Jazzin' up the Pillow; Victor Goines: Latter-day doubler; Africa Fete '98
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 2, 1998)

Jazzing up the Pillow

Jazz fans won't want to overlook the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket as a place to hear great music this summer. There's always been a strong connection between jazz and dance, and the program at the Pillow this summer seems intent on reflecting and perpetuating that link, with new works examining and exploring the give-and-take between dance and jazz.

Last week's program by the Bebe Miller Company featured a new work by contemporary composer Don Byron. This weekend, Donald Byrd/The Group presents the New England premiere of Byrd's "JazzTrain I, II, III." The three-part work fuses dance with music composed by drummer Max Roach, guitarist Vernon Reid and pianist Geri Allen.

In a recent phone interview from his New York City apartment, Byrd said of the piece, "What I am interested in doing is finding a way of introducing jazz audiences and dance audiences to each other and to the two different mediums."

Modern dance in particular has long drawn on jazz for its soundtrack, but what makes Byrd's new work different is that the scores were specifically commissioned by him.

"The music was created as a result of conversations and dialogues I had with the composers," said Byrd. "There's a kind of collaboration involved with the source, rather than something where there's no collaboration at all but just an interpretation of the music."

Byrd had worked with Max Roach on several previous occasions. "I knew Vernon Reid through his Living Colour rock band and through the work he had done with Bill T. Jones," said Byrd, "so when I got the music from him I was pretty surprised, because it was softer and more melodic and gentler than what I expected.

"Geri and I talked about how jazz grew out of dance music, and we talked about juke joints. She was already headed in that direction, which was kind of serendipitous. Her music surprised me when I got it, too. It didn't do literal juke joint -- it was a very abstract, sophisticated notion about music that you might hear in that context."

In choreographing these dances to the music, Byrd echoes the task of a jazz composer, which is to lay down melody over a chordal structure while leaving room for individual expression by a soloist. "In some cases, I've given the dancers material that was not interpreted by me at all, and said here is this movement, now deal with it any way you want to.

"Jazz is really about surprise and the unexpected. People who really love jazz -- they go because they are excited by this unexpectedness. They're waiting for those moments, those surprises. That's the thrill of the music. So what I've tried to do with the dancing is to provide visual surprises, too."

While the Byrd program and other upcoming dances that address jazz in various forms -- including "Jazzdance" by Danny Buraczeski (July 16-19) and "Roy's Joys" by Twyla Tharp's new dance troupe, which pays tribute to the great trumpeter Roy Eldridge (Aug. 18-22) -- use recorded music, a few shows will actually feature live musicians. The Jazz Tap Ensemble (July 7-11), brings its own company trio. Dianne McIntyre teams with avant-garde trumpeter Lester Bowie, who will be on hand with his group, Brass Fantasy, at the Pillow from July 30 to Aug. 2.

Now, if the Pillow would only reinstate its much-beloved and longed- for series of jazz performances.

For more information, call (413) 243-0745 or visit www.jacobspillow.org on the Internet.

Victor Goines: Latter-day doubler

There was a time when versatility was prized amongst jazz players -- when the ability to play several different instruments was a point of pride. This was especially so for players in big bands, where the music called for the different shades and hues that could be supplied by the various sizes and shapes of clarinets, saxophones and flutes. It was a lot easier to have one player -- a "doubler" -- double on soprano and tenor saxophone, or clarinet and bass clarinet, than to have four separate musicians handling the various chores.

In this way, and perhaps others, Victor Goines is a throwback to an earlier era. On his new CD, "Joe's Blues" (Rosemary Joseph), the reedman plays all four of those instruments. No mere doubler, his bag of tricks also includes alto and baritone saxophones, flute, piccolo and alto flute.

Goines credits Wynton Marsalis, as director of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra -- of which Goines is a member -- with supporting and encouraging his broad musicianship. With Lincoln Center's emphasis on Duke Ellington's repertory, as well as in Marsalis's compositions, there is great demand for Goines's clarinet playing. In fact, all five saxophonists in the band double on clarinet.

"Lincoln Center gives me a chance to develop on the clarinet," said Goines in a recent phone interview from a hotel in Michigan. "It's probably not something I'd be playing if I was out there by myself, because there's just not enough avenues to express that instrument. Everyone wants to hear the saxophone."

Marsalis, reached at the same hotel as Goines, emphasizes his childhood buddy's versatility. "Victor is a very serious musician," said the Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, trumpeter and bandleader. "He's very diligent, and has a lot of different skills that he's developed. He plays all the horns, and he's very thorough. `Stay on that stick,' we say."

Goines has been "on the stick" since he began playing clarinet at age 8. He first met Marsalis when they played together in an elementary school honors band, and has maintained his friendship with him ever since. "I've seen him strive and accomplish the things that he has," said Goines. "He's not just someone who's been lucky to receive all these honors and accolades -- he's worked really, really hard to get to where he's at, and he's still working hard to develop what he has in his mind."

As Marsalis's "musical preparator," Goines currently has a front-row center view of the composer's creative process. When Marsalis writes music, he uses a unique shorthand he has developed so he can quickly get down on paper what he comes up with. As his copyist, Goines has learned to read Marsalis's shorthand, and it is his job to render all the parts into standard musical notation.

"It's exciting," said Goines, "because when Wynton's writing he has an idea in his mind when it's going to end, but only he has that idea....So you're waiting for the music to come from him and you have no idea when it's going to end."

Goines will be on hand when Marsalis brings the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to the National Music Center in Lenox this Sunday, July 5, at 8. The program will include works by Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, as well as Marsalis's own new suite, "Big Train." Call 637- 4718 for ticket info.

Africa Fete '98

Ancient meets modern at Africa Fete '98, the touring festival of African music and culture that pulls into Look Memorial Park in Northampton on Tuesday, July 7, at 5, as part of the Pines Theater Summer Music Festival. The four featured performers -- Salif Keita of Mali, Papa Wemba of Congo, Cheikh Lo of Senegal and Maryam Mursal of Somalia -- are all stars in their native lands who draw on indigenous African musical traditions and combine them with modern influences to make fresh, contemporary, highly danceable world-beat or Afro-pop music. In addition to the sounds of soukous, mbalax and other rhythms, the festival features an "African village" presenting traditional arts, crafts and food of Africa. Call (413) 586-8686 for ticket information.

Backstage bits

Mass MoCA kicks off its intriguing "EarMarks" exhibition of sound art, scattered in locations throughout North Adams and Williamstown, tomorrow night, July 3, with a rave-style party from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Route 2 underpass on Marshall Street in North Adams, where one of the soundworks -- Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger's "Harmonic Bridge" -- is installed. The party, free and open to the public, features music by Toneburst, a Boston electronic music collective....Add top-notch Boston singer-songwriter Deb Pasternak to the Music on Main Street series at the Manic Stage in downtown North Adams on Aug. 7. Jess Klein is set to open....Ani DiFranco -- who performed before about 500 people just two years ago at Mass MoCA's Night Shift Cafe, played to a crowd of 10,000 last week at Great Woods in Mansfield....Stockbridge native and superstar rock drummer Kenny Aronoff is touring the world with Smashing Pumpkins, coming to Boston's Orpheum Theater on July 31....They're doing it again at Yasgur's Farm, site of the original Woodstock Festival, next month, with Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Ziggy Marley and Ten Years After on Aug. 14 and Pete Townshend, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed and Richie Havens on Aug. 15. Ten Years After, Townshend and Havens are veterans of the original festival -- Mitchell stayed home and wrote a song about it.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 2, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]