Williamstown Jazz Festival, April 8-11, 1999

by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 11, 1999) -- There was a palpable feeling of cultural excitement around town this weekend, akin to those crazy summer weekends when the Williamstown Theatre Festival is up and running at top speed and thousands of tourists are passing through the doors of the Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum of Art.

The organizers of the Williamstown Jazz Festival set out to recreate that feeling of summertime cultural excitement in mud season, and by any measure they succeeded. They programmed a varied and dynamic selection of performances at locations on and off campus, which attracted an equally varied and dynamic audience of students, townspeople, alumni and jazz lovers from the greater region. With the jazz festival shadowed by an unofficial alternative festival at one off-campus location, and festivities throughout the weekend honoring the 10th anniversary of the campus's Multicultural Center also attracting a contingent of alumni to town, the place was unusually abuzz.

The highlight of the festival, musically speaking, was the concert by the Mingus Big Band on Friday night, in a Chapin Hall packed to the rafters. The New York-based group, dedicated to the performance of compositions by the late, great composer/bassist Charles Mingus, was an apt choice to kick off the inaugural festival -- plans are already in the works for a follow-up festival next spring. Mingus composed from a broad, deep palette, drawing from early jazz, the blues and spirituals as much as from classical music and orchestral jazz, combining these influences into a rich fusion with a highly personal, modernist outlook, reflecting in sum the rich wellspring of African-American jazz.

Mingus wasn't afraid of brassiness, dissonance or even a bit of well-placed noise, and the 14-piece big-band reflected the composer's fiery exuberance on familiar material and lesser-known works. "The Children's Hour of Dream," an excerpt from Mingus's symphonic work, "Epitaph," was a painterly, through-composed narrative, sort of Prokofiev meets Ellington, that included a melange of textures ranging from rural to urban and back again. Saxophones and flutes played like strings, and flutes, tubas and voices were included in the versatile sonic mix that Mingus always favored.

"Nostalgia in Times Square" was, like several of the compositions performed, a modified take on the blues, showcasing Howard Johnson on tuba and an electrifying solo by one of the group's trombonists. Saxophonist John Stubblefield brought down the house on an excerpt from Mingus's "Cumbia and Jazz Fusion," eliciting cheers as much for his proto-rap savaging African-American stereotypes as for his wild, honking, R&B-laced solo.

The festival kicked off the night before at Chapin Hall with a concert by the Ted Rosenthal Trio. Joining the pianist, a winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, were legendary sidemen Reggie Workman on bass and Joe Chambers on drums. The trio played an elegant, abstract set, including pieces by Lennie Tristano, Thelonious Monk and Rosenthal himself. Economy and precision were watchwords of the trio's approach. Workman's solos were hornlike; Chambers' playing was all finesse; Rosenthal's touch was delicate and stringlike.

On Saturday night, three area restaurants were scrambling to deal with the hordes of customers trying to get in to hear groups of Williams alumni musicians perform. At the 1896 House, bassist Chris Lightcap, pianist Adam Shaw, saxophonist Alex Wong and trumpeter Steve Robinson played elegant standards for a roomful of dinner patrons.

Later that night, the far-flung alumni groups reassembled at Goodrich Hall for a late-night jam session which allowed for some more relaxed and adventurous playing. The ringer in the group turned out to be a young alto saxophonist named Ian Golub, not a Williams alumnus but just someone's friend up from New York City visiting for the weekend. It was the sort of spontaneous touch the festival promised -- indeed, in large part what jazz is all about -- and it was a tribute to all involved that Golub made it to the bandstand, where he blew some remarkably inventive phrases. He's one to watch.

The festival concluded on Sunday afternoon with a double-bill back at Chapin Hall featuring the Art Lande/Bruce Williamson Duo and the Joe Mullholland Sextet. Lande and Williamson duetted on piano and saxophone, respectively, weaving a tapestry of dual melody lines that skirted the edges of new-age, world-beat and jazz fusion. The Mullholland group included an accomplished, three-man horn section that traded solos on a variety of bebop-style tunes.

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