Vision Festival, NYC’s sole surviving summer jazz big bang

With no news confirming — or denying — that there will be a mainstream New York City jazz festival next summer like those produced by George Wein since the late ’60s and for the past 25 years supported by the JVC Corporation of America, the artist-organized “avant-jazz”Â Vision Festival stands as the largest and longest concentrated such effort in the city this year, having just released its completeÂ scheduleÂ of concerts and panels to be held at the downtown Abrons Arts Center and Angel Orenzanz FoundationÂ June 9 – 15, 2009.

Wein by comparison — and disassociated with Festival Network, to whom he sold his former Fetival Productions company two years ago — has announced he’ll present singer-pianist Diana Krall at Carnegie Hall June 23 and 24 (in celebration ofÂ Quiet Nights,Â her recently released,Â string-drenched,Â chart-toppingÂ album of broken-hearted love songs) and stage jazz and folk fests in Newport, Rhode Island, where he established the successful format for summer vernacular music fests 55 years ago.

“Avant-jazz” and its related forms of expression (improv dance, in-the-moment drawing/painting, music-inspired poetry) tend to be thought of as enduring aspects of artistic bohemia, marginally or not-at-all commercial though the Vision Festival is now in its 14th consecutive year. Produced by the non-profit Arts for Art, Inc. organization headed by Patricia Nicholson-Parker (wife of bassist William Parker), the Vision Festival says itsÂ mission is to build awareness, understanding, a sense of community and stage for multi-media collaborations serving musicians from innovative Afro-American-derived perspectives/traditions and their audiences.

I once objected on-air to WNYC-FM program host John Schaefer‘s statement that the Vision Fest is more open to different styles of jazz than Wein’s JVC New York Jazz FestivalÂ and related JVC Newport Jazz Festivals; I still think the Vision Fest programs deep into its subgenre, rather than wide, encompassing the varieties of jazz. There are no so-called “traditional,” swing, bebop, fusion, smooth or determinedly commercial acts at a Vision Fest, but instead an international complement of improvisers partaking of post-Ornette Coleman/Cecil Taylor freedoms regarding melodic conception, harmonic fields and rhythmic underpinnings. Vision Festival artists typically embrace open-improvisation, high energy and determined self-expression rather than conventional song formats and repertoire familiar to non-specialist “general” audiences. Â

This year’s Vision Festival comprises 48 performances. Highlights at first glance include violinist Billy Bang‘s “Brass Bang” (four brass, Bang and drums); midwestern reedist-visual artist-folk craftsman Douglas Ewart‘s band; Butch Morris conducting a chorus of poets and string ensemble; the Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen (who will be honored for his lifetime achievement); Chicago alto saxist Ernest Dawkins‘ New Horizon Ensemble, drummer Sunny Murray‘s Quartet with reedists Odean Pope and Sabir Mateen; South African saxophonist Zim Ngquawana with William Parker, pianist Matt Shipp and drummer Nashiet Waits; drummer Milford Graves‘ quartet with Parker and pianist D. D. Jackson; singer Lisa Sokolow‘s trio (I wrote liner notes for her excellent album A Quiet Thing); guitarist-bassist Joe Morris‘ GoGo Mambo tentet; Henry Grimes solo violin, bass and poetry; Chicago 80-year-old jazz master/proprietor of the Velvet Lounge tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson‘s trio with Parker and drummer Hamid Drake; pianist Michele Rosewoman with a sextet; German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann‘s trio Full Blast; violinist Jason Kao Hwang‘s 25+ string ensemble Spontaneous River.Â

The style of the above artists is about as far as can be from what Diana Krall has wrought, and what most other jazz-definedÂ best sellersÂ offer. The Vision Fest has, over the course of its existence, been a convention of the hard-core improv ranks, and as such is a good thing. Â But if no effort or focus is fixed on theÂ diversely flavored, multi-generational “jazz” that has attracted casual listeners as well as devoted fans in years past to Carnegie, Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, the Danny Kaye Playhouse, the Studio Museum and jazz clubs throughout Manhattan via discounted after-concert tix, Jazz City is impoverished — isn’t it?

howardmandel.com
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