courtesy Cafe Coda
The Sun Ra Arkestra on stage.
Sun Ra Arkestra’s Café Coda appearance was originally scheduled for April 2020, but was derailed by the pandemic.
A fifth anniversary is not something most people would celebrate with five days of world-class jazz performances. But Hanah Jon Taylor is not most people.
As Madison’s preeminent jazz sax and flute player, Taylor has performed with such artists as Miles Davis, Richie Havens and Nina Simone. He is also owner/operator of Café Coda, the only club in the city devoted to jazz performances. It’s an environment Taylor feels best suits the music. Café Coda is Taylor’s baby and he is honoring its fifth anniversary with CodaFest, a blow-out that brings together many strains of jazz under one roof, from Nov. 16-20.
The five CodaFest days will feature 25 events or artists, and with Café Coda’s capacity of just 99 people, it’s possible every event will sell out.
The Fest’s performers are drawn from Taylor’s musical contacts and represent jazz royalty:
• Roscoe Mitchell, a Chicago native and former Madison resident, is considered one of the leading figures in avant-garde jazz. He co-founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and formerly served as the Darius Mihaud Chair of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he currently lives. Mitchell and his trio help open the Fest on Wednesday, Nov. 16.
• Taylor’s own Artet will perform on Saturday, Nov. 19, and this performance will include bassist Reggie Workman. As a young player, Workman joined the John Coltrane Quartet, and also has played with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Freddie Hubbard, Pharoah Sanders, Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter, and a host of other artists. He currently serves as a professor in the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School in New York City.
• Vocalist Dee Alexander follows Taylor’s Artet with her own quartet. A favorite of the Chicago jazz scene, Alexander has been voted the Windy City’s best vocalist and her quartet originally opened Café Coda in March 2017. She hosts Sunday Jazz with Dee Alexander, which originates at Chicago’s WFMT-FM and also is carried by Wisconsin Public Radio.
• Saturday’s closing highlight is the Sun Ra Arkestra, a Philadelphia-based 12-musician ensemble as well known for its colorful costumes as for its jazz/funk blend. The band was among the earliest purveyors of Afrofuturism, a cultural aesthetic that explores the intersection of the African diaspora with science and technology. Founder Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount, later changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra, then Sun Ra and claimed to be from Saturn. He died in 1993, passing the reins to fellow band member and sax player Marshall Allen, who still leads the group at age 98.
Sun Ra Arkestra’s Café Coda appearance, originally scheduled for April 2020 but derailed by the pandemic, is a particular source of pride for Taylor, who himself was asked to join the ensemble years ago but declined due to family obligations. The group’s stability, longevity and creativity best characterize the concept of both jazz and CodaFest, Taylor says.
“Music is not something you can disconnect from life, and we should learn to experience it in more than just a sonic way,” he says. “Sun Ra always offers a bombastic experience that takes art much farther than a pedestrian concept of what music is.
“It’s a little different than bebop,” he adds. “If your impression of jazz stops at Charlie Parker, then you are doing yourself and the music a disservice.”
The venue, at 1224 Williamson St., was intended to elevate the genre. “It’s Madison’s only real jazz club with a stage, concert grand piano, and a Green Room,” Taylor notes. “You must have those three things in any real jazz venue, and Madison didn’t have such a venue before.”
That elevation is important in several ways. “Let’s acknowledge that jazz is not a museum piece, but it’s the music of the time,” Taylor says. “We’re offering an opportunity for the community at large and especially young people to accept jazz as a new music, not just the music of their grandparents.”
Ticket info is available here; tickets also are available at the club.
