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Glenn Siegel’s Jazz Ruminations

A wonderful confluence of circumstances resulted in a memorable visit to the Valley by South African jazz great Fezile “Feya” Faku and friends on Sunday, April 23rd. The concert that brought Faku from Johannesburg to the theater in New Africa House at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst was a large, happy coming together.


Faku dedicated the performance to his late countryman, Zim Ngqawana, a saxophonist who attended UMass in the early 1970s at the behest of Max Roach.

In the last few months, my friend and colleague Judyie Al-Bilali has committed to turning the history-laden, but moribund basement space in New Africa House into a sovereign, student-centered creative zone. Having cleared the room of broken chairs and desks, Judyie and her students cleaned, painted and reimagined the venue, then set about filling it with theater and music. The created environment, with tapestries, painted doors, jerry-rigged stage lights and couches, became a musical oasis for 85 lucky participants.


When I lamented that Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ full schedule prevented us from presenting one of South Africa’s most esteemed jazz trumpeters, Judyie asked, “Feya Faku?” The pieces fell into place when Amherst College Assistant Professor of Music Jason Robinson offered to fund an afternoon workshop.


Boston-based pianist and arranger John Kordalewski, whose 12-piece Makanda Project was featured during Season 3 of Jazz Shares, is connected to the South African jazz scene and served as facilitator for this concert. For his abbreviated New England tour (Connecticut stops at Black Eyed Sally’s and the Side Door Café), Faku insisted on asking Kesivan Naidoo, with whom he has decades of experience, to join them. The 37-year old drummer from East London, South Africa was among the first Masters students at Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute and now lives in New York. Colombian bassist Carlos Pino is earning a degree from the New England Conservatory and has been subbing for John Lockwood in the Makanda Project.


Kordalewski, Amherst College Class of 1976, also has employed tenor saxophonist Robinson in his little big band dedicated to the compositions of Makanda Ken McIntyre. So when Robinson was asked to sit in on the afternoon rehearsal, hopes were high that he would play some that evening. The rapport between Faku and Robinson was so profound he became a full participant.

Faku told the assembled that his older sister’s Blue Note record collection helped shape his interest in jazz, and indeed his approach as a composer and player reflect his debt to that great catalog. The music throughout the 75 minute concert was drenched in blues, swing and tart harmonies. Only the last piece overtly referenced the joyous, life-affirming bounce of South African jazz, but to these ears, the phrasing, scales and the open-hearted nature of Faku’s playing all spoke of South Africa.


It says a lot about his character that Faku turned down a high profile Town Hall (New York) concert under Abdullah Ibrahim’s direction because his own ensemble had a previous commitment. Replacing an ailing Hugh Masakela before 1,500 concertgoers would have been a good career move, but that’s not how Feya Faku rolls.


Naidoo spent two nights with us in Northampton, sharing stories of his family history. His aunt, Theresa Mary Solomon, was Mayor of Cape Town from 1996-98. His great uncle spent 10 years with Nelson Mandela at Robben Island for revolutionary activity. Naidoo shared his musical history, as well. He recently recorded with the great bassist William Parker, and performs in his Artists For a Free World Marching Band, which lends its voice to street demonstrations for progressive causes. He has worked with Joe Lovano, Rene McLean and South African pianists Hotep Idris Galeta and Kyle Shepherd. A powerful and spot on drummer with a built-in understanding of South African rhythms, Naidoo has an easy laugh and a generous soul.


Pino was situated in the middle of the “stage” (an area of concrete real estate a few feet from the audience.) His role was central to the band’s mastery of Faku’s playful, yet complex compositions. He moved his head, his body and his instrument side to side all evening with an expression that evoked joy and concentration. In those moments, I imagined he thought his move from Bogata to the U.S. with little English and few resources, was worth it.


Jason Robinson forsook an Amherst College commitment so that he could play the concert. He seemed genuinely honored and excited to perform. To the less gifted it seems unfathomable that Robinson could meet three of his band mates and see the music for the first time on Sunday and make music of such splendor. The immediate connection between the musicians was a powerful illustration of the power of the arts to transcend difference.

Part two of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ trumpet trifecta touched down at Eastworks’ 121 Club on Friday, April 21st, as Adam O’Farrill brought his Stranger Days Quartet to Easthampton. Sandwiched between the explosive Peter Evans (April 9) and South African great Feya Faku (April 23), the 22-year old trumpeter wowed 85 of us over the course of his 80-minute set.

This was O’Farrill’s first concert on his first tour as a bandleader. He seemed genuinely moved by the warm reception and attentive listening we provided. The band’s itinerary takes them to New Haven, Ithaca, Montreal, and concludes at the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro on April 29.

The poise and maturity of the ensemble, both on and off the bandstand, was one of the remarkable things about this group of twenty-somethings. Given the bloodlines of Adam and his older brother, Zack, perhaps the polish, grace and self-assurance we saw is not surprising. Their grandfather is the renowned Cuban-born composer and arranger, Chico O’Farrill. Their father is the superb pianist and bandleader, Arturo O’Farrill, who performed with his two sons in 2013 as part of Season Two of Jazz Shares. Despite their youth, these musicians have been on stage for years.

With material drawn equally from Stranger Days, their well-received 2016 Sunnyside release, and standards by Irving Berlin, Kenny Dorham and others, the band played with an exuberance that befitted their age, and a restraint that belied it. Tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown displayed a full, rounded tone and a classic approach. Bassist Walter Stinson, playing shareholder Mark Dunlap’s gorgeous instrument, held things together with impeccable time and inventive soloing. Drummer Zack O’Farrill provided energy and glue. Adam O’Farrill showed why he is a rising star and sought after sideman.

The trumpeter was a key figure in Rudresh Mahanthappa’s 2015 album of the year, Bird Calls, and is featured alongside Ellery Eskelin and Tyshawn Sorey in Stephan Crump’s latest group and recording, Rhombal. (Rhombal will perform in October as part of Season Six of Jazz Shares.) O’Farrill’s sound, by turns clarion and burnished, serves the music beautifully.

His unaccompanied solo on Irving Berlin’s Get Thee Behind Me Satan amply demonstrated his musicality. Most young players want to show you how fast they can play, conflating technical prowess for musical intelligence. Although mastery of the mechanics is important and can be thrilling, connecting emotionally with listeners requires skills that only develop over time. That Adam O’Farrill has those skills at such a young age is impressive. His solo kept the contour of Berlin’s composition, but with breathy asides and bent notes torn from the tune, O’Farrill imparted a poignancy that I’m sure was not present in Ginger Rogers’ original reading featured in the 1935 screwball comedy, Top Hat.

For the music to remain vibrant musicians need performance opportunities.

That is especially true for emerging artists, who can only learn so much in the classroom. I am pleased that Jazz Shares was a part of Adam O’Farrill’s inaugural six-city tour (which included a recording session of new material at McGill University.) With next generation artists like Adam and Zack O’Farrill, Walter Stinson and Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, we look forward confidently to the continued vitality of this American music.


If athletes peak in their mid-to-late twenties, musicians seem to hit their stride a decade later. By that time, extensive training has mixed with a modicum of experience to begin to produce fully formed art. The Peter Evans Septet, six of whom are in their mid-to late thirties, provided brilliant illustration of this premise, as they treated 85 listeners to a mind-altering Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert at the Arts Block on Sunday, April 9.

With the exception of Jim Black, the exceptional 49-year old drummer, the other members: Sam Pluta, live electronics, Mazz Swift, violin, Ron Stabinsky, keyboards, Tom Blancarte, bass, Levy Lorenzo, percussion and electronics and Evans, trumpet, are all young veterans with something to say and the means to say it.

At one point the Septet sustained a single note over two or three minutes that filled the space with shards of overtones. At other points, the band swung with the forward momentum of a 16-wheeler on a 35 degree decline. Over the course of the concert the ensemble reduced to playing in mini-groups of two or three. Throughout the evening there was consonance and dissonance, conventional and extended technique, loud and soft sounds, pretty and disturbing passages, all coexisting in an unfolding narrative.

After playing uninterrupted for an hour, during which we journeyed through a myriad of moods, textures and tempos, the crowd erupted in sustained applause. Evans told us to “go home and think about what you just heard.” But the crowd wanted more, and the band obliged with a stately, slightly melancholy encore.

Evans is a virtuoso who can do anything on the trumpet (and pocket trumpet.) At one point he removed the mouthpiece and blew directly into the instrument’s bore. Sometimes he produced sounds like a beatboxer; other times I heard a soprano saxophone. All of it was in service to the music.

Over the years, I’ve heard a good amount of music with electronic elements, but never have I been so moved by plugged in instruments. The electronics, provided by Lorenzo, Stabinsky and especially Sam Pluta, were so well integrated into the ensemble, I stopped caring who was making what sound, and how. A computer whiz who just started teaching composition at the University of Chicago, Pluta is the most advanced and musical laptopist I’ve encountered. His solo was articulate and rhythmically complex, with a dazzlingly variety of constantly changing sounds. For the first time, I heard the laptop and associated gear as a full-fledged and equal partner in a musical proceeding and not just as an agent of color and texture.

As Pluta settles into academia, Peter Evans, Jim Black and Mazz Swift are earning their living on the road. In fact, Swift is missing the last four shows in this nine-city tour so she can rejoin the Idina Menzel band, whose next stop is the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. A more recent addition to Evans’ ensemble, Swift told me how much she loved playing with this group, but alas, the paydays are as different as the music.

For me, getting to hang with the musicians and hear their backstories is one of the real pleasures of doing this work. Levy Lorenzo, the other more recent addition to the ensemble, met Evans through the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), one of today’s premier new music ensembles. (Lorenzo serves as the group’s technical director.) He earned his Masters in Mechanical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and after working for Bose, Lorenzo had had enough, and enrolled in a PhD program in classical percussion at Stony Brook University. He happened upon a class in improvisation taught by Ray Anderson and his life direction changed.

I first met pianist Ron Stabinsky when he would make the four-hour trip from near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to the Valley to hear concerts I produced by Borah Bergman, Cooper-Moore, Sam Rivers and others. Stabinsky, who recently replaced Peter Evans in the ensemble Mostly Other People Do the Killing, learned about the Taubman Approach when dealing with a piano-related injury. Developed decades ago by Dorothy Taubman, it is a groundbreaking analysis of the mostly invisible motions that function underneath a virtuoso technique. The resulting knowledge makes it possible to help pianists overcome technical limitations as well as cure playing-related injuries. Stabinsky has since become an expert.

The Peter Evans Ensemble will travel thousands of miles playing nine concerts in nine days. This grueling schedule under Spartan conditions is best suited for the young and the dedicated. They are both.


Jazz Shares Thanks Its Business Sponsors for this Season
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