September 2023

FESTIVAL MONTH

MUSIC, MUSIC EVERYWHERE

ALL THAT’S JAZZ

BY CYDNEY HALPIN

My July/August column reflected the incredible jazz experiences I had while in Europe in June. My summer of “jazz related riches” continued when I had the opportunity to meet musical phenom Jon Batiste in August, and witness first hand his greatness, not only as a performer, but as a mentor and teacher.

In association with the launch of his new album World Music Radio, Jon conducted a Master Class with the students of the Jazz Stan-

dard Youth Program helmed by David O’Rourke, along with other students from the Brooklyn Music School. To witness Jon’s infectious rapport with everyone in his sphere is truly something to behold!

With only one week’s notice of a “surprise guest” coming for a special class and performance, and playing “mystery music” from Jon’s newest release, the students were a bit overwhelmed at the start. The students’ solid foundation instilled by David’s

longstanding tutelage, coupled with Jon’s repeated sage advice, “The end result is not as important as the process, embrace the process” buoyed the whole experience. I can honestly say I witnessed a trajectory of incredible growth and competency that further underscored Jon’s philosophy, “It’s not about perfection, it’s about being in the room creating together. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

The afternoon’s class and performance ended with what Jon calls a “Love Riot”—a second line-like experience that, from a distance, looks riotous but up close is the manifestation of a love for music, love of the process of creating something special together in the moment, and love and respect for one another. Jonbatiste.com.

It’s well documented that children who participate in music programs do better in school, and are generally more rounded individuals.

To preserve jazz, we must introduce children to this great American art form, and we must nurture and support children’s participation in music.

Thank you, David and Jon, for your decades-long commitment to youth mentorship and programming. And thank you to all the educators dedicated to the transformative power of music, and who keep the art of jazz alive.

Let’s all commit to be a part of the process!

The New Jersey Jazz Society would like to thank the Morris Museum and Brett Messenger—Curatorial Director of Live Arts, Laurel Smith—Manager, Bickford Theater, Lewis Perlmutter—Technical Director Bickford Theater, Jimmy Warren—Assistant Technical Director, and all the other staff and volunteers who made “Jazz on the Back Deck” 2023 another smash season!

We’re grateful for their hard work and commitment to providing jazz programming in a fun environment— for the fourth summer in a row!

We look forward to the upcoming indoor season and thank all involved in advance for supporting and showcasing jazz! Morrismuseum.org

Bravo Don! The music is fabulous.”—Jack Bowers, All About Jazz. CONGRATULATIONS to NJJS Advisor and friend Don Braden on the success of his latest album

“Earth Wind and Wonder Volume 2”, which has spent the last several weeks at #2 on the National Jazz Radio/JazzWeek chart. This album reimagines a selected repertoire of two of Don’s early musical influences: Earth, Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder. The album is available on Spotify and Bandcamp.com. For more information: Donbradenjazz.com

SAVE THE DATES! The Jersey Jazz LIVE! concerts begin again on Sunday, October 8th. If you’ve attended these events, you know they’re great value ($10—$15 for Members, $15—$20 for Non Members) and that the talent of our featured performers and the showcased Rising Stars is incredible. If you haven’t yet attended a LIVE! event, come be a part of the musical celebration, and bring a friend! Performances begin at 3:00PM.

Fall’s featured lineup is as follows: October 8—The Bill Mays Trio (pianist), November 12—The Chuck Redd Duo (vibraphonist), December 10/NJJS Annual Meeting—The Royal Bopsters (vocal quartet).

The performances are held at The Madison Community Arts Center, 10 Kings Road, Madison, NJ, which is fully accessible and has FREE street parking. Refresh-

ments are available for purchase.

More complete details regarding each event will be in subsequent issues of Jersey Jazz and on our website njjs.org. We look forward to seeing you this fall at Jersey Jazz LIVE! performances.

Perhaps you’d like to sponsor or co-sponsor a Jersey Jazz LIVE! event? Funding for the Jersey Jazz LIVE! events has been made possible, in part, by funds from Morris Arts though the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/ Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. While we’re very grateful for this support, this funding doesn’t cover the full

costs of our programming. If you or someone you know would like to sponsor or co-sponsor one of these programs, please contact me at pres@njjs.org for more information.

The past year has brought new successes to NJJS—our Rising Stars initiative showcasing exceptional youth talent ages 12—22, and the exponential growth of our Juried Scholarship Competition. But, there is always more to be accomplished. To this end, we’re looking to add members to our Board of Directors. If you feel you have the skills, time, and energy to devote to NJJS in this capacity, please contact me at pres@njjs.org. I look forward to hearing from you.

In what seems like the “blink of an eye,” summer has come and gone, kids of all ages are going back to school, and the start of fall is upon us!

EDITOR’S CHOICE

BY SANFORD JOSEPHSON

Marc Devine Pays Tribute to Junior Mance at Piano in the Park

Imoved to New York in 1968 and discovered the pianist Junior Mance when he was a regular at Greenwich Village’s Top of the Gate. His unique brand of blues-tinged jazz mixed with bebop and a healthy dose of American Songbook standards made him a favorite all over the city.

Pianist Marc Devine moved to New York in 2009 from Austin, Texas, and “one of my most cherished experiences about moving here,” he told me, “was to become friends with Junior Mance.”

Mance passed away on January 17, 2021, at the age of 92. On Wednesday, September 20, Devine will be performing a piano tribute to his musical

hero for the third consecutive year. It will be in the middle of Devine’s weeklong noon-2 p.m. gig at Bryant Park’s Piano in the Park series. “We’ll do a lot of Junior’s tunes—‘Jubilation’, ‘Harlem Lullaby’, and ‘Junior’s Blues’ (aka ‘Blues for Utaka-san’),” Devine said. “Then, we’ll do some things he put his stamp on like Duke Ellington’s

‘Sunset and the Mockingbird’ and a standard he liked to play like ‘Falling in Love with Love’ (Richard Rodgers).”

In 1998, when Original Jazz Classics reissued Mance’s 1962 album, Junior’s Blues (with Bob Cranshaw on bass and Mickey Roker on drums), AllMusic’s Michael G. Nastos wrote that the recording “has all the jazz and blues bases covered, going back to boogie and stride, through swing and bop, with a couple of more modernistic numbers rounding out this complete overview of classic American soul-based Black music.” In the liner notes, Jersey Jazz columnist Dan Morgenstern described the music as “the basic spirit of jazz”.

At the Bryant Park tribute, Devine will be joined by violinist Michi Fuji and bassist Hide Tanaka, members of Mance’s last trio. Fuji moved to New York from Japan in 2008 and studied with Mance at the

New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. After graduating, she became a permanent member of his trio. Fuji and Tanaka accompanied Mance on his 2012 JunGlo Music album The Three of Us, which included “Jubilation” and “Harlem Lullaby” as well as such jazz standards as Dizzy Gillespie’s “Tin Tin Deo” and Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not”.

For several years beginning in 2006, Mance had a Sunday night gig at Café Loup, a French restaurant on West 13th Street. Devine would go to Café Loup to hear him and then, one day he received the ultimate accolade. Mance, he said, “was playing at Piano in the Park and we were walking to the subway, and he said he had to go out of town. ‘I have to ask you for a favor,’ he said. ‘Would you be willing to fill in for me at Café Loup?’”

On September 20, Devine will once again be subbing for his mentor.

ABOUT NJJS

Founded in 1972, The New Jersey Jazz Society has diligently maintained its mission to promote and preserve America’s great art form—jazz. To accomplish our mission, we produce a monthly magazine, Jersey Jazz ; sponsor live jazz events; and provide scholarships to New Jersey college students studying jazz. Through our outreach program Generations of Jazz, we provide interactive programs focused on the history of jazz. The Society is run by a board of directors who meet monthly to conduct Society business. NJJS membership is comprised of jazz devotees from all parts of the state, the country and the world.

MEMBER BENEFITS

You become an integral part of the NJJS community, and the history and future of jazz

Access to 11 Digital Issues of our Award Winning Jersey Jazz Magazine

— Featuring Articles, Interviews, Reviews, Events and More

Discounts to our Jersey Jazz

LIVE! Sunday Concerts

Discounts at NJJS Sponsored Concerts & Events.

MUSICIAN MEMBERS

FREE Listing on NJJS.org “Musicians

List” with Individual Website Link

FREE Gig Advertising in our Monthly eBlast

THE RECORD BIN

Visit www.njjs.org or email info@njjs.org for more information on our programs and services

A collection of CDs & LPs available at reduced prices at most NJJS concerts and events and through mail order www.njjs.org/Store

Family/Individual $45

(Family includes to 2 Adults and 2 children under 18 years of age)

Family/Individual 3-Year $115

Musician Member $45 / 3-Year $90 (one time only, renewal at standard basic membership level.)

Youth $15 - For people under 21 years of age. Date of Birth Required.

Give-A-Gift $25 - Members in good standing may purchase unlimited gift memberships.

Applies to New Memberships only.

Fan $75 - $99

Jazzer $100 - $249

Sideman $250 - $499

Bandleader $500+

Corporate Membership $1000

Members at Bandleader level and above and Corporate Memberships receive special benefits.

Please contact Membership@njjs.org for details.

The New Jersey Jazz Society is qualified as a tax exempt cultural organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, Federal ID 23-7229339. Your contribution is tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. For more Information or to join, visit www.njjs.org

Magazine of the New Jersey Jazz Society

VOLUME 51 • ISSUE 08

NJJS org

Jersey Jazz (ISSN 07405928) is published monthly for members of The New Jersey Jazz Society

382 Springfield Ave., Suite 217, Summit, NJ 07901 973-229-0543 • info@njjs.org

Membership fee is $45/year.

All material in Jersey Jazz, except where another copyright holder is explicitly acknowledged, is copyright ©New Jersey Jazz Society 2020. All rights reserved. Use of this material is strictly prohibited without the written consent of the NJJS.

Editorial Staff

EDITOR

Sanford Josephson, editor@njjs.org

ART DIRECTOR

Michael Bessire, art@njjs.org

CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITOR

Mitchell Seidel, photo@njjs.org

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Bill Charlap, Bill Crow, Joe Lang, Dan Morgenstern, Mark Shane, Jay Sweet

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Allison Brown, Richard Conde, Don Hunstein, Shervin Lainez, Mitchell Seidel, Steven Sussman, Wojtek Urbanek, Anna Yatskevich

WEBMASTER

Christine Vaindirlis

New Jersey Jazz Society, Officers 2021

PRESIDENT

Cydney Halpin, pres@njjs.org

EXECUTIVE VP vicepresident@njjs.org

TREASURER

Mike Katz, treasurer@njjs.org

VP, MEMBERSHIP membership@njjs.org

VP, PUBLICITY

Sanford Josephson, sanford.josephson@gmail.com

VP, MUSIC PROGRAMMING

Mitchell Seidel, music@njjs.org

RECORDING SECRETARY

Irene Miller

CO-FOUNDER

Jack Stine

Advertising

DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING

Cydney Halpin, advertising@njjs.org

ADVERTISING RATES

Full Page: $135, Half Page: $90, 1/3

Page: $60, 1/4 Page: $30

For reservations, technical information and deadlines contact advertising@njjs.org or visit njjs.org/Magazine/Advertise .

Make payment at PayPal.com: payment@ njjs.org, or via check made payable to NJJS, 382 Springfield Ave., Suite 217, Summit, NJ 07901

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT

Mike Katz DIRECTORS

Jay Dougherty, Cynthia Feketie, Pete Grice, Carrie Jackson, Caryl Anne McBride, Robert McGee, James Pansulla, Stew Schiffer, Elliott Tyson, Jackie Wetcher

ADVISORS

Don Braden, Mariel Bildsten, Ted Chubb, Al Kuehn, Jason Olaine

Tony Bennett: The Ultimate Interpreter of Jazz and the American Songbook

“I Always Wanted a Jazzman with Me. For Me, Having Jazzmen with Me Means I Never Get Stale.”

BY SANFORD JOSEPHSON

(Reprinted from News section of njjs.org)

Tony Bennett, who died July 21, 2023, in New York, at the age of 96, won 19 Grammy Awards. His first best-selling hit record, “Because of You”, was released in 1951. Sixty-three years later, his 2014 Columbia album with Lady Gaga, Cheek to Cheek, was the Number 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart. A giant of the American Songbook, Bennett also had a close relationship with the jazz community.

“I always wanted a jazzman with me,” he told DownBeat Magazine’s Dom Cerulli in May 1958. “For me, having jazzmen with me means I nev-

er get stale.” DownBeat’s John McDonough, writing the day of Bennett’s death, described his passing as “almost certainly the longest sustained career as a star performer in the annals of show business history ... His celebrated recent partnerships with Lady Gaga, Diana Krall, and others kept him a stadium act in the contemporary music scene, while his regular solo concerts at Radio City, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall, and The Hollywood Bowl represented a lineage of living cultural memory that connected audiences to a distant and vastly different time in mid-20th century America.”

Tony Bennett at Mohegan Sun in 2013.

Music historian John Edward Hasse, Curator Emeritus of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, said Bennett “possesses one of the great voices and singing careers of the last 60 years. Not very many singers, much less musicians, have achieved that kind of durability. He’s got a jazz musician’s phrasing and sense of timing, as well as a feeling for spontaneity. These are classic, timeless aesthetic values that he personifies.”

In a 1974 New Yorker profile, jazz critic Whitney Balliett described Bennett as “an elusive singer. He can be a belter who reaches rocking fortissimos. He drives a ballad as intensely and intimately as Sinatra. He can be a lilting, glancing jazz singer. He can be a low-key searching supper-club performer.” Bennett’s voice, he added, “binds all his vocal selves together.”

Writing in The New York Times (July 21, 2023), Bruce Weber said

PHOTO BY DON HUNSTEIN

Tony Bennett at CBS in the 1960s.

BIG BAND IN THE SKY

Bennett had “a storyteller’s grace with a lyric, a jazzman’s sureness with a melody, and, in his finest performances he delivered them with a party giver’s welcome, a palpable and infectious affability ... the songs he loved and sang—‘Just in Time’, ‘The Best is Yet to Come’, ‘Rags to Riches’, and ‘I Wanna Be Around’, to name a handful of his emblematic hits—became engaging, life-embracing parables.”

In addition to “Because of You” and “Rags to Riches”, his early ‘50s hits included “Stranger in Paradise” and his version of Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart”. Mitch Miller, a producer at Columbia Records, was instrumental in the decision to record “Because of You” with the backing of a lush orchestral arrangement by Percy Faith. Later, Miller tried to convince Bennett to record some novelty songs, which Bennett resisted and, for the most part, avoided.

In 1961, Bennett’s pianist, Ralph

Sharon, proposed a new tune for a scheduled West Coast tour. Bennett recorded “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” (Douglas Cross/George Cory), and it was released as the B side of single, “Once Upon a Time” (Charles Strouse/Lee Adams). It was one of the best-selling records of 1962, resulting in Bennett’s first Grammy Awards, for Record of the Year and Best Male Solo Vocal Performance. It continued to be the song he was most closely identified with for the rest of his career, although no one had anticipated its popularity. In fact, Bennett once joked, in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, that, “a Columbia rep called me up and said, ‘Turn the record over. San Francisco is really catching on.’”

In the mid-‘70s, Bennett left Columbia and formed his own company, Improv Records. That’s when he recorded two albums with legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans. They were not big sellers but were well received in

the jazz community. When both recordings were reissued by Universal/ Fantasy as a double album in 2009, The Guardian’s John Fordham wrote: “Bennett can sing a now unfashionable lyric such as ‘The Touch of Your Lips’ with a fervency that suggests the experience has only just happened to him, and Evans’ gleaming, multilayered chording supports the sensation of emotions churning. The Evans classic ‘Waltz for Debby’ also has its

cheesy lyric transformed by Bennett’s immaculate timing and casual dignity, while ‘But Beautiful’ is given a matter-of-fact, bar-conversation informality. If most of the music smokes rather than swings, there are some mid-tempo jaunts, such as ‘Dream Dancing’, in which the two sound as if they’re having the time of their lives.”

Bennett returned to Columbia Records in 1986 and released more than a dozen albums in the 1990s including a centennial birthday tribute to Duke Ellington, Bennett Sings Ellington, Hot & Cool (1999). Reviewing it, All Music’s William Ruhlmann called the album, “Tony Bennett’s practically inevitable commemoration of the Duke Ellington centenary ... an appropriately blue-chip affair, with a big band and orchestra augmenting the Ralph Sharon Quartet on arrangements by Jorge Calandrelli, who has slowed the tempos to give the singer time to give intimate interpretations to the

BIG BAND IN THE SKY

lyrics of songs like ‘Mood Indigo’ and ’Sophisticated Lady.’ Especially impressive are the less familiar tunes, such as ‘Azure’ and ‘Day Dream.’ The slowest tunes also leave room for expressive solos by trombonist Al Grey and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis ... ”

Sometime during that period, according to The Washington Post’s Matt Schudel, Bennett “became something of an avuncular emissary to a generation that never heard of Cole Porter but who admired Mr. Bennett’s cool nonchalance and his refusal to follow other people’s trends.”

He won Grammys in the ‘90s—for a 1992 tribute to Frank Sinatra, Perfectly Frank, a 1993 tribute to Fred Astaire, Steppin’ Out, and for MTV Unplugged, a live album, released in 1994. Backed by the Ralph Sharon Trio, Bennett appeared on the TV show MTV Unplugged to spotlight the Great American Songbook with guest appearances by Elvis Costello and k.d.

lang. In 2005, he was a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor, and, in 2006, he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“There was never a time when Bennett was not in proximity to the finest (jazz) players,” according to DownBeat’s McDonough. “His musical directors came straight out of the jazz world: Ralph Sharon, Torie Zito, John Bunch, and Lee Musiker. Ruby Braff, Harold Jones, and Gray Sargent were

part of his working groups, and there were encounters with Count Basie, Herbie Hancock, Candito, Herbie Mann, Neal Hefti, and Bill Charlap.” In the 1958 interview with Cerulli, Bennett credited guitarist Chuck Wayne as “the guy who really influenced me as to the guys playing good jazz.”

Bunch was Bennett’s Musical Director and Conductor for six years.

Charlap and Bennett recorded The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern on the RPM/Columbia label in 2015.

Reviewing the album for The New York Times, Nate Chinen compared “its voice-and-piano intimacy” to the previous Tony Bennett/Bill Evans albums. “Jerome Kern,” he pointed out, “turns out to be the ideal touchstone for Mr. Bennett: He was a suave melodist who married classical form with jazz inflection, and many of his tunes have long been standards. ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and ‘All The Things You Are’ are each rendered here as a duet,

with Mr. Charlap in exquisite form.” The album won a Grammy Award in 2016 for Best Traditional Pop Album.

In an email the day after Bennett’s death, Charlap told me, “Tony Bennett was American popular song. His interpretations were definitive. The depth of his choices, the level of taste, the way he told the story of the song, the nuance of his phrasing. All of it iconic, original, and definitive.” (See ‘Bill Charlap Remembers Tony Bennett’, following this article).

Bennett discussed the Evans and Charlap albums with the San Diego Union-Tribune’s George Varga in September 2019. “Working with Bill Evans,” he said, “was all about proper involvement of the highest level. It’s rare that a pianist of such magnitude as Bill, who had his own career as a solo artist, also was able to understand how to accompany a vocalist. It’s like a great marriage, where you are tuned in all the time and are able to know what

BIG BAND IN THE SKY

your spouse is thinking and can finish their sentences. That’s how it worked with Bill during those sessions.”

As for Charlap, “I have such admiration for master musicians such as Bill and the quartet of jazz musicians that travel with me. They are so gifted, and their expertise is on such a high level, that they are able to be completely spontaneous when they perform since they have such a strong foundation of musicianship. It is why I have always gravitated to working with jazz musicians, as they can be completely in the moment and yet also anticipate and react to what’s going to happen next.”

Bennett, who lived in Englewood, NJ, from 1957-1971, was born in Astoria, Queens, as Anthony Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926. He sang at family gatherings and, as a teenager, listened closely to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby before joining the Army during World War II. After leaving the Army, he was invited by comedian

Bob Hope to be his opening act at New York’s Paramount Theater. Benedetto was using the stage name, Joe Bari, but Hope asked him his real name. Before Benedetto could tell him, Hope added, “We’ll call you Tony Bennett.”

In addition to his career as a vocalist, Bennett was an accomplished visual artist. “I’ve always done the two things that I love to do, which is sing and paint, and it’s wonderful being

honored about it,” he told Reuters at an exhibit of his work in 2017. He signed his paintings, which have been displayed around the world, with his birth name, Anthony Benedetto.

He was also a political activist and advocate for civil rights, campaigning for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and participating in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, AL.

In 2006, Bennett recorded the first

of two “Duet” albums featuring duets with a variety of singers from various segments of the music world. The first, simply titled Duets: An American Classic (Columbia) featured him singing with Barbra Streisand (“Smile”), James Taylor (“Put On a Happy Face”), and Billy Joel (“The Good Life”), among many others. That was followed in 2011 by Duets II including Lady Gaga (“The Lady is a Tramp”), Amy Winehouse

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga

(“Body and Soul”), and Norah Jones (“Speak Low”). In 2018, he recorded a duet album on Verve/Columbia with Diana Krall (who was on Duets) called Our Love is Here to Stay.

When AllMusic’s John Bush reviewed Duets II, he pointed out that, “Bennett, as ever in splendid voice and impeccable groove, laughs and trades lines with stars half his age (like John Mayer), or in the case of Lady Gaga, six decades younger, and clearly makes them so comfortable in this setting that it would be easy to believe that jazz vocals were their home.”

“ HE CHAMPIONED SONGWRITERS WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE HAVE REMAINED UNKNOWN. ”

On Facebook, the day after Bennett’s death, Joel called him “one of the most important interpreters of American popular song during the mid to late 20th century. He championed songwriters who might otherwise have remained unknown to many millions of music fans. His was a unique voice that made the transition from the era of jazz into the age of pop. I will always be grateful for his outstanding contribution to the art of contemporary music. He was a joy to work with. His energy and enthusiasm for the material he was performing was infectious. He was also one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever known.”

heimer’s was beginning to take its toll.

In 2016, Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and that was revealed in August 2021 by his wife, Susan, on the AARP website. That month, he gave two farewell concerts at New York’s Radio City Music Hall with Lady Gaga to celebrate his 95th birthday. In an article on northjersey.com by Jim Beckerman, John Schreiber, President and CEO of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, recalled a concert by Bennett at NJPAC in 2018 when Alz-

“I was standing backstage with him and his wife Susan,” Schreiber said, “and he was standing still, expressionless. When it came time to go on, and he heard ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Tony Bennett’, he sort of lit up. His wife gave him a hug, and he went out there and twirled around, put his arms in the air, danced. He was totally Tony Bennett.”

In a well-known 1965 Life Magazine interview, Frank Sinatra called Bennett “the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

Jazz violinist Aaron Weinstein, on Facebook, recalled seeing and meeting

Tony Bennett in 2007 when Weinstein was 21, performing his first gig in New York City (Stephane Grappelli’s posthumous induction into the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame at Jazz at Lincoln Center). “For me,” Weinstein said, “Tony Bennett symbolizes old New York—a New York where people had a sense of occasion, where folks dressed up to go to the theater, not because of a dress code but because it was just what you were supposed to do.”

In addition to his wife Susan, Bennett is survived by two sons from his first marriage (to Patricia Beech), Danny Bennett and Daegal Bennett; and two daughters from his second marriage (to Sandra Grant), Joanna Bennett and Antonia Bennett.

‘Life is a Gift’: Bill Charlap Remembers Tony Bennett

As told to Lee Mergner. Reprinted, with permission, from wbgo.org

The first time I met Tony Bennett, I was playing solo piano at a club called J’s at 97th Street and Broadway. Tony came in with Helen Keane, who had been Bill Evans’ manager. He listened and he sketched something of me and gave it to me. Of course, I was delighted to meet him. I had grown up on the duo albums that he had made with Bill Evans, among many other jazz-oriented recordings he did like Count Basie at Carnegie Hall, and things with the drummers like Art Blakey and Billy Exiner and all of that. Those records by Tony and Bill are masterpieces. I remember being given those recordings by my teacher, Jack Reilly. He gave me a cassette. On the cassette it said Bill and Tony on one side, Bartok Third Piano Concerto on the other. I remember it very well, because Jack said, “When you listen to these, these are like Mahler songs, the relationship between the

accompaniment and the vocal.”

I think the next time I saw him was when I was playing with Phil Woods at the Blue Note in the mid‘90s. I was in the dressing room and the maître d’ came to me and said, “Mr. Bennett’s in the house, and he’d like to see you.” I went down there and greeted him, and he said, “You know, there are a couple of gigs that Ralph Sharon [Tony’s regular pianist] can’t make right now and I’d like you to do a few things with me.”

First of all, I was thrilled because he was just about my favorite singer ever and one of my favorite musicians. I was so moved by the way he would interpret the song. His glorious voice, his incredibly dramatic interpretive skills, and the ability to tell the story and put his signature on it. He always talked about doing something that was definitive, a definitive interpretation of the song—something that came

from his heart and from his instinct.

In preparing for those shows, I listened to a number of concerts and noticed that things were different from night to night. When Tony would do a set list, it might have 50 songs. It was a lot. I prepared as well as I could and as quickly as I could, because the dates were happening three or four days

later. I went straight into the shed, as they say. But, of course, I knew the songs, and once I understood the routines and I understood that there was some looseness to it, too, it was automatic, and very natural. He had beautiful time. His phrasing was very extemporaneous. If he would sing something one way one time, he might

sing it very differently another time. I knew how many choruses it might be or where a solo might be or that sort of thing, but it was definitely extemporaneous within that structure.

Tony Bennett was a very accomplished painter. He had that sense of design and architecture in what he painted. I believe that he also

painted a beautiful line with what he sang, with all the nuance of the brush and the oil paints and all of those beautiful things that were there.

I was never a member of Tony’s band, but we were friends and we would perform together from time to time. He told me that he wanted to do an album together of Jerome Kern songs. Of course, I felt that you can’t do better than that. Tony Bennett singing Jerome Kern: two iconic forces in American music and some of the greatest songs ever written. As I’ve said many times, in a way Kern is the angel at the top of the tree of American popular songwriters. All the songwriters looked to him. Tony asked me, “Should we do it as a duo album or with your trio, or with two pianos with your wife Renee?” At that point he had come many times to hear my trio with Peter Washington and Kenny Washington. He would even

come up on stage to sit in with us.

He also loved hearing Renee [Rosnes] and I play two piano duets together. I said, “Let’s do all three of them—duo, trio and with Renee.” Because he was always talking about doing something different or in a new terrain, I thought all of that would keep it fresh, integrated, and in the family. I knew that it would all be of a piece. The resulting album was The Silver Lin-

ing, which is under both of our names, and the record won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Album. He was in such fantastic form. He was already in his late 80s and singing brilliantly, both technically and interpretively.

Tony understood how to tell a story and how to do it in such a musical way. Underneath that beautiful classic Italian bel canto voice, he was also informed by the singing of Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Jimmy Durante, Billie Holiday, and Bing Crosby. Plus, he drew on the great instrumentalists who also deeply informed his interpretations. He often told me of how he loved the way that Art Tatum made a production of a song. All of those influences are in there when you listen to Tony’s singing.

Tony had such great taste in the way he dressed, in the way he painted, in the way he sang, in the repertoire he chose. He possessed all of

those brilliant aspects. Yet he was also a true New Yorker, from Astoria, who was from the street. He was a world icon with all the success that goes with that, but he really dug everybody. He wasn’t an elitist. He had a way of walking in the world. I walked through it many times with him, down the city streets, as people called out, “Hey Tony, how you doing?” He handled it with elegance. It was never, “Get away from me.” Never. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He was always warm, and he always had time for people. He wasn’t looking for attention either. It was just Tony, that guy who’s on the street where you live.

Tony always talked about how much it was a gift to be alive, how he loved life, how he loved art, how he loved. He felt blessed. When he would talk about somebody in his past, like, “Fred Astaire told me this” or “Judy Garland told me that”, … it’s almost

surreal because these are such icons. But it was real life for him. These were the people in his life who had touched him deeply. Of course, he was absolutely standing shoulder to shoulder with these iconic forces. He was one himself. But there was always that feeling of “Wow, I can’t believe this, I feel so lucky.” There was real humility in the essence of who he was. He didn’t live in the past. The feeling around Tony was that it was always, “Let’s go on to the next day.”

Tony loved to share his passion for art with his friends. I remember we were in Washington, DC, for Carol Burnett winning the Mark Twain Prize for comedy. There were all kinds of superstars on that show. Tony came out, with just me at the piano, and he sang “The Way You Look Tonight.” He stood there and looked up at Carol in the box and sang his heart out straight to her. That was really

quite a beautiful moment. But I remember earlier that same day he said, “You know, at the Phillips Collection, there’s a beautiful Van Gogh exhibit. We’ve got to go. Do you want to go?” Of course, I went. He had such a passion for life. He wasn’t just putting his feet up during the day. He couldn’t wait to get over there and see what was

happening there. And he was generous enough to go over there with his friend. Over the years he taught me so much about the great painters whom he admired, like John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, and Anders Zorn.

Audiences adored him, and he adored them back right. They could feel the genuineness of that love. Man,

could he sing. And, boy, did he sound great. What a God given instrument. The way he developed it and the way he sang. It was just so soulful. That’s all there is to it. And it sounded so distinctly him. That’s what you want. With some singular artists, you can name them in just one note. You know it’s Tony Bennett in just one note, just like Miles Davis or John Coltrane or Louis Armstrong. One note. It could only be the one and only Tony Bennett. His longevity was remarkable. He was still at the very height of his powers for a very, very long time. That’s a great inspiration for any of us.

At the bottom line, Tony Bennett loved life. He always felt life was a gift. He lived it that way. God bless him. I feel very lucky to have known him. Tony Bennett is a part of every note I play, for the rest of my life.

Big Band continued on page 49

Pianist Lafayette Harris, Jr., Embracing ‘Everything’ from Eubie Blake to Max Roach

He’s Also a Fan of the ‘Tin Pan Alley Songwriters— Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, the Gershwin Brothers’

BY SANFORD JOSEPHSON

In 1975 when Lafayette Harris, Jr., was 12 years old, growing up in Baltimore, he saw a television commercial advertising a “hometown hero who is coming back to Baltimore to play.” Harris was just starting to learn to play the piano, and the “hometown hero” was Eubie Blake. “I had no idea who Eubie Blake was,” he recalled. “They showed him playing this piece, ‘The Maple Leaf Rag’. I’d never heard of that, and I just had to learn how to play that music.

“I made my way on the bus to the library in downtown Baltimore,” he con-

tinued. “I told the librarian, ‘There’s this piece of music, Maple Leaf Rag. Can you help me find it?’ She said, ‘I think that’s by Scott Joplin.’ We went back in the archives, and she pulled out this big brown book. On the cover, it said ‘Scott Joplin’, and we thumbed through it. And there was ‘Maple Leaf Rag’. She Xeroxed it for me, and I took it home. That’s how I started working on it.”

Harris, who will be leading a quintet at the Somerville segment of the Central Jersey Jazz Festival on Sunday, September 10, went on to earn his

CENTRAL

Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin Conservatory and received his Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance at Rutgers, where he studied under pianist Kenny Barron. Throughout his career, he has emphasized flexibility—“everything from Dixieland to the most progressive ‘out’ kind of jazz.”

That’s reflected in the variety of artists he’s performed with—from experimentalists such as drummer Max Roach and trombonist Roswell Rudd to mainstream saxophonists such as Frank Wess and Houston Person to vocalists such as Ernestine Anderson and Melba Moore. “Max Roach,” he said, “was one of the masters of bebop. But he also was really into playing ‘out’ (free or atonal). That was great because I got to get into that kind of expression. I kind of continued on with that kind of thing with Roswell Rudd.”

But Harris is also a fan of the “Tin Pan Alley songwriters—Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, the Gershwin

brothers.” His last two albums, on the Savant label, have been a mix of original compositions and American Songbook and jazz standards. Leading a trio with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash, his 2020 album, You Can’t Lose the Blues, featured his original, “Blues for Barry Harris”, dedicated to his mentor, with whom he began studying when he moved to New York in the mid-1980s. That was combined with such standards as Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”, Nicholas Brodszky’s “Wonder Why” and jazz favorites such as Charlie Parker’s “Bloomdido” and Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be”. Reviewing the album for Jersey Jazz, Joe Lang wrote, “From start to finish, this album is filled with excitement ... Harris is not as widely known as many of today’s pianists, but he should be!”

In March of this year, Harris released his second Savant album, Swingin’ Up in Harlem, also with

Central Jersey Jazz Festival Schedule

SATURDAY, 9/9 FLEMINGTON (Historic Stangl Road in the Artisans District)

6:30-8 PM Vocalist Claudia Acuna

8:30-10 PM Percussionist Steven Kroon and his Latin Jazz Sextet

SUNDAY, 9/10 SOMERVILLE

1:30-2:40 PM Tap Dancer Michaela Marino Lerman

3:10-4:20 PM Lafayette Harris, Jr. and Friends

4:50-6 PM Trombonist David Gibson and his Quartet

Claudia Acuna

CENTRAL

Washington on bass and Nash on drums. It includes two Harris originals, the title tune and “Nat’s Blues”. “As far as writing music,” he said, “I kind of go back to the basics, using knowledge I have from experience and also from Barry Harris’ teaching. A lot of times I start out just practicing a song. Before you know it, it ends up being a song. ‘Swingin’ Up in Harlem’ reminds me of a lot of times I spent up in Harlem playing. ‘Nat’s Blues’ is dedicated to my man, Nat ‘King’ Cole.”

Jack Bowers, reviewing Swingin’ Up in Harlem for AllAboutJazz, wrote, “As for musical expertise and empathy, it simply does not get much better than this ... Harris has been at or near the top of the A-list of in-demand pianists on the New York scene for almost four decades.” Among the standards: Carmichael’s “Stardust” and “The Nearness of You”, Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow”, and Duke Ellington’s “Solitude”.

“ I’M PROBABLY GOING TO BE DOING A COUPLE OF NEW RECORDS LATER THIS YEAR. ”

In Somerville, Harris’ quintet will feature Kenny Davis on bass, Alvester Garnett on drums, Don Braden on tenor saxophone, and Ty Stephens on vocals. In June, Braden released Earth Wind and Wonder Volume 2, new arrangements of songs by Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind and Fire. At press time, it was Number 2 on the Jazz Week charts. Davis is the bassist on that album.

Looking back on all the artists he’s performed with, Harris has special memories of a 2008 Highnote album, A Song For You, he made with vocalist

Ernestine Anderson, tenor saxophonist Houston Person, bassist Chip Jackson, and drummer Willie Jones III. “We got along fabulously,” he recalled. “She and I just hit it off. She wanted a certain kind of thing, and the producers wanted a different kind of thing; and I ended up being a bridge between the two.” Reviewing the album for JazzTimes, Christopher Loudon wrote, “The beauty of Anderson’s dusky magic is its simplicity. No big gestures, no flashy flourishes-nothing but pure, and delightfully mature, showmanship set against superbly relaxed backing by pianist Lafayette Harris, Jr., bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Willie Jones III, with the Harris is extremely pleased by the radio airplay the album has received. It was on the JazzWeek charts for 22 weeks, peaking at Number 4.

singularly perceptive tenor saxman Houston Person as the peripatetic moth circling Anderson’s flame.”

Harris said he is, “constantly writing new music. I’m probably going to be doing a couple of new records later this year. I’m working on a tribute to Max Roach with Alvester and Kenny. And, I hope to get Peter (Washington) and Lewis (Nash) back together to do another straight-ahead trio record.”

Lafayette Harris, Jr. and Friends will be appearing from 3:10-4:20 p.m. on Sunday, September 10, on the Somerset County Historic Courthouse Green, corner of East Main & Grove streets in downtown Somerville, NJ. Admission is free.

Jazz House Collective Pays Tribute to Dexter Gordon

“There’s No Doubt that Dexter Gordon was a Big Part of That Bridge Connecting the Big Band Era to Bebop,”

BY SANFORD JOSEPHSON

Dexter Gordon would have turned

100 on February 27, 2023. To celebrate his centennial birthday, the Jazz House Collective band will pay tribute to the legendary tenor saxophonist on the Montclair Jazz Festival’s BDP Holdings Stage at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 9.

“There’s no doubt that Dexter Gordon was a big part of that bridge connecting the big band era to bebop,” said trumpeter Nathan Eklund, Di-

rector of the JHC. “The influence of Hawk and Prez and the earlier generation on Dexter’s playing is clearly apparent, but he moved forward and really embodied the sound of bebop as well. He was one of the early tenor saxophonists to showcase the bebop language Charlie Parker was playing.”

The Jazz House Collective is made up primarily of Jazz House Kids faculty, although one recent alumnus, Liam Werner, will be in

the trumpet section. The tenor saxophonists featured in the Gordon tribute are Lance Bryant and Mike Lee.

When Jersey Jazz published a Jazz History feature on Gordon in the February 2023 issue, Bryant told me that Gordon’s playing “has always struck me as a bold and no frills expression of bebop. When he made a musical statement, every word was completely uttered. There could be no misinterpretation of what he said through

his horn. No under the breath innuendos or implications—just direct.”

The MJF set will focus primarily on Gordon’s original compositions, “although we are including one standard,” Eklund said, “based off of a Slide Hampton arrangement from their album together, A Day in Copenhagen (MPS Records: 1969). It’s impossible to showcase all of Dexter’s music into just one set, but our goal is to present an hour of music that

PHOTO BY RICHARD CONDE

Jazz House Collective at 2022 Montclair Jazz Festival: From left, trumpeters Freddie Hendrix, Nathan Eklund, Ted Chubb, and Wallace Roney, Jr; trombonists David Gibson, Mariel Bildsten, and Becca Patterson.

will capture as much of his career as is possible.” One of the arrangements of Gordon’s original music was written by another JHK alum, alto saxophonist Alex Laurenzi.

“The Jazz House Collective,” Eklund continued, “has been a fun group to lead, as our faculty base has continued to grow with the growth of Jazz House over the past several years. But one piece of the community that is really special is with our alumni. We are constantly looking for

opportunities to keep them connected and engaged with what we are doing.”

In 1962, Gordon moved to Copenhagen, staying in Europe for 14 years before making a triumphant return to the United States in 1976. When he performed at the Village Vanguard shortly after his arrival back in the States, The New York Times’ Robert Palmer wrote, “The word is out among aficionados that he must be seen. There will almost certainly be overflow crowds at the Vanguard.” And there were.

When AllMusic’s Scott Yanow reviewed a reissue of A Day in Copenhagen, he wrote, “Unlike many other American expatriates living in Europe, tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon always managed to play and record with the top musicians while overseas. This excellent sextet session (with trombonist Slide Hampton, trumpeter Dizzy Reece, pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Niels Pedersen, and drummer Art Taylor) finds him exploring three Slide Hampton compositions and a trio of standard ballads. The other soloists are fine, but Gordon easily dominates the set, playing his brand of hard-driving bop.”

In addition to leading the JHC, Eklund directs the JH Big Band, a large ensemble that features JHK’s most experienced students. “It’s a lot of work,” he said, “as they are a spirited and motivated group of young musicians. But, understanding the role that mentors and teachers have

The 2023 Jazz House Collective

SAXOPHONES

Bruce Williams, Erica von

Kleist, Mike Lee, Lance Bryant, Jason Marshall TRUMPETS

Nathan Eklund, Freddie Hendrix, Ted Chubb, Liam Werner

TROMBONES

David Gibson, Juanga

Lakunza, Mariel Bildsten, Gina Benalcazar

RHYTHM SECTION

Kelly Green, piano;

Andy McKee, bass;

Darrell Smith, drums

VOCALS

Dylan Pramuk

Nathan Eklund

Montclair Jazz Festival Schedule

SATURDAY, 9/9 BDP HOLDINGS STAGE

1 PM Jazz House Collective

2:30 PM Trombonist Steve Turre

4 PM Vocalist Melanie Charles

5:30 PM Bassist Christian McBride

7 PM Afrobeat Band Antibalas

THE FULLERTON STAGE

1 PM Person2Person, saxophonists Eric and Houston Person (not related)

2:30 PM Harpist Edmar Castaneda and his Quartet

4 PM Drummer Vince Ector and his band, Organatomy

5:30 PM Violinist Regina Carter

7 PM Singer/Songwriter Michael Mwenso and The Shakes

played in every great musician’s life, it’s an amazing opportunity to be able to offer what I have to give to the next generation of up-and-coming jazz musicians from our region.”

Eklund is active in the NYC area big band scene, having performed with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Mingus Big Band, and the Roy Hargrove Big Band, among many others. He was also part of the Dafnis Prieto Big Band’s Dafnison Music recording, Back to the Sunset, which won a Grammy Award in

2019 for Best Latin Jazz Album. The Jazz House Collective tribute to Dexter Gordon is one of 10 performances on the BDP Holdings Stage and the The Fullerton Stage at Fullerton Avenue. Bloomfield Avenue will be closed to traffic from Lackawanna Plaza to Fullerton. Three other stages will feature musicians from Jazz House Kids and a group showcasing recent James Moody Scholarship winners. There will also be a Family Jazz Discovery Zone, and food and craft vendors. Admission is free.

Regina Carter

Sept 28 | 6–9pm | EDISON Papaianni Park

OCT 1, 2023

Victor Quezada & his Latin Jazz Band • The Delegations • JP Stevens Jazz Ensemble

Sept 29 | 7–9pm | PERTH AMBOY Historic Perth Amboy Ferry Slip

Forbidden Tropics

• Julian Meyers Koncept

Sept 30 | 1–5:30pm | NEW BRUNSWICK In Front of Arts Center (NBPAC)

Nat Adderley Jr. Quartet

• Conrad Herwig Latin Side All-Stars

New Brunswick Jazz Project Brass

Sept 30 | 6–9:30pm | METUCHEN Halsey Street Lot

Cyrus Chestnut Quartet

Metuchen HS Jazz Ensemble

• Molly Ryan and Manhattan Premier

• Jill Justin Dance Alliance

Oct 1 | 3–6:30pm | WOODBRIDGE Parker Press Park

Alicia Olatuja Quintet • Edmar Castaneda Quartet

Woodbridge HS Jazz Choir

Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund.

The Hot Sardines: Presenting Its Unique Brand of Updated Swing

“This Music isn’t Historical Artifact. It’s a Living, Breathing, Always Evolving Thing.”

In its preview of the New Jersey Jazz Society’s annual Pee Wee Russell Stomp in 2013, Jersey Jazz Magazine wrote about a band appearing for the first time—the Hot Sardines. “In just a few years,” we wrote, “the Hot Sardines has gone from its first gig—at a coffee shop on the last Q train stop in Queens, to selling out its Joe’s Pub debut in fall 2012, headlining at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing, and opening for the Bad Plus, Lulu Gainsbourg, and French gypsy jazz artist, Zaz.

Now, 10+ years later, the Hot Sardines will be appearing at the Morristown Jazz & Blues Festival on September 23; and a lot more has transpired. The band has performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and the Montreal Jazz Festival, has sold out New York City venues such as the aforementioned Joe’s

Pub and the Bowery Ballroom, and has played more than 150 tour dates, ranging from Chicago to London. There have also been several albums released to very positive reviews and a Number 1 place on the iTunes Jazz charts in the United States and internationally.

At the 2016 Newport Jazz Festival, Jersey Jazz’s Sandy Ingham wrote that, “Limber-limbed dancing and hip takes on hits from the 1930s make this New York outfit popular. A new tune, ‘Here You Are Again’, about an unlovable ex’s persistence, boasted a sax section wailing in sympathy as the fetching (vocalist) Elizabeth Bougerol bemoaned her predicament.”

When the Hot Sardines performed in London in 2015, The Guardian’s John Fordham pointed out that, “There are plenty of early jazz good-time bands, and some

PHOTO BY SHERVIN LAINEZ

MORRISTOWN JAZZ & BLUES FESTIVAL

cover the repertoire with more authenticity and technique. These New Yorkers, however, play big halls as if they’d just dropped in to a party. They perform living music, not museum pieces, adding that, “The Sardines may be part of a wider vintage-jazz upswing in New York, but they surely must be considered the charismatic front-runners.”

Reviewing a Hot Sardines performance at London’s Roundhouse, The Times UK’s Clive Davis also acknowledged that the group “may not be the only band celebrating this kind of prewar material, but there are very few with such an astute grasp of showmanship. The Sardines have built their own young audience,” he said, singling out Bougerol’s “bluesy, Peggy Lee edge ... Her ability to sing ‘Comes Love’ and that Disney anthem, ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ in French was a cute touch, too. Yes, a cartoon song at a jazz gig, but

who cares, as long as it swings.”

The 2019 Eleven Records album, Welcome Home, Bon Voyage, was recorded live at Joe’s Pub and Toronto’s Koerner Hall. Calling them “vibrant performances”, DownBeat’s

Bobby Reed described Bougerol’s “sly, charming delivery throughout the program,” and “the poignant pianism of band co-leader Evan Palazzo on ‘Exactly Like You’ and ‘After You’ve Gone’. AllAboutJazz’s John

Bricker said the live album “is a fantastic demonstration of the Hot Sardines’ passion and vitality and proves that swing belongs to the present, just as much to the past.”

Last month, the Hot Sardines

Louis Prima, Jr. & The Witnesses

Morristown

Jazz & Blues Schedule

FRIDAY, 9/22 PIONEER’S PLAZA

4-4:30 PM MHS Spectrum Jazz Band

5-6 PM Vocalist Ty Stephens and Soul Jazz

6:30-7:30 PM Debra Devi Group

8-10 PM The Downtown Charlie Brown Blues Band

SATURDAY, 9/23 MORRISTOWN GREEN

NOON-1:30 PM U.S. Navy Jazz Band, the Commodores

2-3:30 PM Gotham City Latin Jazz Septet

4-5:30 PM The Hot Sardines

6-7:30 PM

8-10 PM

Guitarist/Singer Ana Popovic and her Band

Louis Prima, Jr. & The Witnesses

released a new Eleven Records album, C’est La Vie, a bilingual (English and French) collection of vintage jazz standards and originals written by the group’s co-founders, Bougerol and Palazzo. It includes some early French music such as

“J’attendrai”, written by Dino Olivieri and Louis Poterat in 1938; Django Reinhardt’s “Si Tu Savais:, and “I Wish You Love”, written in 1942 by Charles Trenet and Leo Chauliac with English lyrics by Albert Beach.

There is also music from the 2022 movie, Fletch, which the Hot Sardines contributed music to. Among the selections from the film: a gospel version of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River”, a Sardines’ original, “Adieu l’amour”, and the title track.

The Hot Sardines was founded in 2011 by Bougerol and Palazzo over a shared love of Fats Waller. They are, in fact, producing an original show about Waller, who they consider the “larger-than-life” driver of the Harlem Renaissance. Bougerol and Palazzo met through a jam session they found on Craig’s List and discovered they had a mutu-

Evan Palazzo and Elizabeth Bougeron

“ FOR THE FIRST TIME THE FESTIVAL WILL STRETCH OVER TWO DAYS. ”

al love for songs of the 1920s, ‘30s. and ‘40s. But, they told Jersey Jazz back in 2013, they were committed to not treating the music as museum pieces. “This music,” said Palazzo, “isn’t historical artifact. It’s a living, breathing, always evolving thing.”

In Morristown, Bougerol and Palazzo will be bringing six additional band members: percussionist David Berger, bassist Victor Murillo, tap dancer Calvin Booker, multi-reedist Ben Golder-Novick, trumpeter Paul Brandenburg, and trombonist/ukulele player J. Walter

Hawkes. They will be performing on the Morristown Green from 4-5:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 23.

For the first time, the Morristown Jazz & Blues Festival will stretch over two days, beginning on Friday, September 22, at 4 p.m. at Pioneer’s Plaza with the Morristown High School Spectrum Jazz Band, directed by Timothy Beadle. The Saturday schedule, as usual, will begin at noon on the Morristown Green with the U.S. Navy Jazz Band, the Commodores. All the music on both days is free.

Keyboardist Nat Adderley, Jr. Previews His Upcoming Album

“I Like How Jazz Musicians Do It. They Play Their Tunes Live for Awhile Before Going to Record It.”

BY SANFORD JOSEPHSON

After rhythm & blues vocalist Luther Vandross passed away in 2005, his music director of 25 years, Nat Adderley, Jr., decided to return to his jazz roots as a keyboardist and bandleader. Eighteen years later, Adderley, who will be leading a quartet September 23 at the West Orange Jazz Festival and September 30 at the Middlesex County Jazz Festival in New Brunswick, is recording his first jazz album as a leader.

“I’m in the studio now,” he said. “It will include some hard bop, Motown, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and

some original tunes. It sounds surprising to people that I don’t have any jazz records under my own name.”

Adderley has no idea when the album will be released, saying only, “It’s in the process of being recorded. My experience in the studio is in r&b, but I am going to go ahead and do this like jazz musicians usually do and pop and r&b musicians do not. I like how jazz musicians do it. They play their tunes live for awhile before going to record them.” Adderley previewed some of the album’s tunes on August 4 at the New Brunswick Performing Arts

Center, “and we’ll play them again on September 23 in West Orange and on the 30th in New Brunswick. For me, this is huge. This is earth-shattering.”

The recording will be a trio album with Dwayne “Cook” Broadnax on drums and Chris Berger on bass. “But I’m going to have a horn on one

or two things,” he added, pointing out that tenor saxophonist Mike Lee and alto saxophonist Vincent Herring are likely to be among the horn players featured as guest artists. Lee will also be on tenor sax and flute with Adderley, Broadnax and Berger in New Brunswick. In West Orange,

Adderley, Broadnax, and Lee will be joined by bassist Belden Bullock. Broadnax, born in Philadelphia, is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music and has toured with such artists as organist Bill Doggett, Grammy-winning blues guitarist, Johnny Copeland, and vocalist Jimmy Scott

West Orange Jazz Festival Schedule

SATURDAY, 9/23 OSCAR SCHINDLER PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

2:30 PM James Moody Scholar, drummer Mecadon McCune leading a trio

3:15 PM Vocalist/Drummer Carlos Frias and Circulo Social

4 PM Drummer Jeremy Warren and Vocalist Dermel Warren & The Rudiment

5 PM Nat Adderley, Jr. Quartet

6 PM Pianist Leonieke Scheuble leading the Generations of Jazz Quintet

7 PM Vocalist Ty Stephens and the Soul Jazz Band

8 PM Lifetime Achievement Honor for guitarist Warren Batiste

8:15 PM Charisa—the Violin Diva Leonieke Scheuble

and his Jazz Expressions. “Dwayne is a session guy” Adderley said, “He does a lot of work around town. He may be my favorite drummer for doing everything. I have to have somebody playing Luther Vandross, and he’s really swinging on the jazz. That’s hard to do. That’s what I’m still trying to do. In my heart, to my core, I’m an r&b guy.”

Berger has been part of the New York/New Jersey jazz scene since 1994, playing with drummer Jimmy Cobb, guitarist Herb Ellis, and pianist Junior Mance, among many others. In 1993, he toured with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and his Big Bop Nouveau and recorded with Ferguson on the Concord Jazz label. “When we play the pop stuff,” Adderley said, “it’s obvious Chris has spent a lot of time in r&b bands as well as with jazz groups.” Berger started out playing electric bass when he was 11 before switching to acoustic bass and jazz five years later.

In the July/August 2023 issue of

Jersey Jazz, Herring recalled playing with Adderley’s father, cornetist Nat Adderley, in the early 1990s. Herring joined the senior Adderley’s band for a tour of Australia and stayed with him until Adderley’s death in January 2000. When Nat Adderley, Jr. decided to return to his jazz roots, he said Herring, “paid it forward to me. He

was so good to me, so supportive to me in my new jazz career. He’s one of the main ones that I credit for helping me along when I decided I was going to be a jazz dude. He told me, ‘You got to go into the studio. You’re ready.’”

Herring described Nat Adderley, Jr. to Jersey Jazz as “a complete musician. Great composer and piano play-

Middlesex County Jazz Festival Schedule

THURSDAY, 9/28 PAPIANNI PARK, EDISON

6 PM JP Stevens Jazz Ensemble

6:30 PM The Delegations

7:30 PM Saxophonist Victor Quezada and his Latin Jazz Band

FRIDAY, 9/29 PERTH AMBOY FERRY SLIP, PERTH AMBOY

6:30 PM Saxophonist/flutist Julian Meyers and his band, Koncept

7:30 PM The Afro-Peruvian jazz band, Forbidden Tropics

SATURDAY, 9/30 11 LIVINGSTON AVE., NEW BRUNSWICK

1-1:45 PM New Brunswick Jazz Project Brass

2:15-3:30 PM Conrad Herwig Latin Side

4-5:30 PM Nat Adderley, Jr., Quartet

SATURDAY, 9/30 METUCHEN TOWN PLAZA, METUCHEN

6 PM Jill Justin Dance Alliance

6:30 PM Metuchen High School Jazz Ensemble

7 PM Vocalist Molly Ryan and Manhattan Premier

8 PM Pianist Cyrus Chestnut

SUNDAY, 10/1 400 RAHWAY AVE., WOODBRIDGE

3 PM Woodbridge High School Jazz Choir

3:45 PM Harpist Edgar Castaneda and his Quartet

5:15 PM Vocalist Alicia Olatuja and her Quintet

Alicia Olatuja

er. Nat is also an inspiring person.”

During the pandemic, Adderley performed at the November 2020 New Jersey Jazz Society Virtual Social, from his home in West Orange. “My piano is in my living room, and the acoustics are real good,” he said at the time. His guests were Mike Lee and trumpeter James Gibbs III. He also managed to do quite a few live performances during the pandemic “because Tavern on George (in New Brunswick) was outside, and Shanghai Jazz (Madison) went outside to the back. So, I’m telling people, ‘This was the first time I was finding it more advantageous to be a musician in Jersey than in New York.’”

On January 29, 2019, Adderley appeared at Tavern on George with Lee, Berger, and drummer Vince Ector. Pointing out that “We’re losing too many important folks,” he paid tribute to the late tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath by playing “Big P”, a tune written by Heath for his broth-

“ I’LL PROBABLY BE OPENING THE SET WITH SOMETHING FROM WAYNE SHORTER. ”

er, bassist Percy Heath. Jimmy Heath had died nine days earlier at the age of 93. Adderley added that, in New Brunswick and West Orange, “I’ll probably be opening the set with something from Wayne Shorter. I’m not able to erase the phone numbers of the people who have left us,” he said. “I still have my last voice mail from (trumpeter) Wallace Roney.” Shorter died March 2, 2023, at the age of 89.

Adderley will be preceded at the New Brunswick festival by trombonist Conrad Herwig, whose latest album, The Latin Side of Mingus

(Savant: 2022) was described by The Latin Jazz Network’s Raul De Gama as, “a joyful voyage down the rapids of Mingus’ great oeuvre while enjoying the roaring river of Afro-Caribbean music ... Herwig recreates Mingus’ music in the ‘Latin’ idiom—an important exploration that Mingus himself had made twice in his own life.”

Said Adderley: “I love his most recent CD he has out now. I’ve got to go back and get some of his older stuff since I’m still discovering him. I’m going to be screaming and hollering from the crowd when he’s on that night.”

The West Orange Jazz Festival, presented by Pleasant Valley Productions, will be held Saturday, September 23, from 2-9 p.m. at the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center, 4 Boland Drive. There is a $10 charge for admission, with a $20 premium seating option available.

The New Brunswick segment of the Middlesex County Jazz Festival will be held from 1-6 p.m. on Saturday, September 30, in Monument Square Park at 2 Livingston Ave. The music starts at 1 p.m. with the New Brunswick Jazz Project Brass, followed by the Conrad Herwig Latin Side at 2:15 p.m. and the Nat Adderley Jr. Quartet at 4 p.m. Admission is free.

The MCJF planning team received a Grant Award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund, which is being shared equally among the five towns to fund the talented musicians who will perform .

Jazz Piano Legend

Cyrus Chestnut

Sunday Oct. 29, 2023 3 pm

Afternoon Music at Beacon — A Jewel of a Hall INFORMATION

908-248-2773

afternoonmusic.org

4 Waldron Ave. Summit NJ

TICKETS

$25 online $30 at the door students still free limited availability, buy now

Made possible by funds from the Union County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, a partner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts join our email list like us

Afternoon Music is a 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation, a supporting organization of Beacon Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Summit, New Jersey.

Third World Reggae Band Mixes Elements of R&B, Funk, and Pop

Guitarist/vocalist Stephen “Cat”

Coore is a founding member of Third World, one of the longest-lasting Reggae bands and one of Jamaica’s most consistently popular crossover acts among international audiences. He will be front and center on September 23 when Third World mixes in rhythm & blues, funk, pop, rock, dancehall, and rap elements at Kean University’s third annual Jazz and Roots Festival, a free music event on The Lawn at Enloe Hall.

Third World’s style has been described as “reggae-fusion,” but the band’s core style is roots Reggae. With a catalog of charted smash hits, including “Now That We Found Love,” “96 Degrees in the Shade,” and “Try Jah Love”, spanning over four decades,

From left, bassist Richard Daby, guitarist/ vocalist Stephen ‘Cat’ Coore, vocalist AJ Brown, drummer Tony ‘Ruption’ Williams, keyboardist Norris ‘Noriega’ Webb

sold-out tours, a vibrant and loyal fan base, and inspirational messages, Third World is more than just one of the top Reggae bands of all time; it is an institution that stands for producing and performing music that, while holding firm to the cultural and ancestral roots of its members, still pushes forward cutting-edge music worldwide.

While the band can get political sometimes, its music promotes positivity, progressiveness, and internationally relevant themes. Other performers at Jazz and Roots include vibraphonist Stefon Harris and Blackout, guitarist King Soloman Hicks, and DJ Prince Hakim.

Coore is the son of former Deputy Prime Minister David Coore, who helped draft the Jamaican Constitution in 1961. “My mom was a music teacher who studied at the Royal College of Music,” he said. “She really encouraged me. At six years old, I started playing the cello. When I got

to around 13, I got interested in popular music like the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, and Jimi Hendrix, along with Jamaican music that I heard on the streets like early Bob Marley and The Skatalites. Coore switched to guitar to play popular music and joined a popular Jamaican act called Inner Circle. “With Inner Circle, we played cover songs at hotels and dances.”

He left Inner Circle around the age of 17. “I wanted to do something different, where I could write music and be more creative. So I decided I wanted to start my own group, and we began Third World, and our first gig was for the Independence Holiday.” The group gained notoriety in Kingston and even supported the Jackson Five when they played at the Jamaican National Stadium. Third World grew more internationally popular when it opened for Bob Marley and the Wailers in Europe in 1976. Coore recalled that

experience. “Bob Marley and I met when playing with Inner Circle. With Third World, we opened for him, and that’s when we got our break. Then we signed with Island Records. Bob was serious and could be angry sometimes, but he also had a beautiful spirit and a quick sense of humor. I really admired him, and he greatly influenced all the Jamaican musicians who came after him. To me, he’s like a Black Christ. Known mainly by Reggae fans, the group gained greater attention for its hit “1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade)”

in 1978. Coore co-wrote the song with Michael “Ibo” Cooper. “The song tells the story of the end of slavery in Jamaica. People think it’s a touristy song about a guy having a cocktail under a coconut tree, but we are telling a really important story.” The group’s biggest hit was “Now That We Found Love,” a song written by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff and originally recorded by American R&B/soul vocal group The O’Jays. “The song broke us, and our recording was a rough first take.” “Now That We Found Love” reached Number

Stephen ‘Cat’ Coore

10 in the UK and Number 4 in the U.S.

While it has never had another hit in the U.S., the group remained popular among its core fans and charted a few more singles in the UK. Third World has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards but has not yet received a win. When I asked Coore about being snubbed he said the following. “I think we are a bit unlucky, and I think some people think we are not authentic Reggae but some sort of

fusion group. We may win one soon, but the nine nominations are good enough for me.” Although several members have left or passed, Third World has found a way to continue to record and tour, and it doesn’t seem like that will stop anytime soon. “We are going to continue to make music, and we want to merge generations because we are 50 years old as a band, and every album has been fresh, so we are just going to make more music.”

Jazz & Roots Schedule

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

Festival begins at 3:30 p.m. in this order:

» Guitarist King Solomon Hicks

» Vibraphonist Stefon Harris & Blackout

» Third World (DJ Prince Hakim will be entertaining the audience before and in-between sets).

Located

Madison McFerrin

RISING STAR

James Moody Scholarship Winner

Mecadon McCune to Perform at West Orange and Montclair Jazz Festivals

“When I Would Go to Gigs with My Dad, I Would Always be Watching the Drummer.”

Mecadon McCune has been immersed in music since he was born. His father is veteran jazz pianist Brandon McCune; his mother, Christine Clemmons-McCune, is an opera singer. “My dad made sure that I was learning piano since I was about four years old,” he said, “but growing up I really did not like learning the piano. When I would go to gigs with my dad, I would always be watching the drummer—Jaimeo Brown, who recently moved to California; Alvester Garnett when my dad played with Regina Carter; Lenny White when my dad played with Buster Williams.”

Brandon McCune was a frequent performer at the now defunct West Orange jazz club, Cecil’s, run by drummer Cecil Brooks III, and Mecadon recalled, “At Cecil’s, there was a picture of me on my dad’s lap when I was seven months old, while he’s playing piano. I was at Cecil’s all the time, and Cecil Brooks was like an uncle to me. I love that guy.”

The move from piano to drums became official four years ago when McCune was a freshman at Science Park High School in Newark. “I was in the jazz band playing piano my freshman year,” he recalled, “but Mario Banks,

RISING STAR

the school’s Band Director, advocated to my parents that I be allowed to play drums. He knew that’s where I wanted to be. He’s the actual reason that I play drums. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know if I would even be doing music right now. He supported me musically and in so many more ways as well.”

In June, McCune was awarded the $10,000 James Moody Scholarship to study Jazz Performance at Montclair State University. It is co-presented by Moody’s widow, Linda Moody, and Jazz House Kids and administered by the Community Foundation of New Jersey. The judges were: bassist and JHK Artistic Director Christian McBride, pianist Renee Rosnes, alto saxophonist Mark Gross, and trumpeters Ted Chubb and Nathan Eklund.

Chubb, who is Jazz House Kids Vice President of Arts Education and Director of the Jazz House Summer Workshop, said, “We had

always looking for musicians who want to present their own personality in the music while recognizing the tradition that has come before them; and Mecadon is truly developing as a musician that embodies that mindset.”

some incredible applicants this year, which made the final decision that much more difficult, but Mecadon checks every single box of what this prize is meant to embody, what a musician is supposed to be, and what a citizen is supposed to be.”

Eklund, who directs the Jazz House Big Band, of which McCune is a member, described McCune to me as “an extremely talented and

hard-working young musician that I am so excited to hear every time I get the opportunity. It has been a true pleasure working with him over the past year and watching him inspire and be inspired by his peers at Jazz House! It’s clear his childhood was filled with growing up around all kinds of music, and his instinct for playing the drums shows a deep connection to jazz and its history. I’m

In August 2022, McCune was part of a quartet that performed as the Rising Stars opening act at the New Jersey Jazz Society’s Jersey Jazz LIVE! concert in Madison, NJ. All four members of that quartet won awards at the 15th annual Charles Mingus High School Competition & Festival held in February at the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York. McCune, alto saxophonist Ginger Meyer, and trumpeter Alvaro Caravaca won Outstanding Soloist awards; and bassist Sam Konin won the Charles Mingus Electric Bass Award for his performance of Mingus’

“The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines”. Konin, from Lawrenceville, NJ, will be performing with McCune and

Mecadon McCune on drums at NJJS Jersey Jazz LIVE! concert in August 2022. Ginger Meyer is on alto saxophone and Sam Konin is on bass.

PHOTO BY MITCHELL SEIDEL

RISING STAR

“ THE 18-YEAR-OLD DRUMMER WAS BUSY IN AUGUST. ”

Maplewood pianist Ben Collins-Siegel at the West Orange Jazz Festival on September 23 (see page 33). And, McCune will be performing with some past James Moody Scholarship winners at the Montclair Jazz Festival on September 9 (see page 24).

The 18-year-old drummer was also busy in August. On August 17, he led a quartet in an outdoor concert in Scotch Plains. Konin was on bass; Ben Sherman, a high school student from Brooklyn, was on saxophone; and the pianist was James Bally, a William Paterson jazz student from Elizabeth. On August 19, McCune’s parents hosted a graduation recital for him at Newark’s Akwaaba Art

Gallery. Once again, his “go-to bassist” was Konin. The tenor saxophonist was Birsa Chatterjee, “an amazing tenor player based in New York right now,” and the trumpeter was Eklund. (See article on Nathan Eklund’s Jazz House Collective band on page ??).

Classes at Montclair State began on August 28, and McCune was “very excited” about getting started with his college music studies. Drummers Alvester Garnett and Billy Hart are on the MSU faculty, and another drummer, Jerome Jennings, teaches jazz history. “I’ve met all three,” he said, “because they’re instructors at Jazz House Kids. And, Alvester is my personal instructor.” -SANFORD JOSEPHSON

FROM THE CROW’S NEST

BY BILL CROW

Shelly Ferrell posted this on Facebook:

We used to play this big Florida club. The two guys that owned it were in the mob, but they loved our band and paid us great money. The problem was, one of the guys got busted for moving big quantities of coke, and part of his probation was that he was forbidden to go near this bar, because that’s where he did a lot of his dirty deals. The next time we played there, we were just starting our set when I saw the big garage door backstage go up. My drums used to travel in big flight cases, and one of them was long like a coffin. I saw two crew members roll that case out of the garage door, down the ramp and into our truck. The truck drove away, and

Bill Crow is a freelance musician and writer. His books include Jazz Anecdotes, Jazz Anecdotes: Second Time Around, and From Birdland to Broadway. This column is reprinted with permission from Allegro , the monthly magazine of AFM Local 802.

10 minutes later, it came back, and they rolled the big coffin-case back into the club and tipped it up on end. They opened the latches, and this Sopranos-looking dude was inside, just waving and smiling ear-to-ear. I’m thinking “Yes, this is how my life will end,” because if law enforcement got wind of it he might try to shoot his way out. But his plan worked. He watched our whole set and then then the roadies rolled him back into the truck and carted him home.

Lin McPhillips quoted Harry Edison: “Well, this happened one day in March back in ‘37. All of us in the Basie band were sitting around the lobby of the Woodside Hotel in New York. It was snowing outside, and we were waiting for the bus to go on a tour of one-nighters. We were all like brothers in that band. I was kind of the baby of the band and took a

lot of the ribbing. So, this time Lester Young was joshing me about my ‘sweet’ style, and he said: “We’re going to call you ‘Sweetie Pie.” They did, too, for a few months. Then they shortened it to ‘Sweets.’ The nickname has kind of lasted a long time.”

Kevin Larson told about playing in a band where the guitar player said he was quitting. “He had us over for a nice dinner, and afterward we went to the bar to play his last show. The bar owner was buying us shots, and everything was going great until the last set. An out-oftowner showed up wasted, and he proceeded to get even more so. He loved, loved, loved the band, and especially the lead singer. He danced around in circles by himself, then tripped over the monitor and landed face first on the retiring guitar player’s pedalboard. The bouncer

FROM THE CROW’S NEST

picked him up, and there was blood running down the guy’s face onto the pedalboard. I asked my friend, ‘Are you SURE you want to quit?’”

Jerry Wayne posted this:

When I first moved to Florida, no one knew me, and I was open to take any gig that would pay me. Even those I knew would end up being a difficult crowd. One of those gigs was at Century Village, a senior community ranging in ages from 70 to deceased.

We were playing a favorite of the audience when a lady came up to me and said that we were playing the song too fast, and she could not dance to it that way. I asked her to turn around to see the huge dance floor packed with around 500 seniors dancing. I asked, “If it is too fast, why are they all dancing?” Her answer was the funniest I ever heard. “They’re all wrong.”

Steve Kessler wrote that he played piano for the dinner crowd at an assisted living facility. “I played all kinds of music. A sweet resident came over to me afterwards and said ‘I used to sing in a band. But we did the modern stuff. Like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.’”

And Marc Apfelstadt said he played one where an old lady was wheeled into place, front row, before the performance. She promptly fell asleep and remained so through the whole event. When people started applauding at the end, she woke up and shouted out, “When will the concert start?”

Brian Hagen told this story:

Ages ago, in a Top 40 band, our idiot boss booked us at a dingy joint in International Falls, MN (aka “the lumberjack capital of America”). Part way into the first set, a big brawny drunk approached our singer, grabbed

him by the throat and very profanely yelled at us to start playing some ROCK N ROLL!! We all took off our tux coats and ties and started winging ‘50s tunes. The dance floor then filled up with dirty lumberjacks and dingy off-duty strippers. Fights were breaking out and, according to the bartender, that was “just these guys’ way of having fun.” Fortunately, we got fired the next day. At least we were able to leave town without getting mauled.

Herb Gardner sent this: In Boston we had Mel Dorfman, a fine jazz clarinet player, and also a uniquely strange character, who worked in a bookstore, worshipped Benny Goodman and would send him a Christmas card every year. After several years with no responses, Mel finally gave it up. Around the following Easter he got a note in the mail: “Where’s my Christmas card? Benny Goodman.”

OTHER VIEWS

BY JOE LANG

For the past 32 years, Mike Vax has done a yeoman job of keeping the legacy of the legendary big band leader Stan Kenton alive. Kenton was adamant that he did not want a ghost band under his name after he left the scene. Vax honored that wish but believed strongly that the unique approach to the music fostered by Kenton, as well as the great commitment Kenton had to jazz education should not be allowed to fall by the wayside. His solution was to form a big band that included many Kenton alumni to present programs containing both classic Kenton charts and new arrangements that captured the approach to big band music favored by Kenton. In addition, he carried on another Kenton tradition by offering clinics staffed by members of his band for players in high school jazz

bands. Ultimately, he was authorized by the Kenton estate to use the name Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra . The Stage Door Still Swings (and Movies Too) (Summit—814) is a compilation of tracks including melodies from musical theater and films from a dozen concerts by the band from various combinations during its 32 years. There are charts from the old Kenton book as well as many new charts written specifically for the band. Overall, it presents a fine landscape of the music presented by this consistently impressive aggregation, offering along the way individual contributions by trumpeters Vax and Carl Saunders, saxophonists Kim Richmond and Joel Kaye, trombonists Scott Whitfield and Dale Devoe, and pianist Bob Florence. Here is an eclectic program that

never wanes in its engaging appeal. S ummitRecords.com

Mavis Rivers is a singer who is too often overlooked when great pop/jazz vocalists are discussed. Her three albums, each on Capitol and Reprise, are gems. She passed on her musical genes to her son Matt Catingub . He is a multiinstrumentalist/vocalist/arranger/ band leader. On From Samoa to Sinatra (Summit—813), Catingub has created a wonderful tribute to his mother. He was able to isolate the vocal tracks from her Reprise albums to use as part of this album. There are 15 tracks that feature scintillating new charts from Catingub. The songs are ones that he closely associates with Rivers, most of which she recorded. On some he has paired her original

vocals with new arrangements. On others, he has combined her vocals with ones by him to form duo tracks. He has also used her voice as part of a vocal quartet, providing the other three voices himself. The band was recorded remotely during the pandemic by musicians located throughout the nation. This album provides shining examples of the vocal artistry of Rivers as well as an impressive display of range of talent possessed by Catingub. S ummitRecords.com

The Brooklyn-based Danny Jonokuchi Big Band is led by trumpeter Jonokuchi, who also provided the arrangements for the 11 tracks on Voices (Outside In Music—2315). The program features 15 standards sung by 11 outstanding young New York City area vocalists.

OTHER VIEWS

The selections are “The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else” by Alexa Barchini, “All of Me” by Tahira Clayton, “Social Call” by Nicole Zuraitis, “Summertime” by Brianna Thomas, “You Turned the Tables on Me” by Shenel Johns, “What a Difference a Day Made” by Alita Moses, “Blame It on My Youth” by Charles Turner, “Born to Be Blue” by Lucy Yeghiazaryan, “So Many Stars” by Sirintip, “All or Nothing At All” by Martina DaSilva, and “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So” by Hannah Gill.” Jonokuchi has written charts that swing hard and offer terrific musical beds for the vocalists. From first track to last, this is an aural feast. (Danny Jonokuchi was featured as a Jersey Jazz Rising Star in the March 2021 issue.) DannyJonokuchi.com

Me” and “I’m in the Mood for Love.”

The lineup varies from track to track and includes Hannah Gill, Queen Esther or Gabe Terracciano on vocals; Terraccinao on violin; Alphonso Horne or Jon Seiger on trumpet; Dan Levinson or Danny Lipsitz on reeds; J. Walter Hawkes or Ron Webster on trombone; Gordon Webster on piano; Justin

Poindexter on guitar, banjo or organ; Brandi Disterheft, Ian Hutchison or Wallace Stelzer on bass; and Patrick Soluri on drums. Slip this disc into your player ,and it will keep a smile on your face. HotToddies.band

Alto saxophonist Kent Engelhardt and trumpeter Stephen Enos co-lead a Cleveland-based big band Madd for

One of the bands that has been enjoying great popularity on the swing and classic jazz scenes is The Hot Toddies Jazz Band (Prohibition Productions). Its self-titled debut album will keep your toes tapping throughout the 11 selections: “Digga Digga Do,” “Love Me or Leave Me,” “I Wan’na Be Like You,” “Kansas City,” “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You,” “Kilowatt Stomp,” “Saint Louis Blues,” Blue Drag,” “When I Get Low, I Get High,” “Mean to

Tadd , a group dedicated to playing the music of composer/arranger/ pianist/leader Tadd Dameron. They have released a superb collection of Dameronia on a double album, “Central Avenue Swing” & “Our Delight” (self-produced). “Central Avenue Swing” is devoted to music written by Cleveland-born Dameron for Harlen Leonard and his Rockets while he was the pianist on that band in the early 1940s. He later went on to write for big bands led by Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie as well as bands which he fronted. In addition, he wrote charts for John Coltrane and Blue Mitchell among others. Music from this later period of his career, from the mid1940s to the late 1950s forms the material explored on “Our Delight.” Dameron was truly one of the giants of big band arranging and was also a magnificent composer. Among his most memorable compositions were

“Hot House,” “If You Could See Me Now,” “Good Bate’” “Our Delight” and “Lady Bird,” the latter two being among the selections on the second disc with clever lyrics by Engelhardt sung by Erin Keckin. If you are not into Dameron’s music, this provides a great jumping off place. If you already dig Dameron, you will certainly want to add this set to your collection. MaddForTadd.com

Raymond Scott’s place in jazz was a matter of dispute for many jazz critics. He was best known for creating tunes with clever titles that were played by his sextet, called the Raymond Scott Quintette. He did not compose on paper, rather created melodies at his piano and added the parts for the other members of his group by suggesting riffs to them and then working the arrangements out as a group. Once set, the arrangements did not offer

space for improvisation, an early incarnation of chamber jazz. His tunes attracted the attention of Carl Stalling who selected music for Warner Bros. cartoons, and this resulted in much of Scott’s music finding a home with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Jeremy Cohen, principal violinist and founder of Quartet San Francisco was fascinated with Scott’s music and conceived a project called Raymond Scott Reimagined

(Violinjazz Recordings—110), a collaboration with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. The program includes 10 selections with four spoken word interludes by Scott taken from Deconstructing Dad, a documentary about Scott interspersed among the tunes. The Quartet San Francisco appears on eight of the instrumental selections with support from Goodwin’s personnel, in some instances the full big band and on others with select personnel. There are two tracks, “In an 18th Century Drawing Room” and “Serenade” where the quartet accompanies the vocal group, Take 6. Goodwin wrote the charts. In one instance, he took a Scott fragment and finished composing “Cutey and the Dragon,” a piece premiered on this recording. Cohen has taken an interesting collection of musical pieces and provided them with new settings and life. ViolinJazzRecordings.com

BIG BAND IN THE SKY

Continued from page 18

Tom Artin My Friend and Bandmate.

BY MARK SHANE

Trombonist Tom Artin passed away on July 25, 2023, at the age of 84. Pianist Mark Shane, a friend and fellow musician, pays tribute to him. What follows is an extremely impressive resumé of the work of Tom Artin, my friend and bandmate for many happy years. Tom and I shared an interest not only in music but also in photography. I was privileged to know and work with him

Tom was a teacher, jazz musician, author, and photographer, and a beloved brother, father, husband, grandfather, great grandfather, friend, and social activist. Among his many contributions to the arts were dozens of books and records, and thousands of photographs.

He was born in 1938 in Bloomington, IN, to mathematicians Emil Artin and Natasha Jasny Artin, who immigrated from Germany along with Tom’s brother, Michael, and sister, Karin. Tom began playing jazz in junior high school in a band organized by the now celebrated American composer John Harbison.

When he was a sophomore in high school, he was recruited by an undergraduate jazz band at Princeton University and toured Europe in the summer of 1955 in a VW van. Since then, he has played throughout the U.S. and Europe with several world-renowned jazz groups including the Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble, the Louis Armstrong Alumni All-Stars, the World of Jelly Roll Morton, the

In 2014

Mark Shane, left, and Tom Artin released an album for Slide Records called Slide & Stride Redux.

World’s Greatest Jazz Band, and Wild Bill Davison. He played lead trombone in Mel Tormé’s big band, recorded live at Michael’s Pub in New York, and played with Bob Wilber’s Benny Goodman revival big band.

Tom played at many festivals, including Kool Jazz in New York and Baltimore, the Illinois Jazz Festival,

the North Carolina Jazz Festival, the Atlanta Jazz Party, the Guinness Jazz Festival in Ireland, the Floating Jazz Festival aboard the S.S. Norway, The Lugano Jazz Festival, and the Ascona Jazz Festival, both in Switzerland. For about five years he was the house trombonist at Eddie Condon’s in New York, having inherited the seat of a childhood idol, Vic Dickenson.

In 1994, he performed at the White House for the annual Christmas Congressional Ball. In 1999, he appeared at Rome’s celebrated jazz club Alexanderplatz. Beginning in 2006, he appeared regularly as guest artist with John Harbison at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival in DeForest, WI. He has played on movie and television soundtracks and appears on numerous recordings.

Tom attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 and captured images of others that day who gathered

BIG BAND IN THE SKY

to demand an end to racist segregation, discrimination, and intolerance. He was uplifted by Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, and later published “March On” and exhibited the photographs in many galleries.

After graduating from Princeton with a PhD in Comparative Literature, Tom taught at Swarthmore College, Drexel University, Empire State University, SUNY Rockland and UMass Lowell. He studied Comparative Literature at Princeton until deciding to become the full-time house trombonist at Eddie Condon’s until the club closed. Then, he played at hundreds of venues around the world, taking photographs as he traveled.

In 1990, Tom founded and was CEO of Artin Music, an agency representing dozens of jazz, classical, and folk musicians; and he formed the TomCats Big Band and the Tom Artin Jazz Quartet and continued for years playing with Harbison, now one of the world’s most recognized composers. The business expanded as Artin Arts beginning in 2003; for more than 30 years he oversaw the creative direction of the firm which today continues to serve businesses and non-profits.

A quietly generous humanitarian and activ-

ist, he photographed the work of many non-profit organizations, including the American Austrian Foundation where he lived at the Schloss Arenberg, a castle in Salzburg, Austria, and photographed the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and created a portrait of a fellow Princetonian, Gerhard R. Andlinger ’52. His son Michael Artin ’87 followed in his father’s footsteps to Princeton, where Tom’s father Emil Artin taught mathematics from 1946 to 1958.

Tom restored, cataloged, and curated his mother Natascha Artin Brunswick’s broad collection of photographs and dark room prints taken in Nazi Germany; today 227 photographs are in the permanent collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe after a one-woman exhibition, Hamburg, As I Saw It. Photographs from the 1920s and 30s.

He is survived by his wife, Cynthia Artin; two sons Peter and Michael Artin, seven grandchildren, one great-grandchild, his brother Michael and his wife Jean, and his sister Karin, along with dozens of nieces and nephews, and hundreds of friends whose lives were made extraordinary by a man who documented life, and poured love into his family until he died at the historic home he renovated in the Hudson Valley.

BIG BAND IN THE SKY

Dr. Steven Alexander

Well-Known Urologist Who Was Also an Accomplished Jazz Pianist

Steven Alexander, M.D., a wellknown urologist in the New Jersey/ New York area, was also an accomplished jazz pianist. He passed away on August 16, 2023, at the age of 88.

Dr. Alexander served on the Board of the New Jersey Jazz Society for many years and was also affiliated with William Paterson University. Stew Schiffer, a current NJJS Board member (and a drummer) often performed with Alexander. Pointing out that Alexander was “passionate about his family, his medical career, and serving his community,” Schiffer added that he was just as passionate about “music and, in particular,

the American Songbook. He played piano with numerous bands, from trios to big bands and every size in between throughout the Tri-State Area. He played into his late 80s before illness forced him to stop.”

David Demsey, Coordinator of Jazz Studies at William Paterson, said Alexander “took literally every undergrad jazz course that we teach, and a

few grad courses as well! He studied jazz piano with James Weidman for a number of years, and he had studied classical piano and theory with Jeffrey Kresky, who recently retired as head of our Music Theory area.

“I remember Steve saying to me one January, ‘All my retired doctor friends are playing golf and tennis in Boca, and I’m up here practicing scales and patterns in all keys. This is exactly what I want to be doing!’ The students treated him as one of their own—not just out of ‘respect for one’s elders’, but because he knew the music, and he could play. They would be analyzing the music of Ellington in class, and Steve could hang right with them. Then, he’d add a quiet aside of, ‘And, he was a great guy, too.’ The students would be stunned because all those 20-somethings had forgotten they had an 80-something in their midst. The funeral ceremony at Temple Beth Tikva in Wayne, NJ, on August 20

ended with a New Orleans band in the synagogue parking lot, playing us all out. Steve organized the whole thing.”

Born in Passaic, NJ, Dr. Alexander studied medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, interned at the Cincinnati General Hospital Medical Center and did his residency training in surgery and urology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was an attending urologist on the staff of Passaic General Hospital, Passaic Beth Israel Hospital, and St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic. He was also an Assistant Professor of Urology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Survivors include his wife, Razie; two daughters, Heather Alexander Seltzer and Ellen Jaffe; one son, Craig Alexander; a sister, Priscilla Alexander; six grandchildren; and several nieces, nephews, great-nieces, great-nephews, and cousins. Dr. Alexander’s email address was: drjazz823@aol.com.

Leny Andrade

‘The Ella Fitzgerald of Brazil’

Tony Bennett once called Leny Andrade “the Ella Fitzgerald of Brazil.” Paquito D’Rivera, the Grammy-winning multireedist, saluted her on his 1990 composition “For Leny.” And, The New York Times’ Stephen Holden, reviewing a New York club performance by her in 2008, wrote: “You may think you know ‘The Girl from Ipanema’, but you haven’t really absorbed it until you’ve heard Ms. Andrade sing it in Portuguese ... like everything else she performs, it seems to well up from the center of the earth.”

Andrade, who died on July 24,

2023, in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 80, recorded more than 35 albums of what she chose to call “bossa-jazz”. She made her American debut in 1983 at New York’s Blue Note jazz club, and The Times’ John S. Wilson compared her to Edith Piaf. “Miss Andrade sings in a darker, softer voice than Piaf’s,” he wrote, “with a dramatic effect that comes through even to a listener who doesn’t understand Portuguese.”

Born in Rio on January 26, 1943, Andrade began studying classical piano and singing when she was six years old. She became fascinated by bossa nova and was influenced by the samba stylings of Dolores Duran, a popular Brazilian singer.

Early in her career, she sang with the Sergio Mendes Trio, a jazz group, prior to Mendes becoming an international star with his band, Brasil 66. “He said he hated samba,” she told Es-

quina Musical. “He didn’t play it. And, I said the same about jazz. But we ended up giving in and mixing the two.”

According to The Times’ Alex Williams (August 4, 2023), Andrade “came to embrace jazz and its improvisational wordless singing style known as scat.” An early album, A Arte Maior de Leny, on the Polydor label, combined bossa nova with traditional jazz.

One of her frequent musical partners was guitarist Roni BenHur. In an article for jazz radio station WBGO, he wrote, “She never forced anything, or insisted on a certain arrangement. ‘Let’s see what happens’ was her modus operandi. Without fear, and doubts.”

No information was available regarding survivors. She was married briefly when she was young and never had any children.

Bob Jones

“The Right Type of Person to Take Monk Around the World”

Bob Jones, who produced the Newport Folk Festival for 20 years and was a key member of the Newport Jazz Festival staff for nearly 40 years, died August 14, 2023, at the age of 86 in Danbury, CT.

Joining Festival Productions as a volunteer in the early 1960s, Jones was described by NJF Founder George Wein (in his book, Myself Among Others: Da Capo Press: 2003) as “the most diligent and devoted of these volunteers ... an invaluable asset—not only as a member of the folk festival staff, but for the next 40 years as an indispensable member of the hierarchy of Festival Productions, Incorporated.”

Jones was present on the night in 1965 when Bob Dylan infuriated folk traditionalists by playing an electric instead of an acoustic guitar. He also helped convince Wein to revive the folk festival in 1985 after an absence of 16 years.

In addition to his folk festival

duties, Jones was involved in all aspects of Wein’s productions including the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France; the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival; and the Kool Jazz Festivals in New York and around the country. Jones also served as road manager for Wein’s international tours, which featured Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Ellington in the ‘60s and Sarah Vaughan in the ‘80s.

According to Nate Chinen, Editorial Director of WRTI Radio (and co-author of Wein’s book), Jones “was an intelligent and low-key person who was unfazed by chaos and worked really well with artists. So, you can imagine he was the right type of person to take Monk around the world.”

Jones is survived by his wife, Marguerite; his daughters, Radhika and Nalini; his son, Christopher; his sisters, Helen von Schmidt and Marcia McCarthy; and three grandchildren.

Your membership is vital to NJJS’s mission to promote and preserve America’s great art form— JAZZ!

NEW MEMBERS

NOT WITHOUT YOU!

Bob Adleman MONTCLAIR, NJ

Alan Chaubert SHOBO MUSIC ACADEMY

Misa Iwama SUMMIT, NJ

RENEWAL MEMBERS

John Banger HIGH BRIDGE, NJ

Peter Carey ALLENDALE, NJ

Patricia Curry VAUXHALL, NJ

Robert Diken METUCHEN, NJ

THANK YOU and welcome to all who have recently joined or renewed their memberships. We can’t do what we do without you! NJJS

Julie Kolehouse CHATHAM, NJ

Jay Larry DENVER, CO

Mark Miller SOUTH ORANGE, NJ

Mary Rosenberg

Alonzo Ryan MORRISTOWN, NJ

Gloria & Len Feiner SPRINGFIELD, NJ

Larry & Jane Fuller PRINCETON, NJ

Gary Harris HACKETTSTOWN, NJ

Lorelei Harris MORRISTOWN, NJ

Scott Heavner WAYNE, NJ

Jersey City Public Library JERSEY CITY, NJ

Mike Katz & Jackie Wetcher CHATHAM, NJ

Cheryl Levy BASKING RIDGE, NJ

Richard Levy RANDOLPH, NJ

Bob McGee BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ

New Brunswick

Jazz Project NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ

David Orthmann WANAQUE, NJ

David Ostwald NEW YORK, NY

Lewis Polk VERO BEACH, FL

David Post HOBOKEN, NJ

Monroe Quinn NORTH BERGEN, NJ

Alan Routh CHATHAM, NJ

Lorenzo Sandi Stewart Schiffer WEST ORANGE, NJ