NEA Jazz Masters Program Finds New Support for Federal Funding

The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations recently insisted on the continuation of the 29-year-old Jazz Masters fellowship, which was recommended to be cut earlier in the year by the National Endowment of the Arts. The 2012 appropriations bill submitted by the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (which includes NEA appropriations) was approved by the Committee only under the stipulation that the Jazz Masters program continue.
The Appropriations Committee’s bill still awaits a full floor vote from the House of Representatives, review and approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee and the full Senate, and final enactment by President Barack Obama. This leaves a lot of room for amendment and adaptation.
Find more info at www.nea.gov/national/jazz.

CALL/WRITE YOUR CONGRESSPERSON AND SENATORS

New book celebrates David Baker’s career as jazz musician, composer and master teacher

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — David Baker has received just about every honor imaginable in his 60-year career as a jazz musician and educator. The Distinguished Professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music has recorded extensively, been acclaimed for his playing, writing and arranging, and done more than just about anyone to establish and shape college-level teaching of jazz.

He has been named a national Living Jazz Legend, an Indiana Living Legend and a NEA Jazz Master. And he is the author of countless books on jazz pedagogy, theory, improvisation and history.

Monika Herzig (left) with friend, mentor and book subject David Baker
Print-Quality Photo
But never has he been the subject of a book — until now. David Baker: A Legacy in Music, published by Indiana University Press and scheduled for release next week, celebrates Baker’s life and his work as a musician, composer, author, arts advocate and, especially, teacher and educator.

Monika Herzig, the book’s primary author and editor, is a professional jazz pianist and a lecturer in the Arts Management Program in IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. When she learned that no one had produced a book about Baker, her mentor and friend, she decided to do the job herself.

“I owe him so much,” she said. “This is a very special thing to be able to do.”

The release of the book and a book launch concert and signing on Nov. 6 anticipate Baker’s upcoming 80th birthday. An official Jacobs School of Music birthday celebration will take place Jan. 21, 2012. Information will be posted at http://blogs.music.indiana.edu/bakercelebration/.

While it includes rich details about Baker’s life, David Baker: A Legacy in Music isn’t a biography but a tribute focusing on Baker’s work and career. It is accompanied by a full-length CD and includes a foreword by Quincy Jones and photographs from throughout Baker’s career, including pictures with music legends J.J. Johnson, Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Wes Montgomery and Josef Gingold.

Along with Herzig, seven other colleagues and former students contribute chapters on Baker’s early years in Indianapolis, his rise as a New York trombone star with the George Russell Sextet and other groups, his move from jazz clubs to the academy, his rigorous approach to teaching, the music he has produced with the Bloomington-based 21st Century Bebop Band and as leader of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, and his accomplishments as a composer and arts advocate.

Contributors include Jacobs School of Music faculty members Lissa May, David Ward-Steinmann and Brent Wallarab; University of Pittsburgh Director of Jazz Studies Nathan Davis; Smithsonian Institution Curator of American Music John Edward Hasse; promoter and author Willard Jenkins; and Thelonious Monk Institute Director of Education JB Dyas. The project is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For his part, Baker says he is profoundly grateful for the appreciation shown by the project, and thankful that Herzig is the one who took it on. “She knows the music, she knows how to play the music, and she’s a composer and a recording artist,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone else I could have worked with on this.”

He is also grateful for his career, which he attributes to hard work rather than innate talent. And he is philosophical about the turns that it took. Complications from injuries suffered in a serious traffic accident forced Baker to stop playing trombone in the 1960s. He took up the cello, became proficient on the new and difficult instrument and redoubled his dedication to teaching, composition and arranging as a member of IU music faculty.

“If it hadn’t been for the accident, I’m not sure I would have ever become a teacher,” he said. “When one door closes, another door opens.”

Baker continues to work hard, chairing the Jazz Studies Department, directing a student jazz ensemble and teaching current classes on jazz history, bebop and improvisation. Despite having taught for decades, he prepares anew for classes and expects to learn as he teaches.

“It’s a constant learning process,” he said. “I can’t imagine there’s any reason to be an educator if you’re going to stand still.”

Related events

Also in connection with Baker’s birthday, WFIU radio’s “Night Lights” program will broadcast a two-part special Dec. 10 and 17 drawing on interviews for the book, host David Brent Johnson’s interviews with Baker and composer-music historian Gunther Schuller and featuring Baker’s jazz and “Third Stream” music. It will be archived at http:// indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights.

On Dec. 21, there will be a formal dinner and concert at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis, featuring the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra playing Baker’s original music. VIP tickets are $150 and include dinner, drinks and a newly re-issued CD of the Buselli-Wallarab orchestra playing Baker’s music.

An IU Press audio podcast of an interview with Baker and Herzig can be heard at http://ht.ly/6Xu5j. Copies of David Baker: A Legacy in Music may be purchased online from IU Press. To speak with Herzig, contact Steve Hinnefeld at University Communications, 812-856-3488 or slhinnef@iu.edu.

Copyright © 2010 The Trustees of Indiana University | Copyright Complaints

Besides being one of the quintessential second generation bop pianists, the late Walter Bishop, Jr., who played with a broad range of masters, from Charlie Parker and Miles Davis to Archie Shepp and Makanda Ken McIntyre, was a man of letters, authoring two instructional books, and even doing some acting in his day. He was also a serious poet and member of the poetry society known as Poets Four. Special thanks to the gracious lady Valerie Bishop for sharing some of the unique poetic expressions of Walter Bishop, Jr. which the Independent Ear will share with you over the next few weeks.

Cover of Coral Keys (Black Jazz), one of Walter Bishop, Jr.’s essential recordings

Relaxin’ With Max, The Invincible Roach
by Walter Bishop, Jr.

There was a Roach named Maxwell. He was unusual in that he could fly, having been born with wings.
He also played the drums, of all things. From his home in South Carolina, he came to the Big City, via
Brooklyn. There he got hooked up with some other insects.

Let me see… there was a Yardbug that flew in from K.C. And man, he could play the blues on alto, like
you never heard. A Birks-bug from South Carolina, could play notes on the trumpet that would make
you Dizzy. There was The-Lonious-Bug from North Carolina, who played piano. To my mind, he was the
strangest bug of all! And they say he was born ‘Round Midnight. I don’t doubt that at all.

These, plus some other bugs got together and they created some of the damnedest music you ever
heard. Soon, the other insects spread the word. They proclaimed, “A New Music is Born.”

Be-Bop it was called. It spread like wildfire. Grasshoppers did the lindy to it. Even the jitterbugs
waltzed to it. All the insects wanted to learn it. But you couldn’t be jiving. You had to earn it.

Well, these creatures used to congregate at a spot in Harlem called the Bug House. Insects came from
far and wide. They came crawling, running and flying. Society got the word that the bugs and Roaches
were infesting Harlem with this new music, and decided to exterminate the creatures. They came with
insecticides, pesticides, DDT, Black Flag and others. They sprayed and sprayed and kept on spraying.

The creatures prayed and prayed and kept on playing. Do you dig what Ahm saying? Instead of dying,
they kept multiplying. Then, they brought in the big Rock to crush them.

Well, that did slow them down a bit. Because they all couldn’t survive it. It even left Max un poco loco.
They couldn’t kill Birks, they just made him stronger. The-Lonious, I’m told, is hidden away to last a little
longer. The Yardbug flew to the higher ground. But what he left will always be around. Remembrances,
too, to Buggs Dwyer. One of the lesser known creatures – not a flier.

Now Max is alive and well. Playing the song they couldn’t quell – Freedom Now.

Thank you, Max, for showing me the way.

Your friend, Walter Bishop, Jr.

Part five of our ongoing dialogues with musicians where we ask the burning question:
When you read music journalism and criticism what qualities are you looking for in the writer and the writing?

This time we hear from trumpeter-bandleader-educator Sean Jones, a busy man these days what with his teaching assignments at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, his artistic direction of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, leading his own band and putting in sideman work here and there. Sean’s latest recording is “No Need For Words” (Mack Avenue). And we travel west to the Bay Area of San Francisco to hear from pianist-bandleader Mark Levine, who in addition to leading his Latin Tinge band is one of the plaintiffs in a landmark lawsuit against the Grammy Awards for their recent draconian decision to summarily eliminate several awards categories – notably for Levine, the former Latin Jazz category – without so much as consulting membership. Mark’s latest recording is “Off & On – The Music of Moacir Santos”.

SEAN JONES

“If I am looking at a journalist’s work, I tend to research their credentials (i.e. music experience). After researching I then do my best to read the review or writing from what could be their perspective based on those credentials. But honestly, I do my best to avoid reviews as they are simply opinions based on one’s personal taste and what they believe is either good or bad.”

MARK LEVINE

“I generally don’t read jazz criticism, unless its a review of a gig or a CD of my own. To me, to quote Woody Allen (I think) “talking about music is like dancing to architecture.

“Jazz journalism is a different subject than criticism, of course. I’m enjoying the new book on Monk, and I’ve enjoyed a few other biographies and autobiographies. I’m still waiting for a good one on Coltrane. I’ve read and re-read the ones on Strayhorn, Mingus, the various ones on Duke, expecially the most recent one. I like biographies when they are written to show the context of their time, which means thoughtful and honest talk about the racism that colored (pardon the pun) the music biz at the time, and still is present in the jazz world, albeit thankfully much less than when I started playing.”

Last July I had the distinct pleasure of traveling down to New Orleans on a JazzTimes assignment for their annual jazz education issue (published October 2011). The occasion was the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp, held typically the first 3 weeks of July on the campus of Loyola University. For those not familiar with the Loyola campus, it’s located (along with next door neighbor Tulane University) in the Uptown section of New Orleans, right on picturesque St. Charles Avenue – long noted as one of America’s most storied avenues – across the street from beautiful Audubon Park.

The Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp, which celebrated its 17th anniversary this year, had a 2011 enrollment of 70 students. You can read complete details on the camp in the current JazzTimes jazz education issue. In addition to several faculty, the visit afforded some conversation with the camp’s co-founder and Executive Director Jackie Harris, and its artistic director, the iconoclastic tenor saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan.

Jackie Harris is a woman of classic African features with a close haircut, who speaks in measured Southern tones, with a quick and often biting wit. At the time of the camp’s inception she served as New Orleans director of the city’s Music and Entertainment Commission. For 10 years she served as Assistant Fair Director and Night Concerts Producer for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. And she spearheaded the successful movement to have New Orleans’ airport named Louis Armstrong International Airport..

The Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp was the brainchild of yourself and former Mayor Marc Morial. What was the thinking behind this camp?

Jackie Harris: At that time [1995] arts education programs and curriculum were being taken out of public education; there were budget cuts all over the state of Louisiana and actually across the nation. We felt that young people in New Orleans definitely needed to have avenues and opportunities to study jazz music in its birthplace and if we didn’t do something about providing those opportunities the cultural heritage of the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana could be lost.

Where did you hold the camp initially?

JH: Actually for the [first] 15 years it was held at Menard Elementary School in Gentilly [a solidly middle-class neighborhood that was hard hit by the failure of the federal levees and resulting floods in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; and a neighborhood that frankly was overlooked as international attention focused on the devastated Lower Ninth Ward]. When we went there it was an Orleans Parish public school. In 2005, actually before Katrina, the New Orleans School System went bankrupt and a lot of schools were turned over to the state or they became charter schools. So [University of New Orleans] took over [Menard] the summer of Katrina. In summer 2006 we had experienced devastation all over the city of New Orleans and all of the summer programs were cancelled, except for the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp; we were the only summer music education program that took place that year.

How do you go about recruiting your campers?

JH: We actually recruit locally; we get [famed 90.7 FM roots radio station] WWOZ to make a cart for us and we advertise that way, we also reach out to a number of the local schools, we create fliers for the bulletin boards of schools, we recruit from the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts [NOCCA, alma mater of the Marsalis brothers, Donald Harrison, Harry Connick, Jr., Kidd Jordan’s sons Kent (flute) and Marlon (trumpet), Nicholas Payton, Trombone Shorty, Christian Scott and countless other important contemporary musicians], and if we hear of any young person that is interested in participating in the program and their parents can’t afford to pay anything for the program we take them.

What’s the age range of your campers?

JH: They range from 10-21. Actually we started from 10-17 and our kids wanted to continue with us after they finished, so we keep expanding the age [laughs].

Do the campers have to audition?

JH: They do audition and there are certain criteria they must meet: #1 they must be at least 10 years old, they must have been studying music for a minimum of 2 years, and be involved in a music education program, either through school or private instruction. That private instruction could come from a family member [in New Orleans, rich with a family music tradition, that’s a highly likely route], it could come from a neighbor, it could come from structured music training; but they must have a relationship with the instrument, and we like them to have some relationship with their scales.

We do audition and interview each new student. It’s not competitive – if the student meets the criteria – but what that audition does is it allows us to see what level the student is so we can place them in the right environment.

What are the camp registration fees?

JH: It’s a sliding scale. A new student pays a $35 audition fee. Early registration for an existing student is $50, early registration for a new student is $75. After May 30 is late registration, so it goes up to $125. [Returning] students pay $100 a week, new students pay $110, and we have out-of-state and out-of-parish [Orleans Parish] rates. We have continued that practice because early on I mentioned the City of New Orleans sponsored this camp, so we had city dollars to support the program.

What’s camp capacity?

JH: We can take 100 children.

What percentage of them come from New Orleans proper?

JH: 80% come from New Orleans, 10% come from out-of-parish, and we have another 10% that are out-of-state. In the past we’ve had one or two students that have come in and stayed on the college campus and we hire a chaperone to stay with that student as well as look after them in the evening. Our out-of-state students this year come in and stay with relatives, although we have one second generation student whose parents traveled to New Orleans and stayed in a hotel for 3 weeks while their child is in jazz camp.

Where do these out-of-state students come from?

JH: Virginia, California, Texas…

How do they find out about this camp?

JH: Through friends and relatives. The child from Virginia, this is his third year and he’s a relative of the Jordans. The young man from California, his grandmother is a strong supporter of the music. We have some kids who are from across [Lake Ponchartrain], from Covington, LA and they’re staying with their grandmother to go to camp – four brothers.

In addition to the culminating concert, ultimately how do you judge the kids’ progress at the end of the 3 weeks?

JH: We judge it based on what he/she is able to do with their instrument, what they are able to hear and interpret, what their music performance is like – individually and as a unit in the large or small ensembles. Young people learn social skills in this camp; some of them know each other from the previous year, some are new. We talk about jazz being a mentoring agent, and it’s the same with young people; they don’t know each other but kids team up and they help each other. I see kids helping each other with music parts… This is a big college life for them, they eat in the [Loyola] dining room, they’re having a ball because they have the same [food] choices as the college students.

How is this camp funded?

JH: Through grants, corporate donations, individual donations; we had a hard time identifying funders this year. One of our board members set up a Facebook page for us and we received donations as small as $10 and as large as $100 over the internet. We hosted a local fundraiser where we reached out to the local business community and local individuals to sponsor a child because the tuition is minimal and in no way pays for the services that are provided; we pay the university caterer so the children do not have to pay for their meals individually.

Has this been a good relationship with Loyola University?

JH: It’s been a very good relationship. We are also involved with them through the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation; Loyola hosts an annual music festival in March. That was another way for us to partner. When I asked Loyola how many local public schools were participating with them in this festival, they said ‘none.’ They had local parochial schools. We really can’t blame the university if the schools are not participating in the festival, but what we saw was the decline and the lack of music education in the public schools meant that only one school in the city of New Orleans was capable and qualified to compete. That’s a problem for me because that’s not only the death of music education in New Orleans, its’s the death of the cultural legacy that we have given to the world.

So I spoke to the university and to the Armstrong Foundation, that the way the Camp and the Armstrong Foundation could be involved [with the Loyola festival] is that we would create a program with the university to do outreach in support of local public schools to help them to qualify and to be trained to be able to put bands together to enable them to participate in this festival. We’re doing the same thing with the First Line Charter School; they approached us about using our [Camp] curriculum to use in their music education. We felt the only way we could be of service is #1 the school would have to offer to hire a full-time music teacher; so one of our [camp] instructors, [bassist] Brian Quezerque [son of the late, legendary composer-arranger Wardell Quezerque, known as the “Creole Beethoven”, who passed on to ancestry in September], will be a full-time music teacher at that program. We will oversee an afterschool program to support what the daytime teacher is doing with the students.

Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Artistic Director

Several of New Orleans prominent music families intersect on the faculty and in the student body at Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. In addition to Kidd Jordan, his sons Kent (flute) and Marlon (trumpet) are on camp faculty. I had an extensive conversation with Kent, which will post next time, and visited Kidd’s classrooms. If you know Kidd Jordan you know that he is a no-nonsense character, one of those people about whom it is said they don’t suffer fools easily. Despite what some might see as his gruff exterior, Kidd is a warm man of great humor and immense heart. As a tenor saxophonist he is New Orleans’ leading proponent of free jazz, a virtual musical twin of his longtime fellow explorer, the late Chicago free tenorist Fred Anderson, a Vision Festival honoree, and a welcome presence on uncompromising European jazz festival stages. Kidd Jordan’s boundary-less performances are a perennial highlight of the Jazz Tent at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He retired several years ago from directing the jazz program at Southern University’s New Orleans campus (his late brother-in-law, the great clarinetist Alvin Batiste, did likewise at Southern’s Baton Rouge campus), and has been artistic director of the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp from its inception.

When I encountered Kidd one morning at the camp he was hard at work drilling a group of youngsters on their scales and proper positioning of their horns, paying particular attention to a young man whose horn seemed to be getting the best of him but who seemed bound to persevere. Turns out this particular aspiring trumpeter is one of the legion of New Orleans aspirants who pick up their horns at a tender age and all too quickly evolve to being street musicians, playing parades and second lines or scuffling for tourist coins in the French Quarter. While appreciating the sheer want-to of such youngsters, highly trained and skilled musicians like Kidd Jordan and the other camp faculty members find such kids challenging when they come to camp simply because the kids think they know a lot more than they actually do. Jordan picks it up from here…

Kidd Jordan: When I put the horn in his mouth I knew he had the facility – that’s not the problem – but I’m trying to get him to a point where if [his family] can’t get him a trumpet we’re gonna let him keep that one [pointing out a camp instrument]. But all he’s thinking about right now is going out to the streets. He’s been marching in parades… He’s got the talent, I just hope to keep him blowing.

Its interesting that a man of your experience, let alone someone so closely identified with a rather challenging, uncompromising approach to playing this music such as you – and the camp’s artistic director – are so dedicated to this group of absolute beginners.

KJ: These kids are beginners, barely knew their notes and things, but I’ve been on them from day 1. It’s coming…

NEXT TIME: We speak with some of New Orleans finest musicians who comprise the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp faculty.

web: www.louisarmstrongjazzcamp.com
email: jazzcamp@louisarmstrongjazzcamp.com