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Willie Ruff, Jazz Eminence and Master Storyteller, Tells All at Yale Art Gallery | WNPR News

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** Willie Ruff, Jazz Eminence and Master Storyteller, Tells All at Yale Art Gallery
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Willie Ruff, the celebrated French horn player and double bassist (http://willieruff.com/) , venerable Yale School of Music professor, founder/director of Yale’s prestigious Duke Ellington Fellowship Program, award-winning author, documentarian, historian, linguist, ethnomusicologist, and voracious autodidact, is a man of so many intricate, smoothly running, coolly calibrated cerebral parts that he is, indeed, one of the jazz world’s true Renaissance figures.
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One of the greatest gifts of this soft-spoken, unflappably cool gentleman and scholar, who’s originally from Sheffield, Alabama, is his natural-born talent for storytelling. His 1992 memoir, A Call to Assembly, which won the coveted Deems Taylor Award for excellence, is aptly subtitled, The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller.

Ruff’s smooth storytelling skills enliven any topic of his choosing, whether it be profound social issues or the meaning of the blues. His story lines flow like a fluent, lyrical Lester Young solo. Especially when he’s recounting his picaresque life story, a narrative rooted in his dramatic transformation from dirt-poor, ninth-grade dropout to renowned, globe-trotting jazz missionary, educator and performer.

As a hip jazz intellectual, Ruff’s constantly surprising bag of tours de forcehas included multilingual lectures at conservatories, delivered in Russian in Moscow, and most famously in Mandarin in Shanghai. Hiscommentaries were a prelude to concert performances by the universally acclaimed Mitchell/Ruff Duo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEuO1Eris0E) , a more than a half-century alliance with his close friend and longtime musical partner, the virtuoso pianist Dwike Mitchell, who died last April at 83.

At Shanghai Conservatory, Ruff, the consummately charming, cosmopolitan master storyteller and lecturer, even dared to try out a joke in Mandarin on the native, Mandarin-speaking audience. Happily, the erudite Yale professor’s quip drew appreciative laughter. Maybe it was because his listeners were so enthralled by this engaging African American academic/musician explaining to them the African roots of American jazz, expressed in fluent Mandarin, no less.
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What propels Ruff, aside from his insatiable curiosity about virtually everything, is the sheer joy of doing what he loves to do.

Ruff, who speaks eight languages, will stick to his native tongue and his first linguistic love, English, as he delivers a multimedia talk at 5:30 pm on Thursday, September 4, in the lecture hall at the Yale University Art Gallery at 1111 Chapel Street in New Haven. Illustrated with historic film clips and vintage recorded material, the lecture, which is free, is titled, “A Cinematic Excursion through the American Jazz Century.” It’s part of the gallery’s exhibition, “Jazz Lives: The Photographs of Lee Friedlander and Milt Hinton,” (http://wnpr.org/post/yale-photo-show-offers-intimate-insights-jazz-world) which closes Sunday, September 7.

A jazz and photography connoisseur’s delight, the Yale photo show features fresh ways to view jazz and its practitioners through its evocative black-and-white images by Friedlander, a highly original, iconic American photographer, and Hinton, a legendary bassist whose open access to jazz greats brings a candid, intimate ambiance to his photo portraits.
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What initially sparked the gallery talk was Ruff’s close relationship with Hinton. It goes back many years when Ruff, who was then a young undergrad at Yale, traveled with a woodwind quintet from the New Haven campus to New York City to make a recording accompanied by a jazz trio for Epic Records. “We had worked on the woodwind quintet material on our campus,” he said, “and a record deal was made. We had no idea who was going to be in the jazz rhythm section until we arrived at the recording studio. We were elated to discover that it was Milt Hinton on bass, Jo Jones on drums, and Billy Taylor on piano. Later on, I did a lot of recording with Milt as a session player in New York.”

To illustrate his recollections of Hinton, Ruff unearthed footage of the great bass player on YouTube, including clips chronicling his famous stint with the Cab Calloway Orchestra, one of the most famous ensembles of the Big Band Era.

Another major theme of the gallery talk, which may include autobiographical elements from Ruff’s hardscrabble youth in Alabama on through his worldwide triumphs with the Mitchell/Ruff Duo, focuses on the centennial of the publication of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” a powerfully influential classic in American popular music.

Ruff grew up not far from Handy’s birthplace in rural Alabama. He recalls quite vividly the day that the great American composer, powerhouse publisher, and Harlem Renaissance grandee visited the small, segregated schoolhouse he attended in the 1930s. “Handy came to our school when I was in second grade,” Ruff said, “and talked to us, and played his trumpet as we sang. …He told us how difficult his life had been, particularly after he let it be known to his family that he wanted to be a musician.”

To illustrate his reflections on Handy, Ruff tracked down a fascinating radio recording on which the songwriter, known as “The Father of the Blues,” recounted a life-shaping incident from his own early, small-town school days when he was warned against the evils of pursuing a musical career. “You can hear Handy on this tape speaking in his own distinctive voice,” Ruff said. Altering his voice to sound like Handy’s, he recited the words heard on the ancient recording:

I couldn’t tell the story of the St. Louis Blues without including the moment when our school teacher down in Florence, Alabama, called the class to order, and instead of beginning our reading lessons, asked each of us what we wanted to be in life.

Some said doctors, lawyers, merchants, and several other trades. When he came to me, I said, “I want to be a musician.” He read me a lecture, and told me that music would lead me to the gutter; that musicians are idlers and dissipated characters; and wrote my father a note, which, when my father — who was a preacher — read it, said to me, “Sonny, I would rather follow you to your grave than to see you be a musician.”

Reverting to his own speaking voice, Ruff said, “Now, that’s the coldest advice I ever heard!”

During Handy’s visit to Ruff’s schoolhouse more than seven decades ago, the awestruck youngster not only hung on to the old sage’s every word, but, best of all, even got to shake the godlike figure’s hand before he departed. “All of us who were identified as musically inclined,” Ruff said of this early brush with greatness, “were permitted to line up, and shake the hand that wrote the St. Louis Blues. I was never the same boy again. It ruined my life, but I forgive him.”

For his gallery talk, Ruff could riff on the enlightening, liberating impact that both his military service (he enlisted at 14, lying about his age) and his education at Yale (where he went on the GI Bill) had on him. Or he could shift gears and discuss his vital connections with the Ellington Fellows he’s brought to Yale since 1972, a legion of jazz and cultural superheroes ranging from Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington to Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson.

Ruff could chat about running his own jazz club, called The Playback, in New Haven. A fabled piece of the Elm City’s distinguished jazz history, The Playback had a glorious three-year run on Winchester Avenue, bringing in a continuous stream of jazz greats including Stan Getz, Marian McPartland, Slam Stewart, Roy Eldridge (a frequent guest), and a then-young, brilliant pianist named Horace Silver, who Ruff said was also a soulfully-swinging tenor saxophonist.

In retrospect, one of the great historic moments for The Playback occurred when Ruff presented a young, unknown singer named Aretha Franklin. Ruff was asked to give Franklin the gig, as a favor, by the legendary producer John Hammond, a Columbia Records potentate, and discoverer of talents ranging from Count Basie and Billie Holiday to Bruce Springsteen.

Drawn from Ruff’s personal experiences, his anecdotes and reflections on the famous and the obscure spring to life thanks to his pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, irrepressible sense of humor, and novelist’s eye for the telling detail. Plus, there’s the polymath’s ability to put everything in context as when, for example, he explains why he’s so mad about the 17th-century mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, Gregorian Chants, Igor Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, and the Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo.

Ruff’s narrations and explications are presented clearly and gracefully. It doesn’t matter whether he’s explaining what makes a Duke Ellington composition work aesthetically, or on a deeply personal level, discussing the profoundly inspirational influence that the heroic Tuskegee Airmen had on him as a poor, motherless child growing up in the racist Old South of the 1940s, earning a pittance by plowing farmland behind a mule.

One of eight children, Ruff was born on Labor Day, 1931 (an appropriate birth date for a lifelong striver) into crushing poverty in a modest four-room house with no electricity. Not long after Ruff was born, his father skipped out, heading north to Chicago to get a job, leaving Willie’s mother behind to raise the family on the $5.00 a week she earned as a maid. As if this weren’t already too much to bear, Ruff’s mother died when he was only 12.

Despite this Dickensian-like, worst-of-times childhood, it always seems to be the best of times for the upbeat, high-energy Ruff, especially when he’s working on his next project, as with his upcoming lecture at Yale, which has his creative juices flowing. With the talk’s multimedia format — a prototype that Ruff plans to expand on, and tailor for a variety of media and venues, including lecture halls, classrooms, radio, and streaming TV — the musical maven can take his act out on the road, using digital age resources to complement his timeless storytelling gifts.

What propels Ruff, aside from his insatiable curiosity about virtually everything, is the sheer joy of doing what he loves to do. It’s a jubilant feeling of deliverance that he experienced even as young man just beginning his journey, illustrated by a typical diamond-in-the-Ruff anecdote.

“My very first year at Yale there was a little club on Dixwell Avenue called the Monterey,” Ruff recalled, “where some of the Hartford jazz crowd would also come, musicians like drummer Walt Bolden and bassist Joe Calloway. This one night, who walked into the club to perform but the singer Betty Roche. Everybody had turned out, because they knew Betty’s performance of ‘Take the A-Train’ with Duke Ellington. I thought, here I am, at only 19, just five blocks from the Yale campus, playing bass on the bandstand with the great Betty Roche in New Haven, Connecticut. I said to myself, I believe in miracles.” Information: artgallery.yale.edu (http://artgallery.yale.edu/) and (203) 432-0600.
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Magical Potions of Creole Soul

Etienne Charles, the red-hot groovemeister of Afro-Caribbean creole soul (http://www.etiennecharles.com/) — cooking with everything from calypso to reggae to Haitian seasonings — leads his searing sextet at 7:30 pm on Saturday, September 6, as the headliner for the Main Stage lineup at the free Northampton Jazz Festival (http://www.northamptonjazzfestival.org/) . A hip alchemist, Charles serves earthy, eclectic potions laced with soulful soupcons of everything marvelous from Motown to Marley tapped from his bubbling cauldron of a CD, Creole Soul.

Starting at 11:00 am on Hampton Avenue behind Thorne’s Market, the festival’s major event also features trombonist Steve Davis at 2:45 pm; pianist/vocalist Champian Fulton at 4:15 pm; and the swaggering saxophonist Seamus Blake at 5:45 pm. Information:northamptonjazzfestival.org (http://northamptonjazzfestival.org/) .

Jazz Fest Touts Tolerance

Joined by such stalwarts as vocalist Antoinette Montague and trumpeter Ricky Alfonso, the noted singer/producer/activist Nicki Mathis presents the admission-free Many Colors of a WOMAN Jazz Festival at 8:00 pm on Saturday, September 6 at Faith Congregational Church in Hartford.

Along with its advocacy of a world free from sexism and racism, the festival is noted for its diverse, quality musical fare which features, among many assets, trombonists Bill Lowe and Deborah Weisz. Information: (860) 547-0820.

Please submit press releases on upcoming jazz events at least two weeks before the publication date to omac28@gmail.com (mailto:omac28@gmail.com) . Comments left below are also most welcome.

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In Cabaret Show, Acclaimed Actor Portrays the Triumph of Jazz Great Charles Mingus | KQED Arts

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** In Cabaret Show, Acclaimed Actor Portrays the Triumph of Jazz Great Charles Mingus
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Listen to Charles Mingus’ live recording of “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZHWXXEr98w) from 1960 and you hear everything that made Mingus so arresting – and so ahead of his time. From its dense instrumental overlays to its gospel feel that included hand-clapping and shouting from the stage (“Yeah, baby, let’s go baby, go”), the song is a frenetic race against time. Mingus helped break down the barrier between jazz musician and jazz audience, and he established the bass as a musical command center that controlled a song’s tempo and lifted people’s spirits to another realm.

But where is Mingus’ music heard today? Unlike his contemporaries such as Miles Davis, whose Kind of Blue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kind_of_Blue) continues to be the best-selling jazz album of all time, Mingus never made wildly popular music. And in the three decades since his death from the effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Mingus is a puzzle for many people. Yes, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy (http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/lifetime-awards) in 1997 (the same year as Frank Zappa, and a year after Stevie Wonder was similarly honored). And, yes, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in Mingus’ honor (http://www.usstampgallery.com/view.php?id=7449bf78181ea24fde9f9b7e6f3dea4e43d79806) in 1995 that showed him on bass, with piano keys in the background (acknowledging Mingus’ mastery of that instrument) and a caption that announced, “Jazz Composer and Bassist.” But Mingus’ virtual disappearance from pop culture has inspired actor Barry
Shabaka Henley (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0377106/) to try and reintroduce Mingus’ work to a more general audience. Mingus Remixed (http://www.lhtsf.org/bata.html) , a cabaret theater piece with Henley portraying the jazz titan, makes its world premiere on Friday, September 5, 7:30pm at San Francisco’s Children’s Creativity Museum.

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Henley, an acclaimed actor who’s appeared in a litany of Hollywood movies, like Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal and Michael Mann’sCollateral, wrote Mingus Remixed after researching the musician’s life and interviewing his close family and friends. Delroy Lindo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delroy_Lindo) , himself a well-regarded actor, is directing the production, which is sponsored by theLorraine Hansberry Theatre (http://www.lhtsf.org/) and is also being performed on Saturday, September 6 at 2pm and 7:30pm.

“We have overlooked a giant of American music, not just a giant of jazz,” says Henley. “Charles Mingus was not only a genius but an unsung genius outside of certain circles. In reality, he wasn’t really known outside of jazz circles.”

Henley has long admired Mingus’ music, and the way he navigated disparate cultures to become an artist. Mingus, who had black, Chinese, and Swedish ancestry, was raised in Los Angeles’ Watts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts,_Los_Angeles) section, where he was ostracized by teenage peers who didn’t relate to his interest in the cello and classical music. Throughout his life, Mingus was both embraced and shunned in white and black circles. He never backed off from a confrontation, and the stories of his temper are legendary. Duke Ellington (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington) fired Mingus after he punched a band saxophonist during a performance.

But for every story of Mingus’ temper, there is a story of his genius at composing music and synthesizing jazz with gospel and classical music. Mingus could be deeply political, as with his 1959 song “Fables of Faubus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fables_of_Faubus) ,” which was a searing critique of Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who prevented African-American students from integrating his state’s schools. The song is a gospel-driven, almost circus-like eruption of shouting and instrumentation that veers from heaving to stylish. The lyrics are vintage Mingus: Oh, Lord, don’t let ‘em shoot us! Oh, Lord, don’t let ‘em stab us! Oh, Lord, don’t let ‘em tar and feather us! Oh, Lord, no more swastikas! Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan! Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie. -Governor Faubus! Why is he so sick and ridiculous? He won’t permit integrated schools. Then he’s a fool!

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On the 1960 album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, which featured a live version of the song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXuZBywW4gA) , Mingus can be heard warning the audience, “don’t rattle your ice and your glasses” during the performance. Contrast that song with “Moves” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4hJEhn24V8) , from Mingus’ 1973 album Mingus Moves, which is a tender, mystical, and almost dissonant ballad that narrates falling in love and expressing joy and optimism. Featuring the vocals of Honi Gordon and Doug Hammond, “Moves” is beautiful without being overly sentimental, pleading without being ponderous. In short, timeless. The Pulitzer-Prize winning composer and jazz historian Gunther Schuller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Schuller) has called Mingus one the greatest composers of the 20th century. Henley agrees.

“Mingus, because of the kind of combinations of what he put together in music, and the magnitude of his personality, represents America for me,” Henley says. “Ethnically. Racially. Mother half-Chinese, half-black. Father half-Swedish, half-black. He grew up in all-black Watts, not treated very well by the community. He became an outsider. And music became a sanctuary for him.”

Henley plans to perform Mingus Remixed again in the Bay Area, though dates are still being set. He is also working on a feature film of Mingus’ life, and plans to play him in that version, too. Mingus Remixed opens and closes with Henley’s Mingus in a wheelchair. It’s January 4, 1979, and the musician is about to pass away from a disease that traumatizes nerves and bones.

“When his body was paralyzed but he could still talk, he was humming new compositions into a tape recorder,” says Henley, speaking in a phone interview from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was shooting his role in the Breaking Bad prequel called Better Call Saul. “What people forget about is that ALS generally kills you fast. Mingus was diagnosed in the spring of 1977, and he died on January 5, 1979. He accomplished so much in his short life, and for me his life covers a very important part of American culture and history.”

Mingus Remixed features a live four-piece band, with 60 percent of the music original Mingus songs, and 40 percent original work written just for the play, most of that by Bay Area pianist and composer Muziki Roberson (https://www.facebook.com/muziki.roberson) .

Henley, who lives in Los Angeles, grew up in San Francisco – in the the inner and outer Sunset District – and he maintains close friendship with many people here, including San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, for whom he has campaigned. Henley, who early in his life taught drama in the San Francisco County Jail in San Bruno, perfected his acting abilities as a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Henley has a resonant voice and a commanding presence, though on the big screen he’s often a character actor. In Collateral, for example, he played a jazz club owner who – suddenly, after riffing about Miles Davis – gets killed by Tom Cruise’s character.

“He was a quick draw,” Henley says of Cruise, laughing. “That’s one of my favorite scenes.”

It shows Henley’s acting range that he can confront Tom Cruise in a Hollywood blockbuster and play a complicated jazz musician in a small San Francisco production. That kind of elastic ability is what’s required of versatile artists. In many ways, Henley identifies with Mingus. It makes portraying him that much easier but also that much more challenging as he reveals Mingus’ greatness and the illness that suffocated and killed him.

Sponsored by the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, “Mingus Remixed” is being performed Friday, September 5, 7:30pm, Saturday, September 6, 2pm and 7:30pm, at the Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Fourth Street, San Francisco. For tickets and more information (http://www.lhtsf.org/bata.html) , go to lhtsf.org.

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In Cabaret Show, Acclaimed Actor Portrays the Triumph of Jazz Great Charles Mingus | KQED Arts

** In Cabaret Show, Acclaimed Actor Portrays the Triumph of Jazz Great Charles Mingus
————————————————————

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“He was a quick draw,” Henley says of Cruise, laughing. “That’s one of my favorite scenes.”

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September 4, 2014 / No Comments / More

In Cabaret Show, Acclaimed Actor Portrays the Triumph of Jazz Great Charles Mingus | KQED Arts

** In Cabaret Show, Acclaimed Actor Portrays the Triumph of Jazz Great Charles Mingus
————————————————————

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“He was a quick draw,” Henley says of Cruise, laughing. “That’s one of my favorite scenes.”

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September 4, 2014 / No Comments / More

Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died | NOLA.com

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** Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died
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Saxophonist Tim Green, right, performs with the ensemble Kora Konnection at the Sunset at the Landing concert at Columbia Street Landing in Covington on June 21, 2013. (Photo by Quentin Winstine, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Keith Spera, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune (http://connect.nola.com/user/kspera/photos.html)

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http://connect.nola.com/user/kspera/index.htmlBy Keith Spera, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune (http://connect.nola.com/user/kspera/posts.html)
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on August 29, 2014 at 6:41 PM, updated August 30, 2014 at 10:24 AM

** NOTABLE DEATHS
————————————————————
* Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died (http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2014/08/new_orleans_jazz_saxophonist_t.html)
* Margie Seemann, Jefferson political activist, dies at 75 (http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/05/margie_seemann_jefferson_polit.html)
* Dr. Raymond Unland Jr., noted dentist and triathlete, dies at 58 (http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2014/01/dr_raymond_unland_jr_noted_den.html)
* George Rodrigue: iconic Cajun artist and classic triumphant everyman (http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2013/12/george_rodrigue_the_master_of.html)
* Frank Davis, New Orleans TV personality and writer, dies at 71 (http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2013/12/television_personality_frank_d.html)

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Saxophonist Tim Green, a thoughtful, highly respected presence on New Orleans stages for more than 30 years, has died. His body reportedly was discovered in his Bywater home on Thursday (Aug. 28) by a friend who went to check on him. He had dealt with various health issues in recent years.

Fluent in everything from avant-garde jazz to rhythm & blues to reggae to traditional Indian music, Mr. Green was as skilled as he was humble. His playing, especially in his solos, was conversational, fluent and conducive to the larger whole.

“Tim was about creating transcendent experiences in the process of improvisation,” said guitarist Jonathan Freilich, a frequent collaborator. “His art form was about creating high points in improvisation, about pushing boundaries. He was about the big concepts – discipline, and freedom.”

He was “very eclectic, a unique personality and a multifaceted talent,” said Jason Patterson, the talent buyer at the Frenchmen Street jazz club Snug Harbor. Though Mr. Green’s name wasn’t well known to the general public, “musicians knew him. Lots of musicians knew him, and had a lot of respect for him.”

Mr. Green grew up in Bridgeport, Conn. Raised in the Pentecostal church, he gravitated to the tambourine as his first instrument. It wasn’t until high school that he took up saxophone.

As a young man, he often ventured to New York City and Boston to hear musicians ranging from Charles Mingus, Stan Getz and McCoy Tyner to Rod Stewart, Earth Wind & Fire, and Blue Oyster Cult. A chance encounter with Grover Washington Jr. in New York provided early encouragement.

After a brief, unhappy tenure at the Berklee School of Music in Boston in the late 1970s, Mr. Green took a Greyhound bus to New Orleans, having visited only once before. Before arriving, his impression of the city was formed in part by the Elvis Presley film “King Creole.” “It was nothing like Bridgeport,” Mr. Green told guitarist Jonathan Freilich in a long audio interview archived online (http://jonathanfreilich.com/music-interviews/2011/7/23/interview-with-saxophonist-tim-green.html) . “That sealed the deal for me.”

His diversity and eclectic tastes served him well in his adopted hometown, where musicians often ignore genre classifications. He excelled at tenor, soprano, baritone and bass saxophone, but was not fond of the alto saxophone.

At various times, he backed soul legend Irma Thomas and blues, funk and soul singer and guitarist Walter “Wolfman” Washington. For years, he worked a steady gig on Bourbon Street with a rhythm & blues band. He was a member of Gulfstream, the Stick Band, and trumpeter Michael Ray’s Cosmic Krewe. He joined Freilich in various avant-jazz projects, including the ensemble Naked on the Floor and the larger Naked Orchestra. He filled in at times with the Iguanas, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Mas Mamones. He recorded and toured with rock star Peter Gabriel.

More recently, he was a regular member of experimental cellist Helen Gillet’s trio. He played in the avant-jazz band Plunge and backed rock guitarist Anders Osborne. He collaborated frequently with bassist James Singleton on adventurous modern jazz projects. As recently as Monday, Aug. 25, he performed at the Blue Nile on Frenchmen Street with a reggae band.

Additionally, he was a member of the board of the Louisiana Jazz Federation, and served a term as its president. He worked as the station manager at WRBH-FM, which caters to blind listeners. He also restored antique cars.

Patterson tried to convince Mr. Green to assemble and lead his own group, under his own name, at Snug Harbor. But Mr. Green steadfastly resisted. “He always wanted to play as a sideman. He’d pitch somebody else (as the leader) with him in the band. He wanted to support other people that he respected.”

That, Freilich said, “was a conscious decision about what he felt his art form was.”

At most, he would allow himself to be co-billed with other members of the ensemble. On Sept. 28, he was to have performed at Snug Harbor with Singleton, Freilich and drummer Johnny Vidacovich. The show was billed as “Singleton, Freilich, Green & Vidacovich.”

As news of his passing spread throughout the local music community, stories of his graciousness and kindness turned up on social media. Vidacovich’s wife, Deborah, recounted how Mr. Green would invariably send her husband a thank-you note after being hired for a gig.

Keyboardist and composer Charlie Dennard, who has spent much of the past decade touring the world with various Cirque du Soleil productions, recounted on Facebook that “the last time I was in New Orleans doing a radio interview, Tim actually called the station just to say hello and that he enjoyed my music… That’s the special kind of person that he was. A gentle soul and brilliant musician who will be missed by all.”

Bonerama trombonist Mark Mullins wrote, “Tim taught without teaching. He made you try to be a better person just by being around him, and he played with a style unlike any other saxophonist I have ever heard.”

“Anybody that played with him loved him,” Patterson said. “He was excellent at complementing others. He took wonderful solos. He was very spiritual, and it showed in his performances.”

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

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Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died | NOLA.com

** Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died
————————————————————

1 / 4

Mr. Green grew up in Bridgeport, Conn. Raised in the Pentecostal church, he gravitated to the tambourine as his first instrument. It wasn’t until high school that he took up saxophone.

That, Freilich said, “was a conscious decision about what he felt his art form was.”

“Anybody that played with him loved him,” Patterson said. “He was excellent at complementing others. He took wonderful solos. He was very spiritual, and it showed in his performances.”

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 4, 2014 / No Comments / More

Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died | NOLA.com

** Highly respected New Orleans jazz saxophonist Tim Green has died
————————————————————

1 / 4

Mr. Green grew up in Bridgeport, Conn. Raised in the Pentecostal church, he gravitated to the tambourine as his first instrument. It wasn’t until high school that he took up saxophone.

That, Freilich said, “was a conscious decision about what he felt his art form was.”

“Anybody that played with him loved him,” Patterson said. “He was excellent at complementing others. He took wonderful solos. He was very spiritual, and it showed in his performances.”

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

September 4, 2014 / No Comments / More

1969 Kraft Music Hall Sandler & Young and Ella Fitzgerald (Special Guest) on NBC – YouTube

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In 1969 Tony Sandler & Ralph Young presented the very popular weekly ‘Kraft Music Hall’ -one hour TV show on NBC. This is 11 minutes of this episode aired on the 4th on June in 1969.
This unique document shows 11 minutes part of the show with special guest the fantastic jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald.
Sandler & Young perform “Sweet Georgia Brown” and Ella perfoms “This Girl is in Love with You”.

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Jazz Promo Services
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August 30, 2014 / No Comments / More

1969 Kraft Music Hall Sandler & Young and Ella Fitzgerald (Special Guest) on NBC – YouTube

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Jazz Promo Services
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Warwick, Ny 10990
USA

August 30, 2014 / No Comments / More

1969 Kraft Music Hall Sandler & Young and Ella Fitzgerald (Special Guest) on NBC – YouTube

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Warwick, Ny 10990
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August 30, 2014 / No Comments / More

For a Band of Steel-Pan Drummers, Summer Means Practice, Practice, Practice – NYTimes.com

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/nyregion/for-a-band-of-steel-pan-drummers-summer-means-practice-practice-practice.html?_r=0

** For a Band of Steel-Pan Drummers, Summer Means Practice, Practice, Practice
————————————————————

Photo
A member of the steel-pan band Despers USA rested during a practice on Tuesday in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Their racks of steel-pan drums strung together, the musicians of the Despers USA band trudged alongside as the entire operation — drum racks, stage, cooking tent, portable toilet — rolled down Washington Avenue in Brooklyn last weekend. They were under tremendous pressure, but there was no way to rush to their new home with that teetering cargo.

“It took us over an hour,” said Odie Franklin, an arranger for the band, and the dean of a public high school for 10 months of the year. “We were blocking traffic.”

Last week, days before New York’s championship competition for steel-pan bands, Despers USA lost the rental deal on the yard it had been using for rehearsals, a patch of vacant ground next door to a flat-fix storefront on Classon Avenue, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. So they relocated a mile away, in a space on the corner of Franklin Avenue and Montgomery Street.

One lot or another, it hardly mattered: Steel pan is a sound and heritage that has already traveled more than 2,000 miles to reach Brooklyn, and it is still going strong.
Photo

Terence Greenidge and his bandmates preparing for a championship competition on Saturday.Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The members mounted a stage and strung lights. During breaks, they ate shark sandwiches in pan-fried bread and sipped cool shandy beverages. A team of auxiliaries with sewing machines and scissors worked on the costumes that the performers would wear this Saturday — for the women, frilled shirts, bandannas and long skirts; and for the men, buttoned-up shirts and straw hats. At the other end of the lot, a shower of sparks flew from a welding gun as a man fixed a drum rack injured in the move. Seven days a week, all summer, about 70 Despers musicians from age “6 to the elders,” as the bandleader said, arrived to practice in late afternoon and stayed until midnight. They played and perfected licks to a 10-minute song for which there was no score — just ears tuned to steel pans that could purr spring water tenor sounds, or boom the bass of an August thunderstorm.

The pan yard has a rhythm that ticks down the days of summer.
Photo

Despers USA recently relocated their practices to a space on the corner of Franklin Avenue and Montgomery Street. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

East of Prospect Park, Brooklyn has 10 such yards (http://www.panonthenet.com/world/newyork/panyard_locations.htm) where steel-pan music — first created on empty oil drums on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago — rings through warm nights. An 11th yard is in Uniondale, on Long Island. Each yard is occupied by a band that will put on a 10-minute performance at Panorama (http://wiadcacarnival.org/event/steel-band-panorama-2014/) , behind the Brooklyn Museum, on Saturday evening, part of the West Indian celebration held every Labor Day weekend.

“It’s not just competition,” Daryl Gamory, the captain of Despers, said. “It’s all-out musical war.”
Continue reading the main story Video

** A Carribean Beat in Brooklyn
————————————————————

Steel-pan players prepare for the Panorama competition in Brooklyn.
Video Credit By Robin Lindsay on Publish Date August 29, 2014.

Commercial sponsors are rare; the steel-pan enterprise rides on sweat equity and high spirits. “For a steel-pan band in Brooklyn during the summer, pan is their life,” said Sheman Thwaites, a tenor player with Despers. “It’s a world within itself. It actually is bringing the culture of that small twin island country in the Caribbean to New York and recreating it for the months leading up to what you will see on Eastern Parkway, as well as what you will see at the Panorama competition on Saturday. They eat, sleep, drink steel pan.”
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

In the second week of September, Alyssa Cain, who began playing in junior high school, will be taking a final set of exams for her nursing credentials. She spends the first three hours of the day studying, she said. “Then it’s coming over to the yard and practice,” she said; she serves as the section leader of the tenor pans. “My job is to drill my section, to make sure they have it clean, crisp, everybody is playing as one. We’re all about one band, one sound.”
Photo

Steel-pan music was first created on empty oil drums on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago.Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Bob Telson, a music composer for theater and film who counts himself as the only non-Caribbean player in the band, marvels at how the music is passed along. Mr. Franklin, the arranger of the song, teaches or sings each part. “I’m a pianist, and finding the notes on the pan is very challenging — then the music is hard, even if you do know where the notes are,” he said.

Over the last week, the band has been working on the introduction to its piece, “Play It Local.” The beginning is customarily the last piece threaded into the composition, Mr. Thwaites said.
Photo

A stall sold food nearby as Despers USA practiced on Tuesday. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

“The intro kind of summarizes what you are going to hear throughout the song,” he said. “It’s no different than what Leonard Bernstein or someone of that nature would have done with a classical piece or a show tune.”

Glenda Spencer, a supporter of the band who spends most of the year in London, savors the ambience of the yard — its smells, passions and sound.

“It’s all part of something you love,” Ms. Spencer said. “Money can’t buy this.”

It was time to run through the introduction, and Mr. Gamory, sweating from a million logistical labors, climbed to the center of the stage.

“Ready?” he shouted. “Here we go: One. Two.” He counted off four more ticks on a cowbell, like a hallway clock, and the music burst into a welcome summer storm.

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