LOCAL
“EVEN IF YOU’VE LOST QUITE A BIT OF HEARING, IT’S NEVER TOO LATE.”
BEAT
{BY MIKE SHANLEY}
JAZZ AMBASSADORS
INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
PITTSBURGH JAZZLIVE INTERNATIONAL. June 20-22. Multiple venues Downtown; outdoor stages: Penn at Eighth, Penn at Garrison. Free. All ages. www.pittsburghjazzlive.com
28
CAN YOU
HEAR ME NOW? {BY ANDY MULKERIN}
C
HRIS FAZIO plays violin and trumpet
Dianne Reeves {PHOTO COURTESY OF JERRIS MADISON}
Jazz music has been closely connected to social change throughout its history, and this year’s Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival is no exception. The event, which runs June 20-22, coincides with the launch of ¡Hola Pittsburgh!, an initiative that promotes opportunities in health care, finance and technology to people in Puerto Rico who are considering a move to the U.S. “ImaginePittsburgh.com and the Allegheny Conference identified the jazz festival as an event that they wanted to support for this year and use it as a vehicle for promoting what they would like Pittsburgh to be: open, diverse, world-class metropolitan,” says Janis Burley Wilson, vice president of education and community engagement and director of jazz programs at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. With the backing of those organizations, the festival was able to book the salsa band El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico. Last year, the group’s 50th anniversary was noted by The New York Times in an article that ranked it in the company of the Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Chieftains as influential groups that have reached the half-century mark. In that time, the group has sold over 150 million records. This connection with ¡Hola Pittsburgh!, means the weekend “is not just a music festival,” Wilson says. “It’s an economicdevelopment piece. But it’s also [about] tourism, employment. It’s promoting the whole region, not just here and not just in Puerto Rico, but internationally as someplace to be, and it’s using the festival as the centerpiece for that.” Naturally, music is still key in the fourth year of the festival, and Wilson focused on bringing up-and-coming acts as well as more established ones. Vocalist Gregory Porter represented the new acts a few years ago, and now the Blue Note artist is a headliner, as is vocalist Dianne Reeves. Wilson is excited to present Brandee Younger, who plays jazz harp, and vocalist Nancy Harms. Most of the performances are free and take place outdoors, with evening jam sessions indoors. Trust Vinyl, a pop-up record store, will be located at 820 Liberty Ave. for the weekend.
with local band The Hills and the Rivers now, but he’s played pretty much every instrument in his day, including drums, which he played in some loud bands as a kid. And while many musicians start to experience hearing problems later in life, it hit Fazio at age 16. “I remember the day,” Fazio says. “I was playing a loud show, playing drums, and after the show, I noticed my hearing was really muffled; I couldn’t hear people speaking very well. I had tinnitus afterward, and the tinnitus never really went away. It got a little better, but it didn’t go away.” If Dr. Catherine Palmer has her way, stories like Fazio’s will eventually be a thing of the past — because young people, especially young musicians, will be better educated on the risks presented by regular exposure to loud noise. Palmer, director of audiology at UPMC’s Eye and Ear Institute (and a professor at Pitt), heads up the Musicians’ Hearing Center, a UPMC unit focusing on preventing hearing loss and related symptoms in musicians. “We started the Musicians’ Hearing Center in 2003,” Palmer says, “with the goal of preventing hearing loss.” Musicians, unlike others who work in noise-heavy occupations, aren’t subject to workplacesafety noise regulations, she notes. And “musicians have a 100 percent chance of hearing damage,” she notes. Musicians can end up with hearing loss, but also a host of other symptoms including
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 06.18/06.25.2014
{PHOTO BY HEATHER MULL}
UPMC’s Musicians’ Hearing Institute is bringing attention to an often-overlooked health concern.
tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and sensitivity to certain frequencies. The UPMC center is one of only a few of its kind, modeled partly on the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, an educational and clinical institution begun in 1986 at McMaster University. Palmer works with school groups — mostly bands and orchestras — and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and gives educational lectures to music students at Carnegie Mellon University. “Vocalists always get vocal-health
education,” Palmer notes. “But instrumentalists in the past have rarely gotten any information about hearing health. CMU has been a leader in changing that.” Fazio says “there was nothing” in terms of education when he was coming up in middle- and high-school band. “I remember in high school looking at all the health books and there was nothing about protecting your hearing.” He attributes his failure to use hearing protection to being young and not knowing better. “I