{"id":1429,"date":"2013-10-02T20:56:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T00:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=1429"},"modified":"2019-09-12T16:13:23","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T20:13:23","slug":"boston-doubles-down-on-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/10\/boston-doubles-down-on-jazz.html","title":{"rendered":"Boston doubles down on jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boston — historically stuffy but blue-blood liberal, devoted to higher education, high finance and professional sports — is now doubling down on itself as a world-class jazz city. Berklee College <\/a><\/strong>of Music,<\/a><\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0nearly 4500\u00c2\u00a0students strong and \u00c2\u00a0an economic engine onto itself, is\u00c2\u00a0generating energy that enlivens Boston’s \u00c2\u00a0neighborhoods, drawing in general\u00c2\u00a0audiences with such outreach events as the\u00c2\u00a0Beantown Jazz Festival<\/a>,<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0the free street fair held last weekend.\u00c2\u00a0JazzBoston<\/a><\/strong>, a non-profit grassroots \u00c2\u00a0organization,\u00c2\u00a0has announced that\u00c2\u00a0its 2014 \u00c2\u00a0“Jazz Week,” celebrated during April, which is Jazz Appreciation Month, will start on Patriot’s Day, April 21, when the\u00c2\u00a0Boston Marathon<\/a><\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0is run, and climax on International Jazz Day, produced globally by UNESCO, on April 30.<\/p>\n

“Previously \u00c2\u00a0we’ve avoided programming during the Marathon,” JazzBoston executive director Pauline Bilsky told Boston media representatives and jazz presenters at a meeting at Berklee College of Music’s Caf\u00c3\u00a9 939\u00c2\u00a0(which, full disclosure, I co-chaired as president of the Jazz Journalists Association; the Berklee Internet Radio Network was another co-sponsor). “This year we realized that more than ever the \u00c2\u00a0Marathon will be a patriotic celebration. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no music more American than jazz. We think these two celebrations belong together.<\/p>\n

“We also hope to work with the new Mayor to produce a public celebration of International Jazz Day that puts Boston on the map. Why shouldn’t Boston be up there with cities like Paris, Istanbul, New Orleans, \u00c2\u00a0and New York?”\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Those cities were central sites for UNESCO IJD activities on April 30 2012 and ’13.<\/p>\n

Though this city has traditionally been better known for its prohibitive “blue laws” rather than its entertainment industry, Boston has been a birthplace, rearing grounds and teaching home of important American musicians since the Revolution (cf., William Billings<\/a>). Renown for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, est. 1881, it has also been home to modernists Roy Haynes, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jaki Byard, Gunther Schuller, Tony Williams, Ran Blake, George Russell and Gary Burton, who attended Berklee in the early ’60s and served on its faculty for 30 years.<\/p>\n

Although not alone in great Boston developing advanced instruction for musicians interested in popular and practical genres — New England Conservatory, Brandeis University and Wellesley College have highly regarded programs, and MacArthur Award recipient pianist-composer Vijay Iyer has just been\u00c2\u00a0appointed Professor of the Arts at Harvard — Berklee attracts the top \u00c2\u00a0professionals to address its students directly.\u00c2\u00a0When I visited the school on Thursday, Sept. 26, pianist-producer Patrice Rushen addressed the freshman class, advising all students to “Commit and contribute.” Faculty currently includes violinist Darol Anger; bassists Victor Bailey, Eugene Friesen and Dave Clark; pianists Joanne Brackeen, Laszlo Gardony, Helen Sung and Francesca Tanksley; saxophonists Bill Pierce, Frank Tiberi, Alan Chase, Walter Beasley, George Garzone, Stan Strickland and Joe Lovano; guitarists Garrison Fewell, David Gilmore, David Tronzo, Mick Goodrick and Dave Fiuczynski; rumpeter Tiger Okoshi,\u00c2\u00a0oudist Simon Shaheen, MC Raydar Ellis,\u00c2\u00a0singer-songwriter Livingston Taylor, vibist Victor Mendoza, electronics designer Neil Leonard, drummers Yoron Israel and Ralph Peterson Jr. Percussionist Terri Lynn Carrington teaches at Berklee, and was music director of the sprawling, Berklee-sponsored Beantown Jazz Fest.<\/p>\n

\"beantown

Beantown Jazz Festival thoroughfare<\/p><\/div>\n

While that one-day fest attracts something like 20,000\u00c2\u00a0Bostonians of all stripes and dots to stroll several blocks, bookended by portable stages and lined with food and other vendors’ booths, it is a tough place to actually hearmusic. Young ensembles with veteran guests — like pianist Matt Savage with alto sax sage Bobby Watson — competed for listeners’ ears with a large stage set in an adjacent field. Noise (not necessarily music, not necessarily jazz) blared from the vendors’ booths. A proud, loud drum ensemble rolled back and forth through the crowd in the street, producing random audio chaos like ballbearings tossed into gearworks.<\/p>\n

This need not be.\u00c2\u00a0A few simple regulations on the vendors’ use of amplification, a designated area (somewhat removed from other music-makers) for the drum troupe to pound all it wants, and better\u00c2\u00a0placement of stages and speakers<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0to mitigate the bleeding of one act over to another would go a long way to enhancing the efforts of musicians who deserve to be heard, and if heard could be enjoyed. Temporary seating areas, if not folding chairs at stage-side, would be nice, too. As it is, people stand mosh-pit style or sit on stoops and grass.<\/p>\n

We can hope JazzBoston will take those kinds of issues into account as it designs programming for its 2014 Patriot\/Marathon Day activities. So far no details of programming beyond the date have been disclosed, and no discussion has been broached with the Boston Athletic Association, organizer and manager\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0of the Marathon. But at the JazzBoston\/JJA\/BIRN meeting attendees floated such ideas as \u00c2\u00a0having jazz stages featuring local musicians set along the Marathon course route, special radio programming, coordination of artists from the city’s music education institutions into public venues, and media outreach using online as well as traditional platforms to snare the attention of folks who don’t currently have any contact with jazz at all — by definition, a potential market.<\/p>\n

JazzBoston, organized in 2006, had the largest booth space at the Beantown Jazz Festival, where volunteers conducted videotaped interviews of local musicians and activists. It publishes an ongoing\u00c2\u00a0calendar<\/a> of \u00c2\u00a0area performances and is sustaining a campaign in support of local jazz radio which has grown to embrace the introduction of JazzBird<\/a>, an app curating and distributing \u00c2\u00a0“live-hosted” programs of online radio from around the world. In collaboration with the JJA, over the past three years the organization has nominated and consulted in the selection of “Jazz Heros.” It also supports\u00c2\u00a0Riffs & Raps\u00c2\u00ae<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0jazz-in-community centers and multi-generational, family-appropriate jazz presentations run by Bill Lowe and\u00c2\u00a0Arni Cheatham (a “Jazz Hero”).<\/p>\n

JazzBoston’s Jazz Week partners in 2013 included \u00c2\u00a0Berklee College of Music, Boston Public Library, Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New England Conservatory,\u00c2\u00a0MassJazz, Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism and in 2012 the Consulate General of Japan. As tens of thousands of runners take to the Marathon course next April 21, and people across America reflect on the anniversary of last April’s devastating Marathon bombings, jazz may be a salve to the soul and\/or a sound of celebration. At the JazzBoston\/JJA\/BIRN meeting, it was reported that both candidates for Mayor of Boston have pledged to rescind Boston’s notoriously burdensome entertainment licensing laws, which would be a boon to producers and presenters, musicians and audiences, too.<\/p>\n

The impulse to play is irrepressible. Last Thursday I heard a quartet \u00c2\u00a0led by pianist David Bryant and tenor saxophonist Tom Hall at the Outpost, a simple room in a yoga studio in Cambridge’s Inman Square. There were only five people in attendance, but the musicians (John Turner, bass; Eric Rosenthal, drums) put their all into improvisations that built on the freedoms and responsibilities proposed by innovators such as Ornette Coleman, with whom Bryant studied and worked. On a long walk of Massachusetts Avenue back toward Boston’s Copley Square, music poured out of bars and restaurants. Young people were out carousing, and carousing calls for music. I heard djs, reggae, a cover band playing classic rock. It felt like ground zero for the up ‘n’ coming audience. Those smart kids from Berklee and their friends from MIT, Boston U, Tufts, Emerson College, Harvard, etc. seem open and ready for anything. Why shouldn’t they like jazz?<\/p>\n

PS: My friend Gordon Marshall is a Boston blogger<\/a> who writes about rock as well as improvised, jazz-related music. In connection with doubling down, I’ve posted some of his music-inspired poetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

howardmandel.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe by Email or RSS<\/a><\/p>\n

All JBJ posts <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boston — historically stuffy but blue-blood liberal, devoted to higher education, high finance and professional sports — is now doubling down on itself as a world-class jazz city. Berklee College of Music,\u00c2\u00a0nearly 4500\u00c2\u00a0students strong and \u00c2\u00a0an economic engine onto itself, is\u00c2\u00a0generating energy that enlivens Boston’s \u00c2\u00a0neighborhoods, drawing in general\u00c2\u00a0audiences with such outreach events as the\u00c2\u00a0Beantown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-n3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":939,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2012\/06\/news-talk-doesnt-replace-jazz-programming.html","url_meta":{"origin":1429,"position":0},"title":"News-talk doesn’t replace jazz programming","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"June 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Of the many postings about Boston radio station WGBH's misguided downgrading of its signature jazz coverage -- managing director Phil Redo has announced the removal of long- beloved prime time show host Eric Jackson to weekends only, the end of producer Steve Schwartz's Friday night show, and the cut back\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "about"","block_context":{"text":"about","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/eric-jackson.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/04\/jazzapril-begins-no-joke.html","url_meta":{"origin":1429,"position":1},"title":"JazzApril begins (no joke!)","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"April 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"April is Jazz Appreciation Month (so named by the Smithsonian Institution), culminating on the 30th with\u00c2\u00a0International Jazz Day (a project of UNESCO, organized by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz) -- and both those initiatives are endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. So the Jazz Journalists Association has launched\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"ja-ijd-jamSQ200","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/ja-ijd-jamSQ200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2007\/07\/diversions_tangents_expedition.html","url_meta":{"origin":1429,"position":2},"title":"Diversions, tangents, expeditions","author":"djm","date":"July 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Jazz Beyond Jazz Jose Reyes' Jazz Con Class Roanna Forman's Boston Jazz Blog David Hadju's The Famous Door Matt Miller's tuneOUToptIN Richard Mitnick's Musicsprings A Blog Supreme (NPR) George Grella's The Big City Sebastian Scotney's LondonJazz Alex W. 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Boston-based Madavor counts International Figure Skating, Volleyball and The Best of Northeast Golf among its \"core\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":206,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2009\/06\/jazz_bloat_gone_phoenix_rising.html","url_meta":{"origin":1429,"position":5},"title":"Jazz “bloat” gone? Phoenix rising from ashes?","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"June 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Forecasts vary in the wake of collapses of Jazz Times and the JVC Jazz Festivals. Brilliant Corners exults that mid-brow music is so over and revels in New York's Vision Fest,\u00a0 while Jazz Chronicles asks what comes next -- possibly something good? 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