Speak Up for Jazz: Take the Greater Madison Jazz Community Survey

The Greater Madison Jazz Consortium is in the midst of crafting a first-ever action plan that speaks to our local jazz community as a whole. A compelling plan that’s grounded in the realities of the current scene and the wishes of jazz musicians, educators, venue owners, and fans will help point the way to a more vibrant and sustainable local scene and help the Consortium secure the resources needed to begin implementing the plan’s new initiatives.

To this end, the Consortium has been conducting a series of interviews with a few dozen key stakeholders, and is now inviting all other members of the jazz community to express their views through an online survey. To take the survey, simply go to http://www.greatermadisonjazzconsortium.org and click on the category (jazz musician, music educator, or fan) that fits you. (You are welcome to self-identify into multiple categories, and take the survey once in each category that fits you.)

The estimated time to complete the survey is 10-15 minutes, and your responses are anonymous and confidential, i.e., the only data to be released publicly will be aggregate data.

The survey will be “live” through day’s end Monday, May 27th, and the results will be compiled immediately thereafter for the Jazz Consortium Steering Committee’s planning retreat on June 2nd. Please help make this jazz community action plan the best it can be by completing this survey.

Thanks much for your time and your concern for the future of jazz in our community.

Howard Landsman, Convener
Cathy Sullivan, Project Coordinator
Greater Madison Jazz Consortium
Email: greatermadisonjazzconsortium@tds.net

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The Greater Madison Jazz Consortium is a partnership of nonprofit jazz presenters (Madison Jazz Society, Madison Music Collective, Midwest Gypsy Swing Festival, and Wisconsin Union Theater), educational institutions and programs (Madison Jazz Jam, Madison Metropolitan School District Fine Arts Department, and UW School of Music), and supportive media (WORT-FM), with additional support from Isthmus, the Capital City Hues, and the Jazz Institute of Chicago. Its work is made possible by a generous grant from the John and Carolyn Peterson Charitable Foundation.

Wayne’s Music World: Big Band on campus…and off

The UW Jazz Orchestra
photo courtesy Michael R. Anderson

The University of Wisconsin Jazz Orchestra is important. It provides a vital training ground for talented students who will take jazz into the future.  It gives those students a foundation in one of the genre’s root forms while exposing them to the masters of yesterday and, in some cases, the masters of today.   45 years after its founding the UWJO concluded its season playing increasingly complex music under UW director of jazz studies Johannes Wallmann. 

Wayne’s Music World: UW Honors Jazz Band hits right notes…and other thoughts

The UW Honors Jazz Band plays its first gig under Professor Johannes Wallmann.
Photo courtesy Michael R. Anderson

The UW Honors Jazz Band is the best jazz idea in Madison in 2013.  But it isn’t just an idea. These kids can flat-out play.  As a veteran “listener” I’ve listened to a lot of good musical ideas.  They don’t always work.  The UW Honors Jazz Band from the fertile musical mind of Professor Johannes Wallmann proved at its inaugural concert that it is a really great working idea.

The Honors Band was the early May opening act for the UW Jazz Orchestra.  I’ll say more about that band’s fine performance next week.

The impressive set list for the Honors Jazz Band included Matt Dennis’ classic Angel Eyes and Thad Jones’ The Farewell plus A Single Sky by Dave Douglas and Samba de Los Gatos from Mike Steinel, a prominent jazz faculty member at the renowned University of North Texas.  With a set like this the auditions for the by-invitation-only band must have had a sign reading, “No wimps allowed.”

The band worked together for just three, albeit very long, rehearsals. The players looked very serious, expected from a young group making their initial public appearance.  At the same time, the listener felt a sense of swing from the group.  These are talented musicians playing more than notes.  They seem to have a surprising understanding of the music they are playing.

Carmen Lundy Vocal and Instrumental Workshops

I heard Carmen Lundy in Madison a few years ago during the Mary Lou Williams Centennial. She impressed me as a fantastic vocalist with many expressive vocal techniques at her command. She is also known to be an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger. Here is an announcement from Madison Music Collective with details about two workshops she’ll conduct when she returns to Madison in June to headline the Isthmus Jazz Festival. 

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Madison Music Collective is teaming with Wisconsin Union Theater to co-produce the headline concert at the Isthmus Jazz Festival, and this year’s headliner is world-class vocalist Carmen Lundy.  In addition to her free evening concert at Old Music Hall on 6/22/13, Carmen will be conducting two outstanding workshops for vocal and instrumental musicians in our community (both amateur and professional).

To register for one or both workshops, complete the form (which appears at the end of each program announcement) and send it, with your fee (check payable to “Madison Music Collective”), to Laurie Lang, 3014 Dianne Drive, Middleton, WI 53562 or pay by PayPal by donating $25 at  http://madisonmusiccollective.org/support.shtml and attaching your registration form to an email directed to laurielang@tds.net.  Scholarships are available.  For info about them, contact Ms. Lang at 833-2200 or laurielang@tds.net.

Wayne’s Music World: Listening To Irakere, Terry Gibbs Dream Band and a Big Disappointment

I found a “new” CD called Essential Irakere.  Irakere is the Cuban band that had Chucho Valdes, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval and Oscar Valdes as founding members in the 1970s.  Not too shabby.  Essential Irakere is wonderful Afro-Cuban jazz but be warned that the material has been released at various times on various labels in various countries since being recorded circa 1989.  Check your collection before buying or downloading.

The album was recorded at a famous London club and named Live at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz House in at least one incarnation.  It was Felicidad another time.  Now it is Essential Irakere.

Truth be told, there is a lot of other Irakere music that listeners would probably judge “essential.”  Nonetheless, the band sounds great, the recording quality is good and the price is cheap: $4.99 when I downloaded it. 

Paquito and Arturo were long gone to the States when these tracks were recorded but Chucho wrote and arranged most of this music, Oscar does percussion and vocals and the entire band plays brilliantly.  Irakere could play proud and loud rock-influenced Afro-Cuban jazz.  On Essential Irakere Chucho Valdes – who last played Madison 12 years ago and is overdue for a return – has the band playing straight ahead jazz with Latin rhythms but no rock overtones.  For serious Afro-Cuban jazz fans most Irakere music is essential.  Irakere is long gone but Chucho’s son Chuchito, who replaced his father as the band’s leader and pianist, will headline Jazz at Five in late summer.

Wayne’s Music World: Musings on Free Jazz, Jazz Generations and other stuff

ACQUIRED JAZZ TASTES                                                

I know many aging beboppers don’t like free jazz.  But I have to make an exception.  The recent Hanah Jon Taylor Artet “Jazz on a Sunday” gig is that exception.  An audience pushing 50 people heard Taylor play five instruments. Much of the music was, well, as accessible as free jazz ever gets and the playing of Taylor, pianist Jim Baker, bass player Alex Wing and drummer Dushun Mosley was strong.  Taylor made a terrifically honest statement during the first set, pointing out that in Europe jazz is considered “classical” music and “classical music is an art form.”

While I probably won’t be sitting in clubs at midnight listening to free jazz, I’ll be back to hear Taylor at a similar more, er, civilized hour. 

And speaking of civilized hours, the “Jazz on a Sunday” series from Madison Music Collective and Mad Toast Live is a gem.  3:30pm gigs on Sunday afternoons are great and they deserve bigger audiences.  The Brink Lounge nightclub setting is ideal and, although the interviews from Mary Gaines and Chris Wagoner sometimes seem like an overlong interruption, they are part of what makes the event possible.  The post-concerts workshops seem very helpful for some younger musicians.

Outstanding High School Jazz Ensembles in Concert on 4/20 and 5/5

Under the direction of the awesome educator Steve Sveum, the jazz program at Sun Prairie High   School is one of the best in the country. As it has often done over the past two decades, the school’s Jazz Ensemble I has been selected as one of 15 finalists in the annual nation-wide “Essentially Ellington” competition produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City (watch here as students find out the big news). In the coming weeks, Madison area jazz fans have two chances to catch performances by Jazz I as they prepare for their big trip to New York.

This Saturday, April 20, at 7:00 PM in the school’s Performing Arts Center (888 Grove Street in Sun Prairie), Jazz I will be performing in a concert that also features the other two Wisconsin high school jazz ensembles that made the “Essentially Ellington” finals this year: Beloit Memorial and Lake Geneva Badger. Each band will be performing the pieces that they’ll be performing at LincolnCenter next month. This concert is free and open to the public.

Then, on Sunday, May 5^th, at 7:00 PM, Jazz I will give its ticketed “Send Off” concert of Ellingtonia to help raise the funds needed to send the band to New York. This concert will be held at Sun Prairie’s Cardinal Heights Middle School Auditorium (the former high school building) at 220 Kroncke Drive in Sun Prairie, and will feature special guest vocalist Kyle Ketelsen singing the Sinatra songbook.

Come out and support these very talented and hard-working young musicians who will be responsible for keeping the music alive for decades to come.