(page 16) FEBRUARY 2015
CULTURE PROFILES BY MICHAEL TODD
Submitted Image.
THE RETURN OF JAZZ “You gotta trust the people you play with,” he said. “It’s not just a read-the-page thing.” Herbie Hancock is at the piano, rolling out a red carpet of chords. Bandmate Miles Davis and his trumpet are sauntering down “So What,” the opening cut off the legend’s landmark 1959 album, Kind of Blue. Midway through a European tour in 1967, the band is on point. “We had the audience in the palm of our hands,” Hancock recounted late last year in an interview with CBS Radio One. They had them, that is, until the red carpet crumpled. “At the peak of Miles’ solo, I played this chord that was so wrong I thought that I had just set fire to burn down the evening,” Hancock said. “And Miles took a breath, and then he played some notes that made my chord right.”
It’s a story, flirting with the mythical, that relights and feathers the flame of Davis’ genius. It illustrates the way he could construct, seemingly, the only musical phrase that would make sense: an akimbo expression to answer an unseemly remark. As the Hemingway of jazz, Davis held a command over its language of notes so steadfastly that even the space between harbored deep meaning. As Sioux Falls trumpeter Jim Speirs puts it, “He said more with fewer words.” On Friday, February 13 at Prairie Berry East Bank, Speirs and the JAS Quintet will spin through that syntax and punctuation, and they’ll improvise addendums for a concert titled Miles Smiles. Doors will open at 7 p.m., with music starting at 7:45, and tickets for $25 can be purchased at prairieberry.com/eastbank. Intercut with stories presented by host Katrina Lehr-McKinney, the group will proceed chronologically through more than half of Davis’ fiercely evolutional career, from the mid-’50s through the early ‘70s. Among a sizeable stack of records, they might sample the
cinematic sizzle of Sketches of Spain, or they could fillet the fractured funk of Bitches Brew. “It’s radical,” said saxophonist Joel Shotwell. “You’ll hear just how much the music changed, even though it was the same instruments.” After nearly 10 years together, the core of the JAS Quintet — including Spiers, Shotwell and bassist Andrew Reinartz — have the chops to span such multifarious material. But when we met for an interview at Wiley’s Tavern, they laughed about the wrong notes they played, too, at a European locale of their own. For a long period, the Sioux Falls jazz community enjoyed a home at Touch of Europe. It was there that members of the JAS Quintet could hone their conversation of jazz. “We spent many nights there failing,” Spiers admitted with a smile. There they could learn to listen to each other, Reinartz added. “You gotta trust the people you play with,” he said. “It’s not just a read-the-page thing.” When Touch of Europe closed in early 2014 after a water line break, Sioux Falls lost a regular venue for jazz. Along with at-
tracting new ears to the genre, the JAS Quintet is hoping this month’s concert could begin to rekindle their community. They envision the event as the first in a series of at least twice-yearly shows that offer an intimate setting for a theme of improvised music. Prairie Berry East Bank follows up November’s sold-out Charlie Parr concert with Miles Smiles, and will provide a Valentine’s dessert bar alongside its offerings of wine and craft beer. Reinartz said he applauds Prairie Berry’s Thomas Hentges — with whom he’d played in underground punk and hardcore bands — for helping to kick start shows like this month’s. It’s an encouraging sign and proof that live music needs not only a venue, but a passionate supporter of music working at that venue to help cultivate a community. Spiers says it’s one important step of the process. “There’s a lot of fans of jazz in Sioux Falls. Touch of Europe had a steady audience, and a culture of good, improvising musicians. We’d like to keep that culture alive.”