The Great River Jazz Fest is an annual event this time of year in La Crosse. Here’s a note from the folks at the Great River Jazz Fest:
Great River Jazz Fest
La Crosse, WI
Interstate I-90 Exits 3 & 4
Aug 14-16, 2009
On the Mississippi, 13 bands in 2 venues, all indoors, Fri, Sat, Sun. Bobby Lewis’ Cats ‘n Jammers, Wally’s Warehouse Waifs, jazz vocals with Lisa Roti Quartet, New York City pianist Dave Marck Quartet, Arne Fogel-Tanner Taylor Quartet, Mostly Blues Quartet, Optimism Sextet, Pianorama, Wonderful World Jazz Band, Dick Chaffee’s Stardust Big Band in our Avalon-style ballroom with dance floor and tables, The DC Five, The Phat Cats, West Salem Community Big Band, Coulee Region High School Jazz All-Stars, Meet the Musicians reception (advance ticket required), Mardi Gras-style Parade, jam sessions, Sunday jazz church service, CDs, raffle, merchandise. Main gate is at the La Crosse Center. Call (608) 791-1190 and log on to www.lacrossejazz.com
The Hanah Jon Taylor Artet, a quartet including several adventurous Chicago-based musicians, will headline an evening of free/avant-garde jazz on Saturday, August 8th, at the beautiful Grand Hall of Capitol Lakes, 333 West Main Street, in Downtown Madison. Read Kevin Lynch’s preview essay about this concert.
The Artet features players associated with the world-renowned Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) including Taylor on saxophone and flute, Kirk Brown on piano, Yosef Ben Israel on bass, and drummer Vincent Davis.
Sponsored by the Madison Music Collective, the “Summer Music Summit” begins at 7:00 PM with a set by the Tom Hamer – Tom Lachmund Duo, followed around 8:00 PM by the JoAnne Pow!ers Quartet. The Taylor Artet’s set will begin around 9:15 PM.
Hanah Jon Taylor leads a quartet of AACM-affiliated players at Madison Music Collective's "Summer Jazz Summit" on August 8th
Tickets will be available at the door, at $12.00 for the general public and $10 for Collective members. Ample free parking is available in the ramp across the street from the concert hall.
For more information about the concert, call 513-3314. For more information about the Madison Music Collective, including a membership form, visit www.mmcmusic.org.
On Saturday, July 18th, the Madison Music Collective will present “Jazz on a Summer’s Evening,” a casual evening of mainstream jazz in the lovely rustic and arts-infused setting of Fitchburg’s Art in the Barn. The line-up for this mini-fest includes:
6:00 PM: Guitarist Cliff Frederiksen’s Trio
7:15 PM: The guitar-piano duo of Louka Patenaude and Paul Hastil
8:30 PM: The Dave Cooper Quintet, featuring Tom Gullion and Tim Whalen
As part of the Collective’s ongoing effort to bridge the gap between improvising musicians and their audience, each performance will be followed by a brief question-and-answer session.
Come early and enjoy the visual artists’ work. Bring food and a blanket or chairs to enjoy a pre-concert picnic on the beautiful Art in the Barn picnic grounds, or purchase food from the Dardanelles Restaurant’s on-site food stand. The grounds will be open from 4:30 PM on.
Tickets will be available at the door, and are priced at $15.00 general admission, with discounts for MMC members ($12.00), students ($10.00) and kids 14 and under (free).
Art in the Barn is located at 5927 Adams Road in Fitchburg, 5 miles south of Madison’s West Beltline, 1 mile south of Lacy Road and 1 mile west of Fish Hatchery Road. Due to summer construction on Fish Hatchery, the best route from points north and east is via Seminole Highway to Whalen Road, then west to Fitchburg Road and south to Adams Road, and finally east to the venue.
Well it’s been a lot longer than a week since I put up a new sample from a Madison jazz artist, but I started this series with that title and I’m going to stick with it. Patrick has been featured here before as a solo artist and with his New York Trio. This week we have Patrick with his new Madison based trio. They will be playing their first gig 9:30 tonight at Magnus, and following that up next Friday with a performance at the Isthmus Jazz Festival.
This is a Steve Lacy tune entitled, “The Bath.” The trio is:
Patrick Breiner – Tenor Saxophone
Michael Brenneis – Drums
John Christensen – Bass
Patrick has a bio and more tunes up on his website. If you want to get inside his head a bit you must read this previous blog post by him, a great piece of writing that reveals the drive behind Madison’s most exciting sax player.
Here’s the recently released 2009 Isthmus Jazz Festival schedule. More info can be found on their website.
Friday, June 5
4 – 5:30 pm: Patrick Breiner Trio
6 – 7:30 pm: Gerri DiMaggio
8 – 9:30 pm: New Breed Quintet
10 – close pm: Madison Jazz Orchestra
Saturday, June 6
12:30 – 1:30 pm: Mama Dig Down’s Brass Band (beginning on Library mall)
2 – 3:30 pm: High School Jazz All-Stars
5 – 6 pm: Jan Wheaton
6:30 – 8 pm: Tim Whalen Nonet
8 – 9:30 pm: Headliner David Sanchez, ticketed event in the Wisconsin Union Theater
8:30 – 10 pm: Get Down, Mr. Cat!
10:30 pm – close: Madisalsa
Tonight Gary Alderman, the 2008 Madison Jazz Personality of the Year, is presenting a program of rare videos at Capitol Lakes Grand Hall. Gary is best known as a WORT DJ and MC for Madison jazz events, but he is also a collector of rare jazz recordings and videos. Gary’s knowledge of jazz recordings and history is vast so this should be a terrific opportunity. See Special Events and my review of the Grand Hall for more information.
For some reason thinking about Gary as 2008 Madison Jazz Personality of the Year got me to wondering who the other winners of this award have been. The award is given out each year at the Isthmus Jazz Festival and goes back to 1988 when the festival first started. I had the names of several of the winners and scoured the internet for the others but could only come up with 8 of the 20 names. The Isthmus Newspaper was kind enough to supply me with the entire list.
Although specific to Milwaukee, this news is pertinent to Madison jazz fans and musicians interested in trends within the jazz world.
The struggling economy appears to be hitting the jazz scene hard. Recently General Motors, the long time major sponsor for the Montreal Jazz Festival announced it is pulling its support from the festival. Closer to home, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Hal Leonard Corp has ended its 16 year sponsorship of the Hal Leonard Jazz Series.
This week Madison Jazz features F&S , a song by the Joan Wildman trio. Joan provided this live recording from February 17, 2007 at Freedom Fest, a four day festival put on by the now defunct Madison Center for Creative and Cultural Arts (MCCCA). I was at this performance which was very well attended and received. Joan states the improv is based on modal scales.
Joan Wildman – piano
Hans Sturm – bass
Dane Richeson – drums and percussion
Joan is enjoying the leisurely pace of retirement and hasn’t gotten around to updating her old website. For those of you who don’t know her here’s a brief bio:
My brother recently sent me a Milwaukee Magazine feature on Chuck Hedges. He knew I’d get a kick out of it. Most people know Chuck Hedges as a famous Milwaukee clarinetist, someone who has recorded multiple jazz CDs as a leader, occasionally plays in Madison, and who regularly plays at jazz festivals across the country and in Europe. We both knew him as our local instrument repairman.
I grew up in a conservative, working class neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee, not far from Cascio’s Music on 62nd and Lincoln. My brother played trumpet. I started on clarinet in 4th grade and switched one year later to the saxophone, playing a Cousnon my parents bought from Mr Cascio (I still have the sax and the receipt, and it still plays very well). Chuck was Cascio’s repairman. It’s hard to say why he made an impression on us; I guess he was always nice and talked to us like we counted, even though we were just kids. I do remember that my sax always played very well after he worked on it.
Many years later I took up the saxophone again and was having problems with my sax. Nobody could seem to fix it so I thought I’d track down Chuck. Well, the little store on Lincoln wasn’t there any more. Cascio’s is now out in New Berlin in a much larger store, Cascio’s Interstate Music Superstore. I was told Chuck had left years ago. Bob Viviano said he had many years of experience, worked on it, and made it play great. Thanks, Bob.
I know that while I had been deep in my school studies Chuck was busy making a name for himself; I had seen him advertised for midwest jazz festivals. Now I was more curious. I bought a few of his CDs. Wow, he can really swing. He’s as good as many of the bigger names, with a unique style that bridges traditional New Orleans jazz with swing. I’ve seen him live several times and own 4 of his CDs. There’s no doubt Chuck Hedges is one of the best clarinetists I’ve ever heard, and the real kick is I can say I knew him way back when he was toiling away in Cascio’s basement repair shop. It’s good to see someone from the old neighborhood make it big.
The Milwaukee Magazine story is a comprehensive profile of Chuck Hedges from his days as a repairman to the current time. According to the article, Chuck is currently struggling with health issues but keeps plugging away, and at a high level. Here’s the story:
I’m bummed that I missed Janet Planet with the UW Big Band at the Middleton Performing Arts Center last night. One of the things I hope to do with this blog is shine the spotlight on Madison jazz events that are special or rare and maybe don’t get the attention they deserve. All of these apply to any Janet Planet performance.
I first heard Janet Planet sing around 20 years ago when I was a student here in Madison. I think it was at one of the Isthmus Jazz festivals. Back then, she performed more regularly in the area as Janet Planet and the Urban World. They were an exciting band featuring Janet and 3 or 4 horns including saxophonist Tom Washatka (who I believe is married to Janet). Tom can circular breathe and I remember him holding a high note for what seemed like forever while the crowd went wild. Somewhat of a crowd pleasing stunt, but he is a great player in many ways who I really enjoy hearing.
I’ve heard Janet a number of times since then. She seems to be based out of Appleton so doesn’t come into town often but it’s always special when she does. The last few times I’ve heard her she was with big bands, once with the UW and the last time with her own quartet partnered with the Middleton HS jazz band. That concert took place at the new Middleton Performing Arts Center too, a place I had not been to before, let alone heard of.
As you can see it’s a beautiful venue, and it has very good sound. It was a bit hard to find at first because I didn’t expect it to be attached to the Middleton High School. I also wasn’t expecting the first set to be the high school jazz band, somewhere I missed that in the fine print. It was OK though, because I found myself enjoying these young people as they worked hard to play and improvise to the best of their abilities. Having Janet and her band there for the second set really seemed to inspire and focus them.
And Janet didn’t let down. She comfortably worked the crowd with anecdotes (some of these were retreads I had heard before but they went over well again so why not recycle?) between a mix of jazzy standards capably supported by her quartet and the high school big band. As her usual for these types of gigs she closed with an Aretha Franklin tune, wailing away and sending shivers down my spine.
Not many singers can be sensitive and introspective one moment and then belting it out like a great gospel singer one song later. She has the whole package and she should be better known. Her concert should have gotten more media attention and then I wouldn’t have missed it. At least I put the time to good use; I created this blog and the next time she comes around I’ll be there because the reliable and detailed crazeology calendar is back on line and linked right from this site.
As part of the Collective’s ongoing effort to bridge the gap between improvising musicians and their audience, each performance will be followed by a brief question-and-answer session.
