Low Standards CD Release Event, Birdland

Friday, June 9 Etienne Charles Creole Soul, Jazz Standard Dion Parson, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alphonso Horne, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Mark Turner Quartet, Village Vanguard Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda Duet, Blue Note Urbanity featuring Albare and Phil Turcio, Birdland

Saturday, June 10 Etienne Charles Creole Soul, Jazz Standard Dion Parson, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alphonso Horne, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Mark Turner Quartet, Village Vanguard Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda Duet, Blue Note Urbanity featuring Albare and Phil Turcio, Birdland

Sunday, June 11 Etienne Charles Creole Soul, Jazz Standard Mark Turner Quartet, Village Vanguard Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda Duet, Blue Note Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Birdland

Monday, June 12 Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard WBGO Presents — Samora Pinderhughes, Dizzy’s Club Coca

Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard The Hot Sardines, Blue Note Jessica Molaskey “Portraits of Joni”, Birdland (Continued on page 17)

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Tuesday, June 13 David Gilmore Group, Jazz Standard Peter & Will Anderson, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Kush Abadey, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Russell Malone Quartet, Village Vanguard Danilo Pérez/John Patitucci/Brian Blade Trio, Blue Note Freddy Cole Quartet, Birdland

Wednesday, June 14 Benoit Delbezq’s The Conversation, Jazz Standard Allan Harris Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Kush Abadey, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Russell Malone Quartet, Village Vanguard Danilo Pérez/John Patitucci/Brian Blade Trio, Blue Note

Thursday, June 15 Tierney Sutton Band: Sting Variations, Jazz Standard Allan Harris Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Kush Abadey, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Russell Malone Quartet, Village Vanguard Danilo Pérez/John Patitucci/Brian Blade Trio, Blue Note

Friday, June 16 Tierney Sutton Band: Sting Variations, Jazz Standard Barry Harris, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Kush Abadey, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Russell Malone Quartet, Village Vanguard Danilo Pérez/John Patitucci/Brian Blade Trio, Blue Note

Saturday, June 17 Tierney Sutton Band: Sting Variations, Jazz Standard Barry Harris, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Kush Abadey, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Russell Malone Quartet, Village Vanguard Danilo Pérez/John Patitucci/Brian Blade Trio, Blue Note

Sunday, June 18 The Smokestack Brunch: Peter Brendler, Jazz Standard Tierney Sutton Band: Sting Variations, Jazz Standard Barry Harris, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Kush Abadey, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Danilo Pérez/John Patitucci/Brian Blade Trio, Blue Note Russell Malone Quartet, Village Vanguard

Monday, June 19 Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Jon Gordon, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard The Hot Sardines, Blue Note

Tuesday, June 20 Shai Maestro Trio with Gretchen Parlato, Jazz Standard Theo Hill Trio, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alina Engibaryan, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Chris Potter Quartet, Village Vanguard Jacob Collier, Blue Note

Wednesday, June 21 Steve Slagle A,M, Band, Jazz Standard

Jazztopad Festival: Wojcinski / Szmanda Quartet & STRYJO, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center

Alina Engibaryan, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Chris Potter Quartet, Village Vanguard Jacob Collier, Blue Note

Thursday, June 22 Azar Lawrence Quintet featuring Steve Turre, Jazz Standard P, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alina Engibaryan, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Chris Potter Quartet, Village Vanguard Michel Camilo Trio, Blue Note

Friday, June 23 Azar Lawrence Quintet featuring Steve Turre, Jazz Standard Kurt Elling, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alina Engibaryan, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Chris Potter Quartet, Village Vanguard Michel Camilo Trio, Blue Note

Saturday, June 24 Azar Lawrence Quintet featuring Steve Turre, Jazz Standard Kurt Elling, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Alina Engibaryan, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Chris Potter Quartet, Village Vanguard Jill Newman Productions Presents: Ntozake Shange "Wild Beau-

ties", Blue Note

Sunday, June 25

The Smokestack Brunch: Vuyo Sotashe, Jazz Standard Azar Lawrence Quintet featuring Steve Turre, Jazz Standard Monterey Jazz Festivals’ Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, Dizzy’s

Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln Center Chris Potter Quartet, Village Vanguard Michel Camilo Trio, Blue Note

Monday, June 26 Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Band Director Academy Faculty Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola,

Jazz At Lincoln Center Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Village Vanguard The Hot Sardines, Blue Note

Tuesday, June 27 Dr. Lonnie Smith 75th Birthday Celebration—Trio, Jazz Standard Black Arts Collective, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Poole & The Gang, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra w/ Carla Bley, Blue

Note

Wednesday, June 28 Dr. Lonnie Smith 75th Birthday Celebration—Trio, Jazz Standard Black Arts Collective, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz At Lincoln

Center Poole & The Gang, Late Night at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola Dave Holland Trio, Village Vanguard McCoy Tyner, Blue Note

Thursday, June 29 Dr. Lonnie Smith 75th Birthday Celebration—Trio, Jazz Standard Cassandra Wilson, Blue Note Dave Holland Trio, Village Vanguard

Friday, June 30 Dr. Lonnie Smith 75th Birthday Celebration—Octet, Jazz Stand-

ard Dave Holland Trio, Village Vanguard Cassandra Wilson, Blue Note

REGULAR GIGS Mondays

Mingus Big Band at Jazz Standard, 7:30 and 9:30 PM. 116 E.

27th. Jon Weiss 2 at Cleopatra's Needle, 8:00 PM. 2485 Broadway. Swingadelic at Swing 46, 8:30 PM. 349 W. 46th. Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at Village Vanguard, 8:30 and 10:30

PM. 178 7th Ave. S. Woody Allen & Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band at Cafe

Carlyle, 8:45 PM. 35 E. 76th. Jam Session at Cleopatra's Needle, 10:00 PM. 2485 Broadway.

Tuesdays

Earl Rose at Bemelmans, 5:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Marc Devine 3 at Cleopatra's Needle, 8:00 PM. 2485 Broadway. Chris Gillespie 3 at Bemelmans, 9:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Jam Session at Cleopatra's Needle, 10:00 PM. 2485 Broadway. Jam Session at Smalls, 1:00 AM. 183 W. 10th St.

Wednesdays

Louis Armstrong Eternity Band at Birdland, 5:30 PM. 315 W.

44th. Les Kurtz 3 at Cleopatra's Needle, 7:30 PM. 2485 Broadway. Stan Rubin Orchestra at Swing 46, 7:15 PM. 349 W. 46th. Chris Gillespie 3 at Bemelmans, 9:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Tony Hewitt/Pete Malinverni at Mezzrow, 11:00 PM. 163 W. 10th

St. Jam at Cleopatra's Needle, 11:30 PM. 2485 Broadway. Jam Session at Smalls, 1:00 AM. 183 W. 10th St.

Thursdays

Earl Rose at Bemelmans, 5:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Vanessa Trouble: Red Hot Swing at Swing 46, 349 W. 46th. Chris Gillespie 3 at Bemelmans, 9:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Spike Wilner & Guests at Mezzrow, 11:00 PM. 163 W. 10th St. Jam w/Kazu Trio at Cleopatra's Needle, 11:30 PM. 2485 Broad-

way. Jam Session at Smalls, 1:00 AM. 183 W. 10th St.

Fridays

Jam Session at Smalls, 4:00 PM. 183 W. 10th St. Birdland Big Band at Birdland, 5:15 PM. 315 W. 44th. Earl Rose at Bemelmans, 5:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Chris Gillespie 3 at Bemelmans, 9:30 PM. 35 E. 76th. Johnny O'Neal at Mezzrow, 11:00 PM. 163 W. 10th St. Jam Session at Cleopatra's Needle, 12:30 AM. 2485 Broadway. Jam Session at Smalls, 1:00 AM. 183 W. 10th St.

Saturdays

Jam Session at Smalls, 4:00 PM. 183 W. 10th St. Jay Leonhart/Tomoko Ohno (except 1/7) at Birdland, 6:00 PM.

315 W. 44th. Charlie Apicella & Iron City at Il Porto, 7:00 PM. 37 Washington

Ave., Bklyn. Chris Gillespie 3 at Bemelmans, 9:30 PM. 35 E. 76th

Sundays

Marion Cowings Vocal Class at Smalls, 1:00 PM. 183 W. 10th

St. Jazz for Kids: Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra at Jazz Stand-

ard, 2:00 PM. 116 E. 27th. Keith Ingham at Cleopatra's Needle, 4:00 PM. 2485 Broadway. Ai Murakami 3 at Smalls, 4:30 PM. 183 W. 10th St. Terry Waldo's Gotham City Band at Fat Cat, 6:00 PM. 75 Chris-

topher. Johnny O'Neal 3 at Smalls, 7:30 PM. 183 W. 10th St. Peter Mazza 3 (except 1/1) at Bar Next Door, 8:00 PM. 129

MacDougal. Jam at Cleopatra's Needle, 9:00 PM. 2485 Broadway.

“...among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a

weakness; a trademark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property

which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will

lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.”

-Mark Twain

“Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free

to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back that

is an outrage.”

- Winston Churchill


5 C Cultural Center, 68 Avenue C. 212-477-5993. www.5ccc.com 55 Bar, 55 Christopher St. 212-929-9883, 55bar.com 92nd St Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128, 212.415.5500, 92ndsty.org Aaron Davis Hall, City College of NY, Convent Ave., 212-650- 6900, aarondavishall.org Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, Broadway & 65th St., 212-875-5050, lincolncenter.org/default.asp Allen Room, Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway and 60th, 5th floor, 212-258-9800, lincolncenter.org American Museum of Natural History, 81st St. & Central Park W., 212-769-5100, amnh.org Antibes Bistro, 112 Suffolk Street. 212-533-6088. www.antibesbistro.com Arthur’s Tavern, 57 Grove St., 212-675-6879 or 917-301-8759, arthurstavernnyc.com Arts Maplewood, P.O. Box 383, Maplewood, NJ 07040; 973-378-2133, artsmaplewood.org Avery Fischer Hall, Lincoln Center, Columbus Ave. & 65th St., 212-875-5030, lincolncenter.org BAM Café, 30 Lafayette Av, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, bam.org Bar Chord, 1008 Cortelyou Rd., Brooklyn, barchordnyc.com Bar Lunatico, 486 Halsey St., Brooklyn. 718-513-0339. 222.barlunatico.com Barbes, 376 9th St. (corner of 6th Ave.), Park Slope, Brooklyn, 718-965-9177, barbesbrooklyn.com Barge Music, Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, 718-624-2083, bargemusic.org B.B. King’s Blues Bar, 237 W. 42nd St., 212-997-4144, bbkingblues.com Beacon Theatre, 74th St. & Broadway, 212-496-7070 Beco Bar, 45 Richardson, Brooklyn. 718-599-1645. www.becobar.com Bickford Theatre, on Columbia Turnpike @ Normandy Heights Road, east of downtown Morristown. 973-744-2600 Birdland, 315 W. 44th St., 212-581-3080 Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd, 212-475-8592, bluenotejazz.com Bourbon St Bar and Grille, 346 W. 46th St, NY, 10036, 212-245-2030, [email protected] Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (at Bleecker), 212-614-0505, bowerypoetry.com BRIC House, 647 Fulton St. Brooklyn, NY 11217, 718-683-5600, http://bricartsmedia.org Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza, 2nd Fl, Brooklyn, NY, 718-230-2100, brooklynpubliclibrary.org Café Carlyle, 35 E. 76th St., 212-570-7189, thecarlyle.com Café Loup, 105 W. 13th St. (West Village) , between Sixth and Seventh Aves., 212-255-4746 Café St. Bart’s, 109 E. 50th St, 212-888-2664, cafestbarts.com Cafe Noctambulo, 178 2nd Ave. 212-995-0900. cafenoctam-bulo.com Caffe Vivaldi, 32 Jones St, NYC; caffevivaldi.com Candlelight Lounge, 24 Passaic St, Trenton. 609-695-9612. Carnegie Hall, 7th Av & 57th, 212-247-7800, carnegiehall.org Cassandra’s Jazz, 2256 7th Avenue. 917-435-2250. cassan-drasjazz.com Chico’s House Of Jazz, In Shoppes at the Arcade, 631 Lake Ave., Asbury Park, 732-774-5299

City Winery, 155 Varick St. Bet. Vandam & Spring St., 212-608-0555. citywinery.com Cleopatra’s Needle, 2485 Broadway (betw 92nd & 93rd), 212-769-6969, cleopatrasneedleny.com Club Bonafide, 212 W. 52nd, 646-918-6189. clubbonafide.com C’mon Everybody, 325 Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn. www.cmoneverybody.com Copeland’s, 547 W. 145th St. (at Bdwy), 212-234-2356 Cornelia St Café, 29 Cornelia, 212-989-9319 Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank, New Jersey 07701, 732-842-9000, countbasietheatre.org Crossroads at Garwood, 78 North Ave., Garwood, NJ 07027, 908-232-5666 Cutting Room, 19 W. 24th St, 212-691-1900 Dizzy’s Club, Broadway at 60th St., 5th Floor, 212-258-9595, jalc.com DROM, 85 Avenue A, New York, 212-777-1157, dromnyc.com The Ear Inn, 326 Spring St., NY, 212-226-9060, earinn.com East Village Social, 126 St. Marks Place. 646-755-8662. www.evsnyc.com Edward Hopper House, 82 N. Broadway, Nyack NY. 854-358-0774. El Museo Del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Ave (at 104th St.), Tel: 212-831-7272, Fax: 212-831-7927, elmuseo.org Esperanto, 145 Avenue C. 212-505-6559. www.esperantony.com The Falcon, 1348 Rt. 9W, Marlboro, NY., 845) 236-7970, Fat Cat, 75 Christopher St., 212-675-7369, fatcatjazz.com Fine and Rare, 9 East 37th Street. www.fineandrare.nyc Five Spot, 459 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 718-852-0202, fivespot-soulfood.com Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., Flushing, NY, 718-463-7700 x222, flushingtownhall.org For My Sweet, 1103 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY 718-857-1427 Galapagos, 70 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY, 718-782-5188, galapago-sartspace.com Garage Restaurant and Café, 99 Seventh Ave. (betw 4th and Bleecker), 212-645-0600, garagerest.com Garden Café, 4961 Broadway, by 207th St., New York, 10034, 212-544-9480 Gin Fizz, 308 Lenox Ave, 2nd floor. (212) 289-2220. www.ginfizzharlem.com Ginny’s Supper Club, 310 Malcolm X Boulevard Manhattan, NY 10027, 212-792-9001, http://redroosterharlem.com/ginnys/ Glen Rock Inn, 222 Rock Road, Glen Rock, NJ, (201) 445-2362, glenrockinn.com GoodRoom, 98 Meserole, Bklyn, 718-349-2373, goodroombk.com. Green Growler, 368 S, Riverside Ave., Croton-on-Hudson NY. 914-862-0961. www.thegreengrowler.com Greenwich Village Bistro, 13 Carmine St., 212-206-9777, green-wichvillagebistro.com Harlem on 5th, 2150 5th Avenue. 212-234-5600. www.harlemonfifth.com Harlem Tea Room, 1793A Madison Ave., 212-348-3471, har-lemtearoom.com Hat City Kitchen, 459 Valley St, Orange. 862-252-9147. hatcitykitchen.com Havana Central West End, 2911 Broadway/114th St), NYC, 212-662-8830, havanacentral.com Highline Ballroom, 431 West 16th St (between 9th & 10th Ave. highlineballroom.com, 212-414-4314. Hopewell Valley Bistro, 15 East Broad St, Hopewell, NJ 08525, 609-466-9889, hopewellvalleybistro.com Hudson Room, 27 S. Division St., Peekskill NY. 914-788-FOOD. hudsonroom.com Hyatt New Brunswick, 2 Albany St., New Brunswick, NJ IBeam Music Studio, 168 7th St., Brooklyn, ibeambrooklyn.com INC American Bar & Kitchen, 302 George St., New Brunswick NJ. (732) 640-0553. www.increstaurant.com Iridium, 1650 Broadway, 212-582-2121, iridiumjazzclub.com Jazz 966, 966 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY, 718-638-6910 Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9800, jalc.org Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th St., 5th Floor Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Reservations: 212-258-9595 Rose Theater, Tickets: 212-721-6500, The Allen Room, Tickets:

212-721-6500 Jazz Gallery, 1160 Bdwy, (212) 242-1063, jazzgallery.org The Jazz Spot, 375 Kosciuszko St. (enter at 179 Marcus Garvey Blvd.), Brooklyn, NY, 718-453-7825, thejazz.8m.com Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232, jazzstandard.net Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St & Astor Pl.,

212-539-8778, joespub.com John Birks Gillespie Auditorium (see Baha’i Center) Jules Bistro, 65 St. Marks Pl, 212-477-5560, julesbistro.com Kasser Theater, 1 Normal Av, Montclair State College, Montclair, 973-655-4000, montclair.edu Key Club, 58 Park Pl, Newark, NJ, 973-799-0306, keyclubnj.com Kitano Hotel, 66 Park Ave., 212-885-7119. kitano.com Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, 33 University Pl., 212-228-8490, knickerbockerbarandgrill.com Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St, 212-219-3132, knittingfacto-ry.com Langham Place — Measure, Fifth Avenue, 400 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10018, 212-613-8738, langhamplacehotels.com La Lanterna (Bar Next Door at La Lanterna), 129 MacDougal St, New York, 212-529-5945, lalanternarcaffe.com Le Cirque Cafe, 151 E. 58th St., lecirque.com Le Fanfare, 1103 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn. 347-987-4244. www.lefanfare.com Le Madeleine, 403 W. 43rd St. (betw 9th & 10th Ave.), New York, New York, 212-246-2993, lemadeleine.com Les Gallery Clemente Soto Velez, 107 Suffolk St, 212-260-4080 Lexington Hotel, 511 Lexington Ave. (212) 755-4400. www.lexinghotelnyc.com Live @ The Falcon, 1348 Route 9W, Marlboro, NY 12542, Living Room, 154 Ludlow St. 212-533-7235, livingroomny.com The Local 269, 269 E. Houston St. (corner of Suffolk St.), NYC Makor, 35 W. 67th St., 212-601-1000, makor.org Lounge Zen, 254 DeGraw Ave, Teaneck, NJ, (201) 692-8585, lounge-zen.com Maureen's Jazz Cellar, 2 N. Broadway, Nyack NY. 845-535-3143. maureensjazzcellar.com Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington St, Hoboken, NJ, 201-653-1703 McCarter Theater, 91 University Pl., Princeton, 609-258-2787, mccarter.org Merkin Concert Hall, Kaufman Center, 129 W. 67th St., 212-501-3330, ekcc.org/merkin.htm Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd St NY, NY 10012, 212-206-0440 Mezzrow, 163 West 10th Street, Basement, New York, NY 10014. 646-476-4346. www.mezzrow.com Minton’s, 206 W 118th St., 212-243-2222, mintonsharlem.com Mirelle’s, 170 Post Ave., Westbury, NY, 516-338-4933 MIST Harlem, 46 W. 116th St., myimagestudios.com Mixed Notes Café, 333 Elmont Rd., Elmont, NY (Queens area), 516-328-2233, mixednotescafe.com Montauk Club, 25 8th Ave., Brooklyn, 718-638-0800, montaukclub.com Moscow 57, 168½ Delancey. 212-260-5775. moscow57.com Muchmore’s, 2 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn. 718-576-3222. www.muchmoresnyc.com Mundo, 37-06 36th St., Queens. mundony.com Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave. (between 103rd & 104th St.), 212-534-1672, mcny.org Musicians’ Local 802, 332 W. 48th, 718-468-7376 National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 646-779-8455. www.nationalsawdust.org Newark Museum, 49 Washington St, Newark, New Jersey 07102-3176, 973-596-6550, newarkmuseum.org New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center St., Newark, NJ, 07102, 973-642-8989, njpac.org New Leaf Restaurant, 1 Margaret Corbin Dr., Ft. Tryon Park. 212-568-5323. newleafrestaurant.com New School Performance Space, 55 W. 13th St., 5th Floor (betw 5th & 6th Ave.), 212-229-5896, newschool.edu. New School University-Tishman Auditorium, 66 W. 12th St., 1st Floor, Room 106, 212-229-5488, newschool.edu New York City Baha’i Center, 53 E. 11th St. (betw Broadway & University), 212-222-5159, bahainyc.org North Square Lounge, 103 Waverly Pl. (at MacDougal St.), 212-254-1200, northsquarejazz.com Oak Room at The Algonquin Hotel, 59 W. 44th St. (betw 5th and 6th Ave.), 212-840-6800, thealgonquin.net Oceana Restaurant, 120 West 49th St, New York, NY 10020 212-759-5941, oceanarestaurant.com Orchid, 765 Sixth Ave. (betw 25th & 26th St.), 212-206-9928 The Owl, 497 Rogers Ave, Bklyn. 718-774-0042. www.theowl.nyc Palazzo Restaurant, 11 South Fullerton Avenue, Montclair. 973-746-6778. palazzonj.com Priory Jazz Club: 223 W Market, Newark, 07103, 973-639-7885 Proper Café, 217-01 Linden Blvd., Queens, 718-341-2233

Clubs, Venues & Jazz ResourcesClubs, Venues & Jazz Resources

— Anton Chekhov

“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere

illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”

— Socrates


Prospect Park Bandshell, 9th St. & Prospect Park W., Brooklyn, NY, 718-768-0855 Prospect Wine Bar & Bistro, 16 Prospect St. Westfield, NJ, 908-232-7320, 16prospect.com, cjayrecords.com Red Eye Grill, 890 7th Av (56th), 212-541-9000, redeyegrill.com Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge, parallel to Main St., Ridgefield, CT; ridgefieldplayhouse.org, 203-438-5795 Rockwood Music Hall, 196 Allen St, 212-477-4155 Rose Center (American Museum of Natural History), 81st St. (Central Park W. & Columbus), 212-769-5100, amnh.org/rose Rose Hall, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9800, jalc.org Rosendale Café, 434 Main St., PO Box 436, Rosendale, NY 12472, 845-658-9048, rosendalecafe.com Rubin Museum of Art - “Harlem in the Himalayas”, 150 W. 17th St. 212-620-5000. rmanyc.org Rustik, 471 DeKalb Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 347-406-9700, rustikrestaurant.com St. Mark’s Church, 131 10th St. (at 2nd Ave.), 212-674-6377 St. Nick’s Pub, 773 St. Nicholas Av (at 149th), 212-283-9728 St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington (at 54th), 212-935-2200, saintpeters.org Sasa’s Lounge, 924 Columbus Ave, Between 105th & 106th St. NY, NY 10025, 212-865-5159, sasasloungenyc.yolasite.com Savoy Grill, 60 Park Place, Newark, NJ 07102, 973-286-1700 Schomburg Center, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., 212-491-2200, nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html Shanghai Jazz, 24 Main St., Madison, NJ, 973-822-2899, shang-haijazz.com ShapeShifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11215 shapeshifterlab.com Showman’s, 375 W. 125th St., 212-864-8941 Sidewalk Café, 94 Ave. A, 212-473-7373 Sista’s Place, 456 Nostrand, Bklyn, 718-398-1766, sistasplace.org Skippers Plane St Pub, 304 University Ave. Newark NJ, 973-733-9300, skippersplaneStpub.com Smalls Jazz Club, 183 W. 10th St. (at 7th Ave.), 212-929-7565, SmallsJazzClub.com Smith’s Bar, 701 8th Ave, New York, 212-246-3268 Sofia’s Restaurant - Club Cache’ [downstairs], Edison Hotel, 221 W. 46th St. (between Broadway & 8th Ave), 212-719-5799 South Gate Restaurant & Bar, 154 Central Park South, 212-484-5120, 154southgate.com South Orange Performing Arts Center, One SOPAC Way, South Orange, NJ 07079, sopacnow.org, 973-313-2787 Spectrum, 2nd floor, 121 Ludlow St. Spoken Words Café, 266 4th Av, Brooklyn, 718-596-3923 Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, 165 W. 65th St., 10th Floor, 212-721-6500, lincolncenter.org The Stone, Ave. C & 2nd St., thestonenyc.com Strand Bistro, 33 W. 37th St. 212-584-4000 SubCulture, 45 Bleecker St., subculturenewyork.com Sugar Bar, 254 W. 72nd St, 212-579-0222, sugarbarnyc.com Swing 46, 349 W. 46th St.(betw 8th & 9th Ave.), 212-262-9554, swing46.com Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, Tel: 212-864-1414, Fax: 212- 932-3228, symphonyspace.org Tea Lounge, 837 Union St. (betw 6th & 7th Ave), Park Slope, Broooklyn, 718-789-2762, tealoungeNY.com Terra Blues, 149 Bleecker St. (betw Thompson & LaGuardia), 212-777-7776, terrablues.com Threes Brewing, 333 Douglass St., Brooklyn. 718-522-2110. www.threesbrewing.com Tito Puente’s Restaurant and Cabaret, 64 City Island Avenue, City Island, Bronx, 718-885-3200, titopuentesrestaurant.com Tomi Jazz, 239 E. 53rd St., 646-497-1254, tomijazz.com Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw Delancey & Rivington), Tel: 212-358-7501, Fax: 212-358-1237, tonicnyc.com Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St., 212-997-1003 Triad Theater, 158 W. 72nd St. (betw Broadway & Columbus Ave.), 212-362-2590, triadnyc.com Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers St, 10007, [email protected], tribecapac.org Trumpets, 6 Depot Square, Montclair, NJ, 973-744-2600, trumpetsjazz.com Turning Point Cafe, 468 Piermont Ave. Piermont, N.Y. 10968 (845) 359-1089, http://turningpointcafe.com Urbo, 11 Times Square. 212-542-8950. urbonyc.com Village Vanguard, 178 7th Ave S., 212-255-4037 Vision Festival, 212-696-6681, [email protected], Watchung Arts Center, 18 Stirling Rd, Watchung, NJ 07069, 908-753-0190, watchungarts.org Watercolor Café, 2094 Boston Post Road, Larchmont, NY 10538, 914-834-2213, watercolorcafe.net Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, 57th & 7th Ave, 212-247-7800 Williamsburg Music Center, 367 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211, (718) 384-1654 wmcjazz.org

Zankel Hall, 881 7th Ave, New York, 212-247-7800 Zinc Bar, 82 West 3rd St.

RECORD STORES Academy Records, 12 W. 18th St., New York, NY 10011, 212-242-3000, http://academy-records.com Downtown Music Gallery, 13 Monroe St, New York, NY 10002, (212) 473-0043, downtownmusicgallery.com Jazz Record Center, 236 W. 26th St., Room 804, 212-675-4480, jazzrecordcenter.com

MUSIC STORES Roberto’s Woodwind & Brass, 149 West 46th St. NY, NY 10036, 646-366-0240, robertoswoodwind.com Sam Ash, 333 W 34th St, New York, NY 10001 Phone: (212) 719-2299 samash.com Sadowsky Guitars Ltd, 2107 41st Avenue 4th Floor, Long Island City, NY 11101, 718-433-1990. sadowsky.com Steve Maxwell Vintage Drums, 723 7th Ave, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10019, 212-730-8138, maxwelldrums.com

SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, CONSERVATORIES 92nd St Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128 212.415.5500; 92ndsty.org Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music, 42-76 Main St., Flushing, NY, Tel: 718-461-8910, Fax: 718-886-2450 Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, 58 Seventh Ave., Brooklyn, NY, 718-622-3300, brooklynconservatory.com City College of NY-Jazz Program, 212-650-5411, Drummers Collective, 541 6th Ave, New York, NY 10011, 212-741-0091, thecoll.com Five Towns College, 305 N. Service, 516-424-7000, x Hills, NY Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow St., Tel: 212-242- 4770, Fax: 212-366-9621, greenwichhouse.org Juilliard School of Music, 60 Lincoln Ctr, 212-799-5000 LaGuardia Community College/CUNI, 31-10 Thomson Ave., Long Island City, 718-482-5151 Lincoln Center — Jazz At Lincoln Center, 140 W. 65th St., 10023, 212-258-9816, 212-258-9900 Long Island University — Brooklyn Campus, Dept. of Music, University Plaza, Brooklyn, 718-488-1051, 718-488-1372 Manhattan School of Music, 120 Claremont Ave., 10027, 212-749-2805, 2802, 212-749-3025 NJ City Univ, 2039 Kennedy Blvd., Jersey City, 888-441-6528 New School, 55 W. 13th St., 212-229-5896, 212-229-8936 NY University, 35 West 4th St. Rm #777, 212-998-5446 NY Jazz Academy, 718-426-0633 NYJazzAcademy.com Princeton University-Dept. of Music, Woolworth Center Musical Studies, Princeton, NJ, 609-258-4241, 609-258-6793

Queens College — Copland School of Music, City University of NY, Flushing, 718-997-3800 Rutgers Univ. at New Brunswick, Jazz Studies, Douglass Cam-pus, PO Box 270, New Brunswick, NJ, 908-932-9302 Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies, 185 University Avenue, Newark NJ 07102, 973-353-5595 newarkrutgers.edu/IJS/index1.html SUNY Purchase, 735 Anderson Hill, Purchase, 914-251-6300 Swing University (see Jazz At Lincoln Center, under Venues) William Paterson University Jazz Studies Program, 300 Pompton Rd, Wayne, NJ, 973-720-2320

RADIO WBGO 88.3 FM, 54 Park Pl, Newark, NJ 07102, Tel: 973-624- 8880, Fax: 973-824-8888, wbgo.org WCWP, LIU/C.W. Post Campus WFDU, http://alpha.fdu.edu/wfdu/wfdufm/index2.html WKCR 89.9, Columbia University, 2920 Broadway Mailcode 2612, NY 10027, 212-854-9920, columbia.edu/cu/wkcr

ADDITIONAL JAZZ RESOURCES Big Apple Jazz, bigapplejazz.com, 718-606-8442, [email protected] Louis Armstrong House, 34-56 107th St, Corona, NY 11368, 718-997-3670, satchmo.net Institute of Jazz Studies, John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers- Univ, 185 University Av, Newark, NJ, 07102, 973-353-5595 Jazzmobile, Inc., jazzmobile.org Jazz Museum in Harlem, 104 E. 126th St., 212-348-8300, jazzmuseuminharlem.org Jazz Foundation of America, 322 W. 48th St. 10036, 212-245-3999, jazzfoundation.org New Jersey Jazz Society, 1-800-303-NJJS, njjs.org New York Blues & Jazz Society, NYBluesandJazz.org Rubin Museum, 150 W. 17th St, New York, NY, 212-620-5000 ex 344, rmanyc.org.

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world

and moral courage so rare.”

— Mark Twain

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Kahil El’Zabar Putting the Renaissance in Renaissance Man

Photo & Interview by Ken Weiss If you thought you already knew about percussion-ist Kahil El’Zabar this interview will still shock you, he’s done much more than you thought one person could do in a lifetime and he’s just now hitting his golden years. Born Clifton Blackburn (November 11, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois), El’Za-bar is an acclaimed Broadway arranger, designer of couture fashion, writer, poet, instrument crea-tor, past chairman of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and com-munity scene builder, in addition to his role as a highly accomplished musician and bandleader of his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and Ritual Trio groups since the ‘70s. He’s collaborated with Diz-zy Gillespie, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Can-nonball Adderley, Paul Simon, Donny Hathaway, Eddie Harris, David Murray, Archie Shepp, Phar-oah Sanders, Lester Bowie, Billy Bang and Nona Hendryx. His current largescale project is build-ing a revolutionary school of music - the Chicago Academy of Music. He talks about it all in this wide-ranging interview done on February 24, 2017 in Philadelphia, prior to an appearance of his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.

Jazz Inside Magazine: Your mission as a musi-cian has always been to “be of service” rather than to entertain. What does “being of service” mean to you and why is that important as a career choice? Kahil El’Zabar: The media associated with music usually takes it into the realm of entertainment so that there’s a focus on the idea of how it’s market-

ed, but music came way before marketing and the historical nature of music is that it was a service to the cultural development of communities. So, if what I’m saying is true, then it has a lot more to do with utility than fascination. It’s a primary source of giving, it’s a vibrational source that impacts human beings. Most cultures associate music with spiritual upliftment and if you look at these aspects as the assets of the musician and the music that they perform, then service would be much more an accurate description of its role, rather than enter-tainment. JI: There are numerous times during your perfor-mances that feel like a meditation. How do you form the music you choose to present? KEZ: That’s a good question. I think presentation is part meditation and part strategic. Great per-formers have an innate ability, as well as a studied ability, to understand the nature of a room. How that room responds to the performance and there-fore choices of material for the response of the room to that. The instinct in the moment must correspond to what the artists are ready to express, as well as what the audience is ready to receive, and then the well thought out meditation of time before the tour and each performance. What cre-

ates the colors, what creates the moods, what is the message that is intended to be expressed, and what is the aspirations that you can see being in the performance before you are even in the perfor-mance. JI: When did you realize the powerful effect that music could potentially have on listeners?

KEZ: One of the key moments came when I was 15 and an older friend took me to McKees [Chicago jazz club] to hear Coltrane. I think Elvin [Jones] had possibly taken too much “stuff” and he fell asleep while playing. He was snoring but was-n’t missing a beat on “Impressions,” and at 15-years-old, to see the telepathic communication at the highest level in adverse circumstances, made me believe that there was something very, very powerful going on. I also made a choice that I wouldn’t mess with any stuff, which has been my whole life, but it didn’t intimidate me nor did I feel any less of the intellectual and spiritual height of Elvin or Trane’s expression. Beyond all the bull-shit in life, the purity that the energy of music can pierce is quite profound and if one accepted the sacrifices necessary on various levels to achieve that communication, they potentially could. JI: The heavily, spiritually-based music you pre-sent has become an area of jazz that is rare these days. There are others, such as Pharoah Sanders, Charles Lloyd, James “Blood” Ulmer, Omar Sosa, Billy Harper and Douglas Ewart who also feature it, but there’s not many. Why do you think more artist don’t center on spirituality? KEZ: I think there are many artists that focus on spirituality but the themes of delivery have changed today. There was a time even a Laura Nyro or a Sly Stone or Rahsaan Roland Kirk or Frank Zappa, performers in various genres, [had spirituality] but the idea of ascension through ex-pression, that was very akin to Hendrix, Trane, Mahalia Jackson and Vladimir Horowitz, who performed as a classical artist completely internal in acceptance of the metaphysical force within that expression. You can’t sell McDonalds or other big conglomerations if you have millions of individu-als in cognitive pursuit of their spiritual and intel-lectual selves. There are many things in popular media that deter us from the vulnerability and the sensitivity of the metaphysical expression. There’s also that idea to entertain, to fill the needs of me-dia, that’s left many musicians without the same attraction to the pursuance of spiritual music. I’ve never been a person, because of how my parents raised me, intimidated through association or in-timidated by groups. I’ve pretty much walked my own road and that’s allowed me to stay consistent in defining my own reality. JI: There was a controversial 94-minute documen-tary entitled Be Known made in 2015 about you that shows your best and worst sides. At one point in the film, marshals show up at a student perfor-mance you’re leading with a warrant for your ar-rest for back child support and at another point you’re berating a colleague and then showing up late for a performance. Did you have any reluc-tance or concerns about revealing so much? KEZ: Yeah, and I was surprised when I saw the unedited version which was even more controver-sial. [Laughs] When I asked the director of the film, Dwayne Johnson-Cochran, who’s a friend and I had given him total freedom to be with me, why would he show me in that way? He captured more than I was aware of because, at a point, I


InterviewInterview

“You can’t sell McDonalds or other big conglomerations if you have

millions of individuals in cognitive pursuit of their spiritual and

intellectual selves. There are many things in popular media that deter us from the vulnerability and the

sensitivity of the metaphysical…”


Kahil El’Zabar Photo by Ken Weiss


wasn’t even aware the camera was on me since it was on me all the time. I had to come to grips with it. When I’m performing, I don’t allow anyone to change my composition. When I’m working in my art form I do what I do and it wasn’t my art form, it was his art form and he had a story he was tell-ing. I happened to be the subject but I was not the decision maker of the art. So if I became too criti-cal of that, then I would very much deter from his process and I had very much trusted and allowed him to capture all of it so I had to trust in the over-all outcome. It was funny, it was sold out for four days in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Theater and there were friends asking, “Are you okay?” [Laughs] I’m okay, I can live with my inadequacies as a human being, as well as my talents as a human being. I’ve always told my children, ‘Be honest in your pursuit to life by the definitions of what would bring you a sense of security for all that you go through.’ So if nothing else with that film, there’s nothing else to hide. Whatever is my so-called worst — it’s out there – so at this point, there’s nothing but going up! [Laughs] JI: What’s been the reaction to the film by your audience members who’ve seen it? KEZ: There have been a few who’ve been morally judgmental. We performed and the film was shown at the LA Film Festival and there was an older woman very upset with me. I told her I was sorry for whatever disturbed her but I’m not sorry for being who I am which is very different. I don’t think that an artist is supposed to be judged purely morally or socially. I think the body of my work, the consistency, the quality, and the sincerity of my pursuance, speaks for itself. And I have to tell that to my children – ‘Dad has got some inadequa-cies and human frailties but I’ve tried to be an honest, loving person. I’ve made a few mistakes. Sorry, let’s keep moving.’” JI: What also comes through in the documentary is your deep love for the music which you refer to as “my life,” and how your biggest aspiration was to be one of the “Cats.” Would you elaborate on being one of the “Cats?” KEZ: I grew up hearing live music and seeing musicians in my community being honored for their ability to express something of value that helped to release and inspire the community. That admirable quality was extremely attractive to me from a small child on. I grew up with trombonist George Lewis and Chico Freeman in the same neighborhood surrounded by legendary musicians who were a part of our daily life. As a child, I was going to picnics with George and Von [Freeman]. My father was an amateur drummer and if Sonny Stitt was in town, he’d be there. Jug [Gene Am-mons] and all of these people were around. I went to Mt. Carmel Baptist Church where Ramsey Lew-is Sr. was the minister of music. In high school I used to go to the Grand Theater and upstairs was Andrew Hill, Malachi Favors and Steve McCall in

a trio and downstairs was Ramsey Lewis, Red Holt and L.D. Young. I saw everything. There was no fee to get into the clubs then, you’d just walked in. Seeing Jack DeJohnette when I was a teenager as a piano player, not a drummer, was my normal life. The comradery and the sense of nobleness about that role, and the hipness. These guys were usually well-dressed, articulate and charismatic in a less than egoistic way. They had a command of pres-ence because of the development of their craft and the character that went with time, discipline, focus and an internal sense of self, and I wanted to be a part of that. I’ve been doing this professionally since 1970 and never achieved any real major success even though I’ve been a part of people who’ve become very successful and I’ve also

watched them lose their success - such as Donnie Hathaway. I worked with Donnie Hathaway when he had his own plane and I knew him when he was struggling at the end of his career. We have to find our own balance. I learned from people like Lester Bowie. He could be as vulnerable, whatever his human frailties were, and as noble with the regali-ty with which he presented his music. I’ve found that many artists have been secure enough to allow their vulnerabilities to be a part of their presence and not see that as weakness. JI: It was surprising to hear you say that you had not found success. KEZ: Found success in terms of economic and media notoriety. You know I’ve done arrange-ments for Julie Taymor for The Lion King and I know it wouldn’t have been the same play without my contribution. I was the introduction of Darryl Jones to Miles Davis, he was in my band at 16 and he left band to go on with Sting and all that. I met Sting when he was still a school teacher in Cam-den Town, London when I was playing at Ronnie Scotts in the early ‘70s. Kanye West lived with me when he was 14. I’ve seen all these people directly related to me gain notoriety much sooner than I did. It’s also my instrument, nobody’s ever heard of an African American hand drummer being a marque star. There have been Latin and African hand drumming stars like Mongo and Olatunji but never was there an African American hand drum-ming star or one who led a popular band before me. I had the personality of a star but the wrong instrument based on the cultural values of the soci-

ety and I understood that. I could have gone on a more straight-ahead direction in terms of my skills as a musician. I could have gone into pop and R & B. If I had wanted, I could’ve been a singer but that wasn’t my choice. The drums, the idea of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, using the pentatonic versus the chromatic as a navigating tool for the development of melody and ideas, being a ban-dleader with a non-commercial kind of instrument. I worked with Dizzy from ‘75-76 so he was the age I am now. I’m now getting recognized, it’s just taken me longer. In the last two years, I’ve been knighted by the French government and I got the Icon of American Culture from the Smithsonian. My children wanted to know why I spend the six or eight hours a day practicing and we weren’t

seeing that much from it. I’m not on TV, I’m not really on the radio. My dedication wasn’t about notoriety or achieving what a Wynton Marsalis achieved. I haven’t been the critic’s choice. [Laughs] I haven’t had the superstar success but I like being on the ground and connected. I have friends all over the world. I have friends and musi-cians who are extremely famous but they go to hotels and they just stay there by themselves. Last night, I played in a friend of mine’s home in Balti-more. We had 60 people, they paid $20 apiece, so we still made $1200 in someone’s home. We played a full concert for very nice people and I actually cooked a 7-course meal in 3 hours. That was part of the deal. I did jerk chicken, potato salad, collard greens, black-eyed peas and a jerk tofu. That’s something you can’t do if you’re big-ger than the people. You’ve got to be in the mo-ment in order to experience and express real life and I think it comes through in your music. JI: Would you go back? Did you say Kanye West lived with you when he was 14? KEZ: Kanye’s mom was an academic colleague. I was teaching at the University of Illinois, I was associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, and his mom was at Chicago State University. Kanye would spend a lot of time at my place in his early teens because my girlfriend, who I was living with at that time—her son was one of Kanye’s best friends. I took Kanye to his shows. I worked on Common’s first record [Common Sense]. Lupe Fiasco’s dad, Jaco, was my student, so I’ve known Lupe since he was born. Lupe had a project last


“I don’t think that an artist is supposed to be judged purely morally or socially. I think the body of my work, the consistency, the quality, and the sincerity of my pursuance,

speaks for itself. And I have to tell that to my children – ‘Dad has got some inadequacies and human frailties. But I’ve tried to be an

honest, loving person. I’ve made a few mistakes. Sorry, let’s keep moving.’”

Kahil El’Zabar


year with Google doing startups and he honored me based on the contributions that I made in his life. So everybody knows me from the under-ground and that’s why Dwayne made the movie Be Known because here’s this guy [that people don’t know about]. I went to Jean Paul Gaultier’s first show in ‘75 at La Chapelle des Lombard and I own one of the first peacoats that he made. I had an apartment next to [designer] Yohji Yamamoto. I presented David Murray’s first professional con-cert out of college. Billy Bang and I met at Rucker Park Street Ball Tournament. He was a point guard opposite Nate (Tiny) Archibald and I was a shoot-ing guard. All these relationships and the tie-ins and the connects are far and beyond the assumed ideas of media. When Kanye did his big fashion thing 4 years ago, I was the consultant for him to go to Paris, to meet certain people, ateliers and sourcing. My son Kahari was high school class-mates with Chance the Rapper so when Chance did South by Southwest the first time, Kahari called me because they had driven from Chicago and they didn’t have any money to pay for the hotel so I paid and now I just saw Chance win three Grammy Awards. So life is a very exciting constant moving adventure. JI: This may be a good time to get that money back from Chance. KEZ: It may be a good time. JI: I have inside information that your basketball nickname was “Graveyard.” Where did that come from?

KEZ: I was deadly on the court! I would take teams to their graves. Got it? JI: Your given name was Clifton Henry Blackburn Jr. When and why did you change your name? KEZ: My mother is part Eritrean [area of northern Ethiopia] and a lot of people don’t realize that Kahil is not a Muslim name, it’s a Coptic name. Khalil is a Muslim name, Kahil is Hamitic, it goes back to the Bible, the children of Ham, and they were Coptics. The family name of my mother is

El’Zabar. When I was a teenager in the ‘60s, my very good friend, a great percussionist now in LA named Derf Reklaw, who played with The Phar-aohs in the ‘60s and Eddie Harris, changed his name. In high school Derf’s name was Fred Walk-er and he turned it backwards and it sounded pretty cool. So I said, ‘I’m gonna do the same thing as Derf,’ but it didn’t work out the same way – it turned into Notfilc Nrubkcalb. [Laughs] So I thought it be better to use my mom’s name and my uncle Wardell had given me Kahil, which in Ham-itic is “force of light.” That gave me a name and a principle of how I’ve tried to express my life jour-ney. El’Zabar is a sect name. You find that name all over North and Northeast Africa. It has differ-ent meanings in different areas but what I know is that in Northeast it derived from people who were teachers of the abacas. So my name became for me – “force of light, the teacher.” That has guided me in terms of my life goal. JI: In this day and age of terrorism and general mistrust, how is it for you to travel the world with a Muslim name? Have you had instances of mis-treatment? KEZ: Yes, instances of mistreatment and disre-spect. We were going to Munich, myself, Pharoah Sanders, Ari Brown and Malachi Favors, it was right after 9/11 and we had first class seats and they said I was a risk and couldn’t be behind the cockpit. So they put me in second class. There were various instances like that, so about a year later, I changed my passport from Kahil El’Zabar to Clifton Blackburn and since 9/11 I’ve been traveling as Clifton Blackburn because it made it extremely difficult being a fair skin, black person that has East African features with what is an as-sumed Muslim name. Very difficult.

JI: You formed an attachment to drums and per-cussion at age four. Your father liked to play them and your uncle, Candy Finch, played professional-ly with Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie. Would you talk about your connection with drums and percussion and what it means to play them? KEZ: Rhythm is language, not in the didactic perspective but much more in the vibrational sci-ence to physics. We know that everything in mat-ter is not necessarily solid but it’s connected through vibration, and those vibrations have infi-

nite rhythmic associations. My father and uncle scatted. It’s one thing to physically play but when you scat, you live in the rhythm continually. Real-ly great drummers have duplex meter sensibility because just to play from the hi-hat to the kick to the ride with the left hand creates that sensibility of duplex rhythm. So growing up with that at an extremely young age was normal at that time for an African American child in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I took tap dance classes because everybody did. That was like today doing tennis, but when I was growing up damn near everybody took tap dance classes. Rhythm was a very important attribute to one’s expressiveness and those who had more of a proclivity would then go into performing or play-ing instruments, whether it was a church gospel sort of thing, or a social setting, or in a more re-fined higher arts sensibility like with Jazz. Every-one had an aptitude for it and understood it. I don’t think you could have had a Charlie Parker if there wasn’t the aptitudinal development of the Kansas City audience. That audience was so sophisticated that anyone that performed had to reach a certain standard in order to find the approval of what the community already understood, what the commu-nity was already hearing and seeing. So if I’m five, six, seven years old, and Gene Ammons is playing at a picnic, I mean can you get better than that? Marshall Thompson and Wilbur Campbell and Jodie Christian, George Freeman, Bebop Sam, Clifford Jordan and Eddie Harris. These are the people I saw all the time as a kid, and not just as musicians, seeing them play softball, and seeing the same attributes that translate in other elements. Everything they did was with finesse, including the way they dressed. You know, some of the mu-sicians of my generation, and especially the younger generation, have become much more grunge focused since the ‘60s and hippies, and the people who know me well know that I was never a part of where my generation was. I was always a “cat.” I was always well-dressed, always in the nature of what the so-called jazz impresario was about, that hipness. Even with the AACM, I was a little bit different than a lot of the cats. I worked with everybody but I had this other way of ap-proaching things that a lot of times people didn’t see as the AACM. I always had that kind of churchy, audience participation part. My stuff was much more rhythmic than arhythmic. I understood everybody’s concepts and forms because I was academically educated, but I saw something that was more connected to the experience that I grew up with as a child and trying to translate those things to all the sophisticated harmonic sensibili-ties and counterpoints and contemporary rhythmic perceptions, but I wanted to still have that same element that Gene Ammons had and Sun Ra’s band had. That old fashion kind of energy with a modern, contemporary interpretation. JI: Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, you had significant musical mentors in Eddie Harris and Von Freeman. How did they help you? KEZ: I’ll give you an example. It was years later, at the Leverkusen Festival [Germany] when I asked to present a 20-year retrospective of my work produced by the festival and Eddie Harris was there with his group. I had been given a large


Kahil El’Zabar

“I have friends and musicians who are extremely famous but they go to hotels and they just stay

there by themselves. Last night, I played in a friend of mine’s home in Baltimore. We had 60 people, they paid $20 apiece, so we still made $1200 in

someone’s home. We played a full concert for very nice people and I actually cooked a 7-course meal

in 3 hours. That was part of the deal.”


piece of money for the event and I brought a big band called Orchestra Infinity, I brought over bands of other people who had come through me like Ernest Dawkins, Light Henry Huff and Ed-ward Wilkerson, and I brought an African group I played with in the ‘60s called The Sun Drummer. I just brought everybody. So Eddie Harris looked at me and hit me in the back of the head. I said, ‘Hey, what’s up with you?’ He said, “I know you ain’t gonna make no money off of this. You got seven kids. I told you, you gotta’ always figure how to make a dollar for yourself when you make a dollar for somebody else. If you don’t do that, then you have nothing to take care of for yourself and your family.” That was an incredible lesson. That’s not music talk, it’s not talk about the changes, it’s about the changes of life. Von’s whole thing was when I went to his sessions, and I always went to Von’s sessions, he’d say, “Yeah, he’s from the AACM but still can swing.” And it was always important for me to have that acknowledgment in both camps. I never became more sophisticated than the streets but I never took the streets out of

the sophistication of the things that I do. And I learned that from Von Freeman. I’ve had several conversations with Sonny Rollins where he talked about the importance of tenor consciousness from Chicago and why he came to Chicago to the ‘40s and was working as a custodian in a school just so he could be around Lucky Thompson, Jug, Von, King Kolax and Clifford Jordan. That was very important to Sonny and Von was the master of that. When Eddie Harris would come in from LA, and he had all those big hits, he did not come up the jam session to solo until Von said he could. That let me know that the idea of what media of-fers to identity and the inter-social graces and re-

spects are two different things that young musi-cians like Wynton Marsalis never understood. As talented and as disciplined as he is as a great play-er, a lot of these young, successful musicians have lost the understanding of neighborhood conscious-ness. JI: You also got to hang with Muddy Waters and other Chess Records artists. How did the Chess Records artists influence you? KEZ: The way I came into Chess was actually through gospel music with Milton Brunson, who Jessie Dickson was the band director. So I was working with them and then I got to see Muddy. At was at the Electric Muddy Sessions because I was friends with Pete Cosey. We’d go to the Checkerboard [Lounge] and some of the other clubs like the Bucket of Blood, which was on the West Side, and only black people went to the Bucket of Blood, and when you’d go to these envi-ronments, you’d see that, for me, Muddy Waters was much closer to the idea of what Louis Arm-strong was expressing than all of the astute practi-tioners of trad jazz. Muddy Waters was the living experience of translating music from lifestyle. Louis Armstrong did it in the swing idiom and Muddy Waters came out of rural blues into urban

blues which is basically the jump idiom. When you look at how Muddy carried himself with the confidence of being, and that was something that I found very similar in Africa. The confidence in being, not the ego of presence, which is very dif-ferent. Ego of presence is defining who you are, rather than living who you are. A confidence in living is the ability to flow and follow through with your expression and that is what I’ve tried to pick up from artists. JI: You’re mentioning important musicians that have influenced you. I’d like to ask you to share some anecdotes of musicians you’ve worked with.

What about Cannonball Adderley? KEZ: Oh, man. I think in terms of musical note choices, elegance personified to the highest order. When you hear Kind of Blue and Trane is just spraying out notes, and then Cannonball rearticu-lates the ideas in more crystalized impact. With Trane, you’ve got this major, major sense of voice but Cannonball has this decisive way of approach-ing rhythm, harmonic sensibility, and note choices. He’s the only guy I know where Miles decides to be sideman on albums in that period because this was a consummate deliverer of poetic expression with music. He was very well educated, extremely articulate, he was a person of refined agility in a larger person with sensitive vibrato, great confi-dence, and could bring anybody into his environ-ment and create a lot of happiness. I tried to learn from that. The biggest memory I have is being in Lucerne, Switzerland when the Mingus band and Cannonball’s band played the festival, and then to sit down with Mingus and Cannonball to watch them eat. Mingus with two hands, with everything going in fast, and Cannonball with his knife and fork, delicately dissecting the same chicken meal with totally different ways of consuming. What an eloquent, cool dude. And I loved the personal rela-tionship of Nat and Cannonball. They were older guys that seemed young when they were together because of the fraternity that they had. JI: What about Gene Ammons? KEZ: Just sound. I had a gig at Dickie’s Lounge where I played the conga for Lady Boogaloo, a shake dancer, and then afterwards Jug’s group would come on and my job was to sit next to him to sometimes nudge him to let him know it was time to hit. Jug was so accurate. If things were going rhythmically in a certain kind of way, the harmonics or the changes of the tune, and he’d hit one note –”Whooooomp”- and that one note would be beyond anything that anyone would do and for the entire night, all that anybody remembered is when Jug hit one fuckin’ note. So that kind of accurate means that you are aware of everything going on. Even during sleep, he would be in the music. You don’t see Jug getting the recognition that others got but, as far as what everybody told me, from Von Freeman to Jodie Christian to Son-ny Rollins, that when Jug walked in the room, it was music royalty to the musicians because the whole key beyond all the stuff you played was your sound and there was, to my knowledge, no greater sound on any instrument than the Gene Ammons sound. JI: A Stevie Wonder memory? KEZ: Enormous humility in the love of music. Here you have a person equal to Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga fame and at the height of his suc-cess, he walks out of the industry to get a master’s degree at UCLA Music so he could advance his writing and producing skills. That’s enormous humility and confidence and a greater value than societal comparables, which most of us are very vulnerable to. Stevie Wonder’s in his own world and that’s not a cliché. I remember doing a concert in Atlanta, and we’ve already gone about two hours but he’s written so many hit songs that peo-


So Eddie Harris looked at me and hit me in the back of the head. I said, ‘Hey, what’s up with you?’ He said, “I know you ain’t gonna make no money off of

this. You got seven kids. I told you, you gotta’ always figure how to make a dollar for yourself when you make a dollar for somebody else. If you don’t do that, then you have nothing to take care of for yourself and your family.

That was an incredible lesson.”

Kahil El’Zabar


ple are still calling out requests, and my hands and my arms are damn near ready to bust, and in that moment I was like, ‘Damn, I wish bro could see!’ [Laughs] Because he would see that he has wore this band out! But he was still just as enthusi-astic and he pushed us on. I learned from his hu-mility. JI: A Dizzy Gillespie memory? KEZ: We played at the New Morning in Geneva. There used to be one there as well as the one that is still active in Paris and owned by the same peo-ple. Dizzy was supposed to end the set at 11 PM, but ended up getting excited and played 3 more encores! We finished closer to 1 AM. I on congas and Mickey Roker on drums were super tired after that! My hands were hurting a little, so I said something to Dizzy complaining about how long we played! He laughed and then looked at James Moody saying, “These young cats just don’t get it Moody.” Moody replied, “I hear you Diz!” Dizzy then looked me dead in the eye and said in a very serious non-joking manner to me, “You are having the opportunity to play and learn from me, plus I’m paying you! Shut the fuck up and enjoy the ride!” He was absolutely right. I never com-plained again and learned to enjoy the journey! JI: During college in 1971, you made special ar-rangements to study African music as an exchange student at the University of Ghana. Today it’s not uncommon for musicians to study in Africa but you did it 45 years ago. Were there other Ameri-can jazz artists studying in Africa at that time or were you one of the first? KEZ: I was probably one of the first but there were people before me. At the height of his career, Ginger Baker left Cream and went to Ghana, Don Cherry traveled in India and Africa, Sonny Rollins went to India, Yusef Lateef, on his own, traveled all over the world to learn about exotic forms of music and integrated them very successfully into jazz. All of those folks influenced me in terms of my journey. I don’t think there was anyone that had used the kalimba [thumb piano] as sophisticat-ed as I had in contemporary acoustic improvised music. And I couldn’t do many of the things I do now if there wasn’t an exposure to those opportu-nities. I feel very grateful to be open to other per-spectives of organized sound, and that’s what mu-sic is. This is a big world and I hope that music will be a tool to create tolerance and excitement beyond culture barriers. Music is a connecting fabric for people. JI: What was your first impression of Africa and the music you found there? KEZ: First impression was why are people in my face? In America, distance is a very important part of etiquette. Coming out of Chicago you’re very defensive to your sense of space. Human commu-nication is naturally ether but as we gain power we re-determine our position and we elude ourselves to think that we own spaces. So that was a hell of a

thing to step out of my comfort zone. As far as the music, I was struck by the sophistication of synco-pation and duplex meter. It made me realize that rhythm was as dominant and as important as melo-dy. In our society, melodic invention is looked at as the superior extension of musical expression but you really have no melodic extension if you don’t have rhythmic context in order to shape melody. JI: Was there a specific musical experience you had during that first Ghana trip that most affected you? KEZ: Being with a couple of teachers and trying to show them all that I had learned, and thinking that I was doing it really well, until one said,

“Bruni,” which means “child of the white man,” that’s what he called me because I was from the U.S. but it wasn’t said with malice, he said, “Bruni, all you do and not how you do. You’re not that.” And then they asked if I could play a blues and I sang one to them and they said, “That’s your African language.” So that formed the Ethnic Her-itage Ensemble. I came back from that experience and took an historical heritage to the reality of my practical urban experience. I told my father I was going to develop this band with horns and my drums and he said, “You’ll never make a liv-ing.” [Laughs] In ‘86 I took my father on a Euro-pean tour of 20 cities and he called my mother- “Gwen! They know this fool’s music! I can’t be-lieve it! I think he gonna be okay.” If you have discipline and understand the value of form, and are able to translate your concepts into form, you are able to develop a formula of expression that can be successfully delivered. So it was that Afri-can experience. They were basically telling me that my language was the urban vernacular and to take that and translate that into my system of ex-pression. JI: You perhaps, with your deep roots in African rhythms, best fulfill the AACM’s operating motto - “Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future.” What’s your approach to the concept of “Ancient to the Future?” KEZ: I taught a class at the University of Illinois for six years. I was hired by the School of Archi-tecture and I was trying to figure out why do they want me at the School of Architecture? I had lived

and studied in an inter-disciplinary sense, socially and academically, I’m a published writer as a poet, I was an internationally acknowledged fashion designer, I’m a painter and a musician. So they wanted me to take architecture students and bring them, with students in other disciplines that I had a background in, and help them get a more holistic understanding of making art. The whole idea of the AACM’s “Ancient to the Future” is we’re looking at principles of human interaction and value from a cultural stance and then taking those values into an immediate contemporary experience and finding a parallel reality that a million years ago people interpreted the vibrational sequences of organized sound into a common expression that fulfilled their cultural social utility. The same thing

happens chemically today. The idea of vibration connecting matter, which is actually not together, it’s only held together by the vibrational frequen-cies, tighter or lesser. And when you look at mu-sic, it is the representation of things in physics associated to the cultural vernacular of Indian, European, African, American, South American, and all of that. There’s no growth in the possibili-ties of tradition without experimentation, which means abstractions have to be reinterpreted to become tradition. So Louis Armstrong was an abstraction of the ideas of things from African, European, Spanish, Arabic music into what it would evolve in jazz, and then in parallel, he be-comes tradition and then anything counter to that by Charlie Parker becomes abstract, and then after he becomes modern, it becomes conventional, and then comes things by Trane and into the AACM and Cecil and whatever. I think the AACM motto becomes very constructive because we have to help the young artists understand that in ancient times, the principals of physics were no different than they are today, and that’s what I did in my class. No matter what we do as artists, we cannot get out of the realms of the constants in the uni-verse as we individually interpret our abstract idea upon the phenomena of existence. People have a sense that there’s nothing they can do about the world but once we have this “Ancient to the Fu-ture” to realize that through time and every day, we’ve gone through changes to re-evolve our op-portunity to see a new idea to create a new oppor-tunity that is way more relevant other than just music. When you see the success of Leo Smith,


Kahil El’Zabar

“You don’t see Jug getting the recognition that others got but, as far as what everybody told me, from Von Freeman to Jodie Christian to Sonny Rollins, that when Jug walked in the room, it was music royalty to the musicians because the whole key beyond all the stuff

you played was your sound and there was, to my knowledge, no greater sound on any

instrument than the Gene Ammons sound.”


Anthony Braxton, Chico Freeman, Henry Thread-gill, George Lewis, Douglas Ewart, the Art En-semble of Chicago, you see all these guys that were supposed to be the strangest in jazz music. But now we’ve been heads of academic depart-ments in halls of learning in this country. JI: One of the African instruments you feature prominently is the kalimba. How have you em-ployed this technically limited instrument to shape your music? KEZ: Whether you’re in traditional scales or modes, no matter where the music is, it has always a tonic, that core note upon which you then devel-op triads to chords. I did a song with David Mur-ray for kalimba and saxophone that became pretty well known called “Golden Sea.” Some of the comments when the song came out was that the saxophone seemed bigger, well I had written it where his melody was in a four part harmony but he just had part of it, and so when I played my tonic against it, it automatically made the sound bigger. People haven’t realized that my music sustains because I actually have a lot of composi-tional sophistication in knowing how to create harmonies and knowing how to create counter-points to give the effect of what’s not there in the

chordal changes of the bass or in the broader capa-bilities of the harmonic voicings of the piano and then retuning some of my thumb pianos in a chro-matic. So when I do “All Blues,” I’m playing the changes on kalimba. No one’s done that. It took a lot of work, sitting at pianos for hours and hours, and retuning, and figuring out which keys work better, which modes work better, and educating my musicians. Guys that have played with me have gone on to be strong leaders – Edward Wilkerson, Corey Wilkes, Ernest Dawkins, Joe Bowie. They’ve learned things working with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble such as rhythmic inde-

pendence so that we can build upon to give people the impression of a full ensemble within the limita-tions of a kalimba and the confidence to deliver what one may consider as primitive to understand that it can have a very contemporary, competitive placement if performed correctly. JI: Another African-influenced instrument you feature is your handmade invention, the Earth Drum [a conga-like cylinder with tied on stretched heads, rather than secured with metal, to allow for vibration and hollow overtones]. How did you develop that? KEZ: I looked at a drum in Ghana called the Atumpan and also the Cuban conga, so it’s a com-bination of both and then I wanted a bottom deeper sound that the Atumpan had that the conga didn’t. So I developed my instrument where it had the bottom of the Atumpan and the top like a conga. My two most dominate influential players are Tiroro from Haiti and Chano Pozo and the way he played with bebop musicians, which is very differ-ent than the way percussion happened after Chano Pozo. Chano was a voice, not an accompaniment. That was very similar to what I heard in Africa. What people don’t understand is that the language and the syntax, that’s what the drummer’s playing and that’s what makes me different than a lot of percussionists. I’m playing language. I’m also playing rhythm, but I’m playing language. JI: Do you speak African dialect?

KEZ: I speak a little Yoruba and Ashanti because those were the languages there. So when I’m scat-ting, I’m mixing in bebop and African phrases in a unique way. But when I’m playing hand percus-sion, I’m talking language so that gives me the same longitude as a saxophonist or a guitarist. I execute at least sixteen different notes, and then within those notes I have all kinds of inflections. Now some people are not hearing that, but I’m hearing all of that. So some people say, “You’re well-educated, you’re an extremely articulate guy, why would you have chosen an African drum?” Well, a circle is a representation of infinity, interi-

or and exterior. If I’m playing a circle, my attacks of interior, exterior are infinite, so it’s an extremely sophisticated instrument because it’s dealing with membrane texture for the articulation of ideas. The trumpet only has three movements. People will come to see that the ideas of what we consider primitive is irrelevant to the idea of pursuance. Pursuance has no limitations in the individual’s idea to express and expound and that’s what’s supposed to be important. JI: Do you sell your Earth Drums? KEZ: Everybody’s asking me to. That will proba-bly be the next phase but it’s difficult enough to keep the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and The Ritual Trio working every year, you know you only keep good musicians because you pay them. I’ll proba-bly do some kind of manufacturing deal with ka-limba and with hand drums. My focus right now is building a school for music. JI: How does the experience of playing the tradi-tional drum kit compare to playing African instru-ments? KEZ: If we look at the extension of Art Blakey and Elvin Jones or Chick Webb, it was an African instrument for them. There’s always been stick drums in Africa. A lot of people don’t realize that I played trap drums before I played African drums. JI: What was your early history with the AACM? KEZ: In 1968 I was still in high school and I took classes on Wednesdays and Saturday’s at the AACM School of Music, along with fellow stu-dents George Lewis and Douglas Ewart. That’s when I first met Muhal Richard Abrams, Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, and all the cats teaching at the school. I graduated high school in ‘69 and got invited by Muhal to play percussion in the AACM Big Band. I started col-lege that fall and also started getting hired for gigs by AACM artists like Kalaparusha, Amina Clau-dine Myers and Threadgill. I worked with Eddie Harris’ band and Gene Ammons’ band locally in Chicago at the same time. George Lewis and Douglas Ewart and I started a trio and played around Chicago and then I went to Ghana for the first time. My school friend, bassist Larry Ball, invited me to play in his band with his brother, pianist Louis Ball, and we became one of Chica-go’s best pick-up bands and started working with the great gospel singer Jessy Dixon and the Dixie Hummingbirds. We also got hired by Donny Hath-away as his backup band. By ‘72 I left Lake For-rest College and started traveling with Paul Simon because he hired Jessy Dixon and the Dixie Hum-mingbirds, with whom I was already playing per-cussion for. I’m doing all this pop stuff working with all these pop artists but Muhal asked me to join his sextet with George, Threadgill, Steve McCall and Rufus Reid and to also become an official member of the AACM, and for me, the neighborhood was always more important than the fame because I didn’t grow up poor, I grew up as a middleclass kid. I wasn’t one of those black kids that was struggling so I never felt I had to make money. I felt so honored to be invited to play in this all-star band of sophisticated, high-level ex-


Kahil El’Zabar

The whole idea of the AACM’s “Ancient to the Fu-ture” is we’re looking at principles of human in-teraction and value from a cultural stance and

then taking those values into an immediate con-temporary experience and finding a parallel reali-ty that a million years ago people interpreted the vibrational sequences of organized sound into a common expression that fulfilled their cultural

social utility. The same thing happens chemically today. The idea of vibration connecting matter, which is actually not together, it’s only held to-

gether by the vibrational frequencies…”


pression that I quit The Paul Simon Band. JI: That was quite a move. You were touring with Paul Simon, making $1500 a week, and gave that up to focus on work as a member of the AACM. KEZ: My father was very upset because I was making a lot of money with Paul Simon, and then left that band to make only $50. I was playing once a week, playing on Sundays with Muhal. My Dad asked why I couldn’t have stayed with both bands. JI: It’s impressive that you achieved the role of AACM Chairman in 1975 after only being a full member for three years. What were the major hur-dles you encountered during your time as Chair-man of the AACM (‘75-’82) and what were your greatest accomplishments? KEZ: It was to translate the new opportunities for grants funding and representing the fiscal agent, the legal not-for-profit, in a way that translated from urban grassroots organizing into long-term institutional viability. The older guys had observed my organizing skills. My mother owned a bridal business so we had been in business our whole lives so knowing how to make decisions with money, meeting timelines with obligations toward your consumers, marketing, all that was innate by my life experience. By the time I had officially joined the organization, the other musicians were older than I was, but I had already been out with Cannonball, I had already been to New York, so I didn’t have the same fascination with new acknowledgement and notoriety. I had already been with what was considered some of the great-est musicians that had ever lived. Once I became chairman, I was focused on how we organize, and how we put together funding for the school, how we create the patterns for the obligated responsi-bilities as artists to fulfill their service to the com-munity. Be on time to teach your class if you want your $50. Concerts had to start on time and a cal-endar was put together so there was no choosing who was to play at the last minute. At the time of my 3 years as chairman, we did festivals through corporate funding. I went to radio stations and said that we had demographic value and I qualified it by knowing how to write the grant. I sat at panels and articulated the issues associated with what was going on. I think that I was that step that moved it from the grassroots into the sophisticated, long-term institution from the administrative perspec-tive. Because it became so successful, people like Steppenwolf Theater hired me and I became part of panels with the National Endowment of the Arts because people wanted to learn how I was able to organize with that kind of sophistication in the inner city institution. JI: You’ve led two powerful bands since the early ‘70s. Would you talk about the significance of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and the Ritual Trio? KEZ: I presented the first Ethnic Heritage Ensem-ble concerts in ‘73. The band included Rasul Sid-

dick (trumpet), Light Henry Huff (reeds), Mchaka Uba (bass), Kirk Brown (piano) and Don Moye (drums). In ‘74 it became a quintet featuring two tenor saxophonists – Huff and Edward Wilkerson – along with Yosef Ben Israel (bass) and Ben Montgomery (drums). In ‘77 the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble became a trio of two horns and percus-sion because we made our first European tour and could only afford three musicians. I had to learn how to write and arrange music for that unique instrumentation! I started the first Ritual Trio in ‘75 with Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors. JI: What conceptual musical differences exist

between the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and the Ritual Trio? KEZ: The model for the Ethnic Heritage Ensem-ble comes out of traditional African practices of music organizing. Many times the approaches are in pentatonic concepts of the construct of melody in the harmonic progressions. The Ritual Trio is more based on the model of the original Sonny Rollins trio with Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach and moving outside of the harmonics of the piano for further exploration. At first I had Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors, they were the right guys that just had invention and unconventional approaches and all the jazz history within it so it was like hav-ing the modern Satchmo with me and Favors be-hind that, and exploring all of the contemporary sense of Jazz harmonic sensibilities. JI: With your Ritual Trio group you got to play with master musicians who have since passed - Malachi Favors, Lester Bowie and Billy Bang. How is it to have worked so intimately with these great artists and to have them suddenly taken from you? KEZ: It’s laughter only expressed now in memory because all of those people had extraordinary sens-es of humor and you hear it in their music. Lester was like the big brother. Most of the things I did, I talked to him about it—business, things in music,

he was a guide on many levels for me. Favors had mentored me since I was 16-years-old, teaching me how to swing and how to focus on pulse versus meter. Billy and I met on the basketball court, we were both successful athletes. I was all-city and all-state in Chicago, 1969. Athletics were the begin-ning of my discipline – being on time for practice and focusing and developing your vehicle. Bang had the same thing as me. He was one of New York’s top street point guards. He’s in the Ruck-er’s Hall of Fame, he was inducted the same year as Rod Strickland. He and I had this fraternity on so many different levels. I love these people ex-tremely, I miss all of them, but just like my parents

who I miss, I feel completely connected to them on a daily basis. I still talk to them because that is the African way – there is no death. JI: How has your career progressed? KEZ: Starting in the mid-’70s, I became a very in demand percussionist working with several AACM bands and that’s when I worked with Diz-zy Gillespie, Cannonball, Eddie Harris and Nina Simone. In the ‘80s I toured and recorded exten-sively with both my bands as well as worked with Billy Bang and David Murray. The ‘80s were quite a lucrative time for avant-garde jazz! We did big festivals and TV globally. That slowed down by the late-’80s when the young classic jazz players became popular so I focused on an academic ca-reer to earn a living. I taught Inter-Disciplinary Arts and Modern Jazz Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln [1988-1998] and then at the University of Illinois at Chicago [1999-2005]. I received a doctorate from Lake Forrest College in 2006 in Inter-Disciplinary Arts and since then I’ve actively worked and an Arts in Education consult-ant on a global scale while touring internationally on a continuous basis. I’ve been an artist-in-residence for the city of Bordeaux, France for the past 11 years. I was knighted by the Counsel Gen-eral of France in 2014, making me a “Chevalier Medal of Letters,” of which I was most honored! I


Kahil El’Zabar

“Muhal asked me to join his sextet … and to also become an official member of the AACM, and for me, the neighborhood was

always more important than the fame because I didn’t grow up poor, I grew up as

a middleclass kid. I wasn’t one of those black kids that was struggling so I never

felt I had to make money. I felt so honored to be invited to play in this all-star band of sophisticated, high-level expression that

I quit the Paul Simon Band.”


am also most proud of the fact that I have toured the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble every year in the U.S. since 1973, that’s more than 44 years! There are few bands in jazz that can boast that kind of history and I feel my recorded work and history of live performances speak for themselves. JI: How do you feel your work has been received? KEZ: It is very difficult for this society to under-stand and appreciate the intellectual value and compositional sophistication of my work as a per-cussionist. Western thinkers rarely understand the essential value of rhythm to the construction and evolution of great music. I am an influencer and innovator far beyond what most jazz critics realize. Some of the most influential players in the last 50 years have expressed some of their best perfor-mances playing with me and my music, including Pharoah Sanders, Lester Bowie, Billy Bang, Archie Shepp, Fred Hopkins, Joseph Jarman, Ka-laparusha, David Murray, Edward Wilkerson and Hamiet Bluiett. I feel I have a gift and talent in knowing how to inspire and bring out the best in those I play with. JI: Why did you start the Chicago Academy of Music and what value does it bring to the current status of music education? KEZ: I’m approaching my mid-sixties and I think I will be pretty physically active into my mid-seventies and then I want to be even more abstract. To give back is so important and the idea of the Chicago Academy of Music is to gather master musicians who have been successful at making a living playing music which is very different than making a living teaching music. The majority of the educators in traditional institutions are people who have made a living teaching. I think the na-ture of how people are playing because of that academic acculturation speaks less to what had been the historical, organic receptive way in which jazz musicians learn. It’s much more like a cookie cutter box than it is the organic delivery and ro-manticism of language. I think we need to develop an institution where people across jazz, classical, Latin, world and other fields have made their ca-reers as soloists. My kids tell me, “You ain’t super famous dad,” which is true, but I am my own indi-vidual style of expression in a time when most things have been consumed by a very traditional idea of what the construction of musical forms should be and so our school will focus on the prod-igy of invention, the prodigy of individual sense of lyricism across multiple genres to create a peda-gogy of transparency ideally. It will take time. At other schools there’s a jazz school, a classical school, and never will they meet. I want to give young people opportunities and creating new com-munities with that. If what I leave as a legacy, that I opened it up for other people to have possibilities to feel secure about a nontraditional approach in-side a consumer based society, where they can find their own way to make it? That’s what I did. I found my own way to make it, nobody can take

that away from me. JI: How did you come to do the arranging for the stage performance of Disney’s The Lion King what else have you worked on? KEZ: I had worked on a Cal Arts panel along with Julie Taymor for the Alpert Awards in 1995. When she got the Disney project she thought of me because she knew I studied African music and that I write and score. It was Jan Hammer and Elton John’s music but it had to be translated from a predominantly synthesized score for an animated film into giving it the breath of a live experience that has the sophistication of contemporary ar-rangements for a large ensemble but has a feeling of Africa and I was a perfect candidate for that. [Laughs] I chose the original band, it was Makanda Ken McIntyre, Bobby Irving, Fred Cash, Chief Bey, Ed Cherry, Craig Harris, all the bad cats. We rehearsed for six months at Sony Studios in New York and it came to be the fourth most successful musical in Broadway history. I also did the scoring and arranging for Love Jones, one of the most successful soundtracks of the nineties. Mo Money for Damon Williams and in 2016 I did a documentary called America the Beautiful which won a lot of awards. I’m about to score a film with a punk rock band. I’ve been arranging for an or-chestra in Bordeaux, France for 11 years called Infinity Orchestra. Doing film scores and pop ar-rangements allowed me when I toured with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and it didn’t make enough money, I still wanted to pay my musicians a minimum of $300 a night, that’s how I could do it. JI: What was your role in the development of Acid Jazz? You’re considered to be a founding father of that genre. KEZ: My friend, Dwain Kyles, owned a club in the early ‘80s called La Mirage and it was one of the main house clubs. Dwain didn’t have a liquor license because it was difficult to get one in Chica-go at the time so he opened up a juice bar which attracted a younger crowd. At that time I really connected with house music because it was these young people tired of the placid distribution of disco music and they wanted something with more edge and honesty so they started using technology and making their own music in their homes. That’s why it became house music because you made it in your own house. I connected with this younger generation and I always liked to dance so I started hanging out in these clubs with a lot of the early pioneers – Marshall Jefferson, Kym Mazelle, Dar-ryl Pandy, the group Ten City, Byron Stingily – they didn’t write music, they didn’t read. So I was in club and they started asking me to look at what they had and to do arrangements for them. One of the records I worked on “That’s the Way Love is” went gold. Then there were these young people in London and Germany asking me to arrange and do stuff. We started doing a thing on Thursdays around ‘82 at La Mirage called Afrocentrix and I put together a group with John Monopoly, and Kanye West would also come over, they were 14. I felt that with the AACM, we were getting our notoriety and we were losing the connect that I always enjoyed from playing neighborhood gigs. I

still do that, I always play concerts in my home and it could be with someone super rich or some-body who lives on the street. When I got knighted [he received France’s Medal of the Knight of Arts and Letters in 2014] I had people from every walk of life at my ceremony. So the Afrocentrix thing became really big in Chicago – folks were wearing African clothing and I had AACM musicians play-ing free with African drummers and DJs. No one had done that before me, I was the first person to really put instrumental solo performance with house music. Melody Maker magazine came over to interview me and I called it Afro house and somehow it got redefined as acid house. Now you have all these projects with Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington being recognized for stuff that I did 20 years ago when nobody was dealing with house music. I was bringing jazz and world musi-cians together. JI: You’re a musician, a poet, a writer, a painter and you’re also a fashion designer. How would you describe your design tendencies and do you make clothing as a side business? KEZ: I did. There’s a line of suits that I do out of Passau, Germany with Elke Burmeister available through her website. I developed a fabric with her which is boiled cashmere because I wanted a fab-ric that always had form but would work for travel. I also do a line of painted pants with [bassist] Ja-maaladeen Tacuma. I recut painters pants into couture fashion and then I individually paint each as if I was doing a painting. I had a line called Zambezi in the ‘70s, the flower dresses that the actress Freda Payne and others wore in all the Blaxploitation films, Nina Simone wore my fash-ions, as did the group Arrested Development. JI: What does the future hold for you? KEZ: You can’t do everything but I see pulling all of my skills together through the internet and my two legacy projects for the future are developing a culture network which I call the OOH, Oracles of Humanity, a global culture network which will be built with many thought leaders across many crea-tive fields, and the Chicago Academy of Music, a physical institution where pedagogies can be creat-ed and all this will give voice to the voiceless in terms of creative contributors internationally. JI: The last questions have been given to me by other artists to ask you: Teodross Avery (tenor saxophone) has given a few questions asking you to choose between two possible selections regarding what has more im-portance to you. “What’s more important to you – the rhythms of life or the melodies of women?” KEZ: [Laughs] He’s so funny. The rhythms of life translate for both men and women having a sensi-tivity to your feminine side is essential to be a romantic lyricist. Teodross Avery asked: “What’s more important to you -Miles and Coltrane or Lee Morgan and Col-trane?” KEZ: These are very good questions. Teodross is


Kahil El’Zabar



Hear Barry Harris at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Jazz At Lincoln Center, June 16-18 Interview & Photo by Eric Nemeyer JI: What was the driving motivation behind your creation of the Jazz Cultural Theatre? BH: I had some people talk me into it. I had a little bit of money and I was thinking I would buy a small brownstone uptown. There was a lady on 132nd Street that was trying to get rid of her place. Some other people we saying, “Barry, why don’t we get a place in midtown?” I said, “Well, we’ll look at the place and we’ll see.” We went to it. We had a meeting and they talked me into it. “Okay, let’s try it.” It began in 1982 and lasted for five years. The whole idea for this teaching thing started a long time ago. I was teaching for [trumpet player] Joe Newman’s Jazz Interactions in the 1970s. One time, at the end of the schedule when I was teaching, I was supposed to be there at 4:00 PM and go involved in things and realized that I was late. And, I said, “Oh my.” I got a cab and it was about 6:30 and I

thought, “Nobody’s gonna be there now.” But, when I got there, everybody was still waiting on me. So I said, “Well, this was supposed to be the last class, but we’re going to keep this going, because you waited. I’m going to find a place, and you have to do is bring enough money to pay the rent.” That’s how the class started. We had musicians who would come and play on the weekend. It was hard though. I never really made enough money. I was blessed though.

There was a lady who was my benefactress. I also had a friend I met at Bradley’s. When I decided to do these concerts with strings, I kept talking about it. He said, “All you do is talk about it. When are you going to do something?” When I went back there next time, I told him I was going to do my concert with strings. He handed me a $1,500 check. He was my other helper. JI: Talk about how you structured the perfor-mance and teaching elements of the Jazz Cultur-al Center. BH: You sort of goof at things when you start out. I goofed at the beginning. I wanted to have music every weekend. When I had the gig, I was bringing my money to pay the musicians. The first class I had there had 90 people in the class. I thought, “This is nice. Maybe if I do three days of this, that’ll be nice.” That was the dumbest thing I ever did. I should have done one class with 90 people. I spread it out and started getting 30 people at each class because they came when they wanted to. Rent was $3,000 a month and

then the landlord wanted to raise the rent with-out doing any repairs. I ended up with a real mess on my hands. But we tried. Frank Foster taught harmony. Vernell Fournier taught drums. I taught the singers and the piano players and the horn players. Jaki Byard’s Big Band played there every month. I had Walter Bishop play there, Walter Davis, Sun Ra … quite a few peo-ple played there. I had jam sessions there and I gave them a list of songs that they needed to

learn—no two chord songs in here … not when I’m paying the rent. Dealing with people is diffi-cult. One of the hardest things to do is to get people to represent you in your manner, not in their manner. You want people to come back to your place, your business. You want people to feel wonderful so they’ll come back. JI: Could you talk about the environment that helped you nurture the music when you were growing up in Detroit? BH: Young people ask me all the time, “What did you do in Detroit?” I think we had a bunch of older musicians who were great. We had an alto player named Cokey. We thought he was the greatest thing in the world. We had a trumpet player name Cleophus Curtis and a trumpet player named Clair Rockamore. If Miles [Davis] was around, you’d have to ask him, “Who was Clair Rockamore?” He’d tell you. He mentioned him in his book. I’m not too good at remember-ing everything. I can remember going to see “Bird” in ballrooms, and I can remember sitting in with Charlie Parker. Those were some of the greatest moments of my life. I can remember going to the Forest Club and hearing Charlie Parker with Strings. I can remember that feeling. [pause] That’s why it’s hard to go into clubs—because I want you to give me that feeling … that feeling I felt when I heard him play. I would love to be able to give that feeling to people myself—to make them feel what I felt when Charlie Parker played. See, we had so many good musicians. I was a scrawny kid. At school I couldn’t even do one chin-up. There wasn’t no baseball for me ... There wasn’t no football, no basketball. Everybody knew where to find me—at my house, on the piano. When I was living on Russell Street on the East side [of Detroit], I went to see Roland Hanna. He’d heard I had been singing. He sent back a nasty message: “You better get yourself a day job.” [laughs] So I found out that he had a record date through Eddie Locke. I said, “I’ll fix him.” So I went and busted into his date and I said, “Okay man, I heard you need a singer.” He just fell on the floor and roared with laughter. Then he [Roland Hanna] said, “Me and Sonny Redd used to climb those stairs on Russell Street, just to get up there to learn about chords and stuff from you. Sir Roland Hanna was part of me. I might be what you would call a part of Tommy Flanagan and Will Davis and Abe Woodley. But Sonny Redd and Roland Hanna, Donald Byrd, Doug Watkins … Paul Chambers learned to play up in my house. He couldn't even play the bass at all. He had gotten a bass and couldn't play it at all. He even came on the gig with his bass trying to play—didn't know a note, hardly. But he learned to play at my house. Later on I had a band with Yusef Lateef. Then I had developed this system of teaching. I taught a lot of cats—even the Mo-town cats. Their piano player’s name was John-ny Griffith — and the first stuff he learned was from me. The bass player who everybody loved, James Jamerson — he learned at my house.


“I can remember going to see ‘Bird’ in ballrooms, and I can remember sitting in with Charlie Parker.

Those were some of the greatest moments of my life ... I can remember that feeling. That’s why

it’s hard to go into clubs—because I want you to give me that feeling … that feeling I felt when I heard him play. I would love to be able to give

that feeling to people myself—to make them feel what I felt when Charlie Parker played.”

Barry Harris

“You have to continue playing.”

InterviewInterview



They were all jazz musicians. What we did, which was bad probably — which is maybe why Detroit is messed up — a whole bunch of us left at the same time and came to New York, and we all made it. Frank Gant. Sonny Redd. Hugh Lawson. Yusef Lateef. Doug Watkins. Paul Chambers—he might have been here a little bit before. Then there were musicians who stayed

there, and they ended up with Motown. I don’t know about the beginning but I think Motown started in maybe the late 1950s. I never knew about Motown. Even when I went back to De-troit after being with Max [Roach] …. That band was Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Donald Byrd, George Morrow and me. That band never rec-orded. Somebody must have something on us. We were together maybe three or four months. JI: What kinds of discussions did you have with Max when you were in that band? Did he offer any suggestions? BH: Not really. Max was still upset about [the death of] Clifford Brown and Richie Powell. That really got him. It was a nice gig, but he wasn’t over that. When I went back to Detroit though I hadn’t heard about Motown—but Berry Gordy and I went to school together. I was out in California at some point playing outside at a museum, and he came to the concert, and he came to one of my big concerts in New York

too, and stayed for the whole concert. At one point, I played a concert by myself and later he said to me, “You really touched my heart. What can I do for you?” I just said, “Oh man.” You know, one doesn't know what to say when some-one says something like that. I wouldn't even know what to say. He sends me a card at Christ-mas. Most of the musicians on those records that made that sound are jazz musicians. JI: When you first came to New York in the 1950s, what kinds of challenges and opportuni-ties did you experience?

BH: Since I didn't stay with Max’s band too long, I went back to Detroit. When I really came to New York and stayed was 1960. We had a lot of record dates. I was recording with everybody. The record companies found us and took ad-vantage of us — Cedar Walton, Herbie Han-cock, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley … we all rec-orded. Since I was recording with all these peo-ple on Blue Note, I called Alfred Lion at Blue Note and said, “I recorded for you with Hank Mobley and Lee Morgan, why don’t you give me a date?” He said, “No, no, no, no.” I said, “Why?” He said, “You play too beautiful.” I said, “Thank you man.” I made it. I recorded. I got little gigs. I went out of town with people. I went to Europe occasionally. So I made it, and that’s when I stayed around New York. It was around 1960. JI: Could you talk about your association with Thad Jones with whom you recorded on Blue Note in the 1950s? BH: Well that started when he came back to Detroit. He was playing at the Bluebird with Billy Mitchell. The Bluebird was our joint. I was too young to get in. Phil Hill was the piano play-er, and the band stand was in the window. So, I’d knock on the window. He’d see me and he’d nod. Then when the tune stopped, he’d get off the piano, and I’d run in and jump up on the piano and play a tune and go on back outside afterwards, because I was too young. I actually celebrated my 21st birthday in The Bluebird—to make sure that they knew I was 21 years old. I played there with Yusef Lateef. That’s when I

came up with all this practice stuff—real stuff to practice, to learn how to improvise by yourself. It’s almost like I’m the throwback to the figured bass, like what the Europeans used to do. JI: Well, Bach was really an improviser. BH: Oh sure. But what Bach did was that he started teaching and he started writing a lot of stuff down. His contemporaries didn't dig that too much because they were improvisers. But what ended up happening was when improvisa-tion stopped in Europe, it started in the USA. We’re really the extension of Bach and Chopin and all of them. The big difference is that we have to do this in public. We can’t stop and say, “That was wrong. Let’s stop and do it over.” You have to continue playing. JI: Did Thad arrive with the charts on the spot? BH: I came to New York to record with him. There were charts. What I was really good at was getting a chart down right away — the chords and stuff — so I didn't have to look at the music. That’s what it was like with Lee Morgan, with The Sidewinder, and all that stuff. With “Sidewinder”, I came into the studio, somebody gave me some music, I made up the intro and that was it. JI: Where were you doing your practicing? BH: Riverside Records had the top floor of a three story building that is still on 46th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue. I had a key to that building. There was a Greek man with a Greek restaurant that made sure that I ate properly. He’d fix me breakfast and dinner. I’d go up in that room after breakfast and then the next thing is I’d look up and it was dark. You’d have to ask Joe Zawinul or Harold Mabern. They all knew where to find me. JI: So you spent most of the day practicing at the Riverside Records company offices. BH: They had a little spinet piano. It wasn’t bad. At some point they brought in this baby grand piano. It sounded like hell. I wouldn't even go and touch it. After a few weeks or months, I decided I’d touch this piano and see what’s hap-pening. I went over there, and as I played that piano, it got more and more in tune. You would-n't have believed it. That piano began to sound so good to me. I wondered how could I sit here and play that spinet and not come over here and check out this grand and really work with it. This grand began to sound better and better and better. I’m not lying to you. The piano is funny. It needs attention.


Barry Harris

“...among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a

weakness; a trademark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property

which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will

lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.”

-Mark Twain

“What I was really good at was getting a chart down right away — the chords and stuff — so I didn't have to look at the music. That’s what it

was like with Lee Morgan, with ‘The Sidewinder,’ and all that stuff. With “Sidewinder”, I came into

the studio, somebody gave me some music, I made up the intro and that was it.”


Hear Sonny Fortune at Birdland with Four Gen-erations of Miles [Davis], May 23-26 Interview & Photo By Eric Nemeyer JI: When you got to New York what kind of environment did you experience? SF: When I came to new York I still had a fami-ly so I had to move very cautiously. I came to find out whether or not I could make it in New York. I ended up being a part of an All Star band up on 52nd Street one night at Beef Steak Charlie’s place—at 52nd and 8th Avenue. That’s when I met Elvin [Jones]. Elvin told me to come down to this club to sit in where he was work-ing. At the time he was working at Pookie’s Pub. I ended up working with this All Star Band. Nobody knew who I was, but I ended up being a part of the band because [bassist] Jymie Merritt made it possible for me to be a part of the band.

It was Jymie Merritt, Jane Getz, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, myself and Elvin Jones. No-body knew who I was. I had met Freddie about a year or so or two earlier in Harrisburg. He and Jymie Merritt were the only two people who knew me at Beefsteak Charlie’s place. The re-sponse there was so favorable. But I had to get a day job here because I still had a responsibility with my family. I used to go to work everyday and hang out until three or four in the morning. I’d get up at seven to go to work—four or five

days of that man. By the time Friday came around, I was almost dead tired. All of that hap-pened in about two weeks of being in New York. I knew someone here from Philly who had this job—a guy named Ed Smith. He asked me if I wanted to take this job. He was a policeman in Philadelphia. He quit his job to come to New York to become an actor. When I came to New York he was getting ready to take off from his day job to do some summer stock. He wanted to know if I was interested in taking his job. So I took his job. I was doing that during the day and hanging out at night. When you’re that young, you can do anything. New York was always good for me. Almost as soon as I arrived. JI: What were the circumstances that led to your joining Elvin’s group? SF: When I came, I went down to Pookie’s Pub and sat in. Somewhere after a couple of weeks of coming down there, Elvin asked me would I

be interested in joining his group, and taking Frank Foster’s place. Frank had to take off to write some music for Basie. You know, I don’t know if it was Frank who asked me first or Elvin, but it was one of them. Now that I think about it, it could’ve been Frank who asked me. I said sure, of course, I’d be glad to. I quit my day job before I even knew for certain I had the gig with Elvin. But, then I started working with Elvin.

JI: Were discussions you had with Elvin about the music? SF: No. We were just playing tunes. Just you know…hit. Here’s what time we hit or show up. From what I understand he had been at Pookie’s Pub for almost a year. I mean things that are unheard of today in terms of guys working in one place for long periods of time. In ’67, Elvin had left Coltrane. Elvin was very popular in the jazz world and he had this gig where people would come. Musicians as well as people. We worked six nights a week. JI: With all that work were you also devoting yourself to a lot of practice on your instrument? SF: Well, yes. I was trying to practice as much as I could. I mean at that particular time in the beginning at least, I was busy trying to get my own apartment and get myself situated. I was staying with someone here in New York. The guy was nice enough to let me stay there but he wasn’t nice enough to let me practice there. I appreciated that because it just helped me to hurry up and get my own place which I did. So when that happened, yeah I practiced. Doing the gig the gig at night and feeling like here I am in the Big Apple, trying to figure it all out. JI: Do you remember any discussions you might have had with Elvin about Coltrane and his ex-periences? SF: No. I never really talked to Elvin about Col-trane. That was my first hit with him. I started working with him again in the 80’s and from the 80’s on into the 90’s off and on. We never had that type of conversation. I more or less looked at that whole thing. I just really came to another level of appreciation with all this within the past seven to eight years. Until then, I looked at the whole experience as something very special. I thought that was some real special music that he and Coltrane created. I thought that was a very special kind of a something. There wasn’t much you could say about it. It was so complete. Those who saw it, and those who identified with it just said, “yeah.” So strangely enough I never felt the need to provoke a conversation. One that I can recall. Coltrane told me, before a I came to New York, that if I ever got the opportunity to play with Elvin to take it. I saw him at his moth-er’s house one night on my way downtown. I had already, I played a concert with him in Phil-adelphia, so he knew me musically. He knew me from playing with me the last year of his life. I had been meaning to tell him I was working with Elvin and I kept putting it off. I finally called him after about two months or so of working with Elvin. When I called him his wife Alice told me he was sleeping, and he died that Sun-day. That was on a Saturday and he died that Sunday. So from what I understand, he had been in the club to see Elvin about three weeks before I started working there. I never saw him again after the time I saw him in front of his mother’s


Sonny Fortune

“This music asks for what is your spontaneity in this moment.”

InterviewInterview

“Until then, I looked at the whole experi-ence as something very special. I thought that was some real special music that he and Coltrane created. I thought that was a

very special kind of a something. There wasn’t much you could say about it. It

was so complete. Those who saw it, and those who identified with it just said,

“yeah.” So strangely enough I never felt the need to provoke a conversation.”


Joseph Jarman

house to tell him I was thinking about going to New York. JI: What lead to your association with Mongo Santamaria? SF: That was because of some friends in Phila-delphia. We had played music together before— Dot and Andy Aaron. I think they had recom-mended me because there was an opening or something. I think that’s how that all came about. I went and auditioned with Mongo and I started working. I also was at a place called The Last Way Out. We used to do something be-tween shows or between sets rather. There was a percussion ensemble. It consisted of abut seven or eight people. We used to fuse the two bands together. The Afro-Cuban ensemble might have had a couple of dancers a couple of times. So it was known that I had a kind of feeling for Afro Cuban music. From a distance I didn’t really know that much about it other than it was some-thing I could identify with. JI: How did your experience with Mongo help you expand your artistic perspective? SF: I definitely feel that working with him gave me the opportunity to be exposed to some rhythms that were out of the ordinary, in terms of where I was going with the jazz pursuit. There was Afro-Cuban music in Jazz but not to the degree that Mongo’s music entailed. That was a whole different culture, a whole different emphasis on music as far as how I saw things at that time. That was really a great gig. Mongo was an incredible cat, a heck of an employer—a professional cat and a very gracious cat. SF: I know I have a vocabulary that I try to stay away from—because this music doesn’t neces-sarily want you to pronounce your vocabulary. This music doesn’t ask for that. This music asks for what is your spontaneity in this moment. What are you going to do on this tune tonight? I know you played it the night before last so, what are you going to do on this tune tonight? Be careful not to sound tonight like you did last night. What are you going to do tonight? So, how do you get there? How do you make all of that happen? You try to stay in shape. You prac-

tice. You make sure you have all your stuff to-gether. You make sure you’re alert enough to respond. JI: I agree with you. It’s like this conversation. We both are interested in this music and the fact that we both know how to speak English repre-sents some common ground that enables it to occur. I didn’t pre-script what we might say, other than writing a few questions that would be guidelines, and you had no idea what I was go-ing to say. SF: Right. And I have to respond to this. Boy, that’s what this music is. That’s why I tell you man I love this music. I really do.

JI: It’s always fresh. SF: Yes indeed Jack and if it isn’t, it’s because you’re stale. You know I mean? It asks all you got, and bring some on if you got it. That’s what I got from Coltrane. That was the thing that real-ly stuck with me about him. Certainly there was a vocabulary. There was an “OK this is Col-trane.” But there was, within that zone of “this is John,” - there was always some other stuff. I’ve certainly tried to embrace that myself. I’m look-ing for other stuff. I’m looking for the challenge of what this music is about. JI: When we start out, it is about the notes and the chords and so on. After that seeps into your subconscious, it’s really about the energy and trying to make something meaningful happen on the spot. As you said, each night its got to be different. Because you might be playing with the same players in the same room, in the same key, at the same tempo. If everybody is sensitive, it’s going to be different. SF: Absolutely. And you’re hoping the members around you feel that way about it. Everybody’s trying to expand. One of the things that really is a turn-on in this music, is the fact that you got to

find something else. How dare you play the licks that you played last night? That’s the reason why the music is in the trouble it’s in—because that’s not an easy thing to come to. JI: What struck me about the players I started out listening to was that each one was recogniza-bly different. Players did not want to sound like someone else. In today’s institutionalization of jazz, it appears that the opposite is true. SF: That’s true. I’m from the era and on the tail- end of the era of sounding like somebody else was a no-no. I often tell people that if Sonny Stitt was alive today, there wouldn’t be enough banks for him to keep his money in—for all the

saxophone that he played. People used to say, “yeah but he sounds like Charlie Parker.” People used to say Sonny’s playing Bird. Man, Sonny Stitt was playing so much saxophone. I listen to him now and say, God. But like you said, be-cause the music has been institutionalized and people are learning from another perspective, originality is hard to hold on to. In the era that I came along, it was about trying to find your own voice. That’s one of the reason’s I continue to play alto, even being influenced by Trane. For me that’s a means of [maintaining] my own identity. People say things to me like you play alto like a tenor. Or your alto sounds like a ten-or. Maybe it’s the influence of the sound of the horn. I more or less try to carry that over to the alto—where I hear the alto not as much on the high end as on the low end. That may be due to the fact of being influenced by the people that I mentioned. JI: You played briefly with Kenny and tenor saxophonist Sal Nistico in Buddy Rich’s sextet. What was that like? SF: That was about five or six months of damn near every night. Buddy would go find gigs



“”A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives

which he habitually uses in conversation.”

- Mark Twain

Sonny Fortune

“I know I have a vocabulary that I try to stay away from—because this music doesn’t necessarily want you to pronounce your

vocabulary. This music doesn’t ask for that. This music asks for what is your spontaneity in this moment. What are you going to do on

this tune tonight? I know you played it the night before last so, what are you going

to do on this tune tonight?”



when we were off. We’d work six nights at his place and he would find gigs on the night off. We worked all time. It was my only time in New York working at one place for that length of time. I definitely walked away with a whole different point of view about Buddy Rich. Con-trary to what people may have heard or thought, he basically was a cat that, all he wanted to do was play those drums. Buddy would play forev-er. He took off one night to do the Johnny Car-son show. He asked me to get a drummer, and I got Freddie Waits. He went out to California, tape the show, came back the following night and was back at those drums. He played all the time. He was from the Basie, Ellington school

where those cats got to work all the time. They just can’t sit around and not work. And Buddy had to work all the time. He had to play those drums all the time. It was a great experience. It also triggered my jumping off. I was working with Buddy. Max Gordon at The Vanguard ask me if I wanted to bring a band into The Van-guard. We were just getting ready to go on the road. I never went on the road with Buddy. I never experienced the rumors about Buddy. In the situation that I was with him, in his club, it was an all star band. I ended up taking off. I had taken a band into the Vanguard and the last night, Miles asked me to join his band. That’s how I went with Miles.

JI: What kind of music were you playing with your own band at that point at The Vanguard? Songs from the Awakening album? SF: No. We hadn’t gotten there. I hadn’t really been working in New York that much as a band leader around 1973. I didn’t have a book. I may have had a couple of tunes, or was trying to put some stuff together. I’m one of the few guys who walks around with a book now. I probably was throwing some stuff together—some jazz standards and other tunes that we were playing. I remember Max Gordon coming up to me one night in the club. He said “Don’t worry Sonny. I like you, I like you don’t worry I’m going to keep bringing you back here.” And he did. But the last night that I was there, Miles came up and asked me if I wanted to join his band. I went in that direction. That was definitely a different direction but...

JI: Was it a shock to your system? SF: Yeah, it was kind of off from where I want-ed to go. I felt like working with Miles is my honor. So I went on in there and did the best I could with that. We did about four or five al-bums. The Japanese recordings got good re-views. JI: What were some he challenges you experi-enced when you were with Miles band? SF: The challenge for me was trying to figure out how to fit. It was an amplified band and I hadn’t played in a band with that kind of vol-ume. It was an electric band. At times I used to feel like playing an acoustic instrument, I felt kind of awkward. When I first started out, I had a wah-wah pedal. [laughs] Later on, Miles said he didn’t want me to play no wah-wah. And I said well Miles you got a wah-wah why can’t I have a wah-wah? He said he wanted to hear my sound. But I was actually getting something going on that wah-wah, that’s why he didn’t want me to play it. Even though he had an acoustic instrument, he had it hooked up into his wah-wah. So it was a band that was working off of sound effects. Being an acoustic player, there were times when I felt like, “where can I go with

this?” JI: The music wasn’t harmonically difficult. SF: Right. It was music that I was trying to get a handle on. He was a cat that I had so much re-spect for. I saw Miles when Trane and Miles were a quintet. Then I saw Miles when Trane and Cannonball were a sextet. He’d been one more of those guys who convinced me that this is the way this stuff is supposed to go. JI: Do you remember any words of encourage-ment that you have received from influential artists? SF: I think one of the things that may have kind of helped me a lot was my appearance of confi-dence. I used to look and act like “I got it”—even when I felt like I didn’t have it. I don’t recall people saying too much to me. I’m very

hard on myself. You’ll never hear me say some-thing as simple as “how do I sound?” I’ve al-ways felt like if I can’t hear myself, then I’m in real trouble. I have had with Coltrane or Sonny Rollins, Miles or Frank Foster. I’m mentioning these people because these are horn players. I never asked them, “how do you do this?” or whatever, because I always felt like, I can figure this out. It doesn’t seem to be something as sim-ple as: well, get up tomorrow morning, and turn to the east, and do fifty push ups—and you’ll have it. People will say stuff to you like “man you got to practice.” Hey, I already know about that one. But that’s the truth. That is the truth. So as an end result, I never heard much more than that. You know you got to practice. John [Coltrane] kind of said that without giving it as advice. John used to practice all the time. I felt from seeing him, and knowing his attitude, that made it somewhat clear in terms of “here’s what I have to do, and how I get there. And I tell you man, as long as I’ve been playing, I’ve only arrived in the past five, six seven years or less, at a comfortable place with myself. I have ar-rived at a place where I’m playing better now than I’ve played all my life.


“Never be in a hurry. Do everything quietly and

in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything

whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.”

- Saint Francis de Sales

Sonny Fortune

“In the era that I came along, it was about trying to find your own voice. That’s one of the reason’s I continue to play alto,

even being influenced by Trane. For me that’s a means of [maintaining] my own identity. People say things to me like you play alto like a tenor. Or your alto sounds like a tenor.

Maybe it’s the influence of the sound of the horn.”

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