Jazzing it up in Williamstown (Jazztown '00)
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 7, 2000)
- For the second year in a row, the Village Beautiful is being officially transformed into JazzTown this week. A cooperative venture of the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce and the Williams College music department, JazzTown '00, as they're calling it, is bringing a series of concerts, jam sessions, jazz brunches, lectures, dances and classes to Williamstown and North Adams.

The high profile events are this weekend's concerts, beginning tonight with the Billy Taylor Trio with Sheila Jordan at 9 at Chapin Hall, continuing tomorrow night with the Tom Harrell Quintet (see accompanying article) at 9:30 in Chapin Hall, and ending on Sunday afternoon at 2 pm at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, with the long-sold-out "For Dancers Only" dance concert featuring what may well be the world's most prestigious dance band: Wynton Marsalis's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

But JazzTown is a lot more than these top-tier concerts. Earlier this week, the Clark Art Institute played host to a free lecture/dance class on the history of the Lindy Hop with innovators Norma Miller, Chazz Young, Mickey Davidson, and Kevin Gaudin. This event kicked off a week-long series of master classes held at Mass MoCA and Williams College open to the public and to area schoolchildren.

Other events scheduled include a free lecture by David Demsey on saxophonist John Coltrane, today at 4 in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall on the Williams campus. A gospel concert featuring the Boyer Brothers will take place tonight at 6:30 pm at St. John's Church in Williamstown.

Tomorrow night, the Water Street Grill and the Taconic Restaurant both will host alumni jazz sessions from 6 to 9 pm. Mezze on Water Street will be the site of a late-night jazz jam, beginning at 11:30 p.m. And on Sunday at 11 a.m., the Williams Inn will host a jazz brunch with the Williams Reunion Jazz Band.

While there isn't any overarching theme per se running throughout the entire weekend, the relationship between jazz and dance is touched on in several of the events, most notably the Lindy Hop master classes and the "For Dancers Only" dance on Sunday at MoCA.

It's unusual for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, arguably the best-known jazz big band in the world, to forsake the concert stage for the dance hall. In fact, Sunday's program is the very first stop of the band's "For Dancers Only" tour, which will take the group to 24 cities performing newly commissioned dance music in addition to classics by the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and others.

In addition to Marsalis, who is the music director and trumpeter for the LCJO, the group will include such other well-known musicians as trumpeters Seneca Black, Ryan Kisor and Marcus Printup, trombonists Wycliffe Gordon and Ron Westray, saxophonists Wess "Warmdaddy" Anderson, Ted Nash and Victor Goines, pianist Farid Baron and drummer Herlin Riley.

Champion swing dance couple Janice Wilson and Paolo Lanna will also travel with the band.

According to the program notes for "For Dancers Only," this tour brings the relationship between jazz and dance full circle back to its earliest days, when "there was no division between the two modes of expression."

"There is no objective reason to believe that music is in any way diminished when people dance to it," writes Loren Schoenberg. "Listeners can still listen, and dancers can still dance at the same time."

Herlin Riley, the man who has been providing the rhythms for the LCJO since it was founded in 1992, agrees.

"It's a positive move, because dance and music go hand in hand," said the drummer last week, speaking by cell phone from New Orleans last week, while waiting in a barber shop to get a trim.

"When people can participate with the music, through dance or singing along, it makes them feel a part of the music."

Riley said that there is some tinkering with the arrangements when performing for dancers as opposed to a seated concert audience. "For a concert, you have the freedom to play in different times, to switch meter, to play faster or slower, or to manipulate the form in a certain way.

"But for a dance, everything has to pretty much stick to a specific rhythm or groove for the dance to be continual."

Musicians playing for dancers are somewhat more constrained in terms of solo improvisation, also. "You're restricted to playing within a certan rhythmic configuration," said Riley, who first met Marsalis in 1981 in London.

"You can't go outside and manipulate the rhythms too much, from a rhythm section standpoint. People can't dance to stuff it it's too wild.

"But if you're playing inside a particular form, you can be just as expressive."

From where he sits, playing for dancers or listening audiences is pretty much the same. "For some guys it may be difficult, but for me it's all the groove. My job is pretty much to keep time and keep the music flowing, the motor running. For dance or not, it's not a problem.

"I've had opportunities to do all kinds of gigs, shows for dance, with routines all set. So I've had that kind of experience.

"There are times when a musician would like an audience to pay more attention to his musical statement, yes. There's definitely a place for that. But at this particular time, there's a place for this. There are times when you just want to be expressive and not have restrictions of time and beat and responsibilities to dancers. But there's a time for everything. For us to be doing this at this time is a good thing. It draws people back to the music."

And for the drummer, which is more fun, playing for dancers or listeners?

"More fun? I don't know. I have fun when I play anything. When I sit behind the drums, I'm thankful to the creator that he gave me talent to play for kids, in a ballroom or a nightclub or wherever. It doesn't matter. I just have fun when I'm playing."

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on April 7, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]