Henry Adebonojo
When the Isthmus High School Jazz All-Stars hit the Memorial Union Terrace stage at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, June 16, the 30th annual Isthmus Jazz Festival will officially be underway.
Their downbeat kicks off a two-day celebration of local jazz, along with a few regional acts and a nationally renowned headliner, New Orleans-based bandleader, composer and trumpet superstar Terence Blanchard and his current band, The E-Collective.
Blanchard’s concert is a ticketed event in the Wisconsin Union’s Shannon Hall. Everything else that’s part of the festival takes place on the Terrace and is free of charge. The festival is presented by the Wisconsin Union Theater in collaboration with Isthmus.
A Crescent City lifer, Blanchard has recorded 30 albums as a bandleader or co-leader; composed 50 film scores, including the music for every Spike Lee joint since 1991; and taken home five Grammys for his efforts. Blanchard first burst onto the jazz scene when he replaced his homeboy Wynton Marsalis in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the early 1980s, and started leading his own bands in the early ‘90s. Since then, Blanchard’s music has bounced around among, between and beyond recognizable jazz subgenres, from traditional to provocative to groovalicious funk. The E-Collective is the group Blanchard initially put together for his 2015 album “Breathless,” whose title refers to the words “I can’t breathe” uttered by Eric Garner, the New Yorker who died after being put in a chokehold by an NYPD officer in 2014. Blanchard and The E-Collective play June 17 at 8 p.m. in Shannon Hall.
In recognition of the festival’s 30th anniversary, the organizers commissioned an original piece by Madison-based composer/bandleader/trumpeter Paul Dietrich. The three-movement composition, “Scenes from Lake Mendota,” will be premiered by the UW Jazz Orchestra on June 17 at 6 p.m. on the Terrace, the very space that served as its inspiration.
As always, college groups will be well-represented at this year’s festival. In addition to the UW Jazz Orchestra, ensembles from UW-Whitewater, Edgewood College and UW-Platteville are all on the bill for Saturday. Another category that figures prominently into Saturday’s schedule is Latin music. Madison Latin jazz stalwart Tony Castañeda and his Latin Jazz Band, along with special guest vibraphonist Tom Mattioli, play at 4 p.m. Closing out the festival Saturday night will be two popular local Latin groups — Edi Rey y Su Salsera at 10 p.m. and Orquesta SalSoul at 11 p.m. (Full disclosure: Your humble author plays trumpet with Edi Rey.)
Friday’s lineup includes a couple of regional acts. Alyssa Allgood is a Chicago-based vocalist whose 2016 release Out of the Blue received best-something-of-the-year plaudits from a raft of jazz publications. The Milwaukee-based Kevin Hayden Trio, led by drummer Hayden, plays a lively melange of jazz, R&B, pop and hip-hop.
But as usual, the Isthmus Jazz Festival is mainly a showcase for hometown talent. Friday night’s closing act is the Darren Sterud Orchestra, led by trombonist Sterud, a fixture on the Madison jazz scene. And Saturday night, after the premiere of “Scenes” and before the salsa blowout, longtime Madison favorite Jan Wheaton brings her quintet to the Terrace stage.
Jazz appears to be on the rise in Madison right now. There is an abundance of young talent, some new venues, and some energetic organizations like the Greater Madison Jazz Consortium working to promote the genre. The Terrace will be the epicenter of that scene for these two days in June.
