The jazz age

Isthmus Jazz Festival turns 30 (we’re pretty sure)

It’s October of 1987. The price of gasoline is hovering around a buck a gallon. The U.S. Senate is preparing to “Bork” a Supreme Court nominee. Here in Madison, Joe Sensenbrenner occupies the mayor’s office. And Isthmus is scrambling to pull together its first-ever jazz festival.

Much has changed in the three decades since that fateful month. Gas costs more; Supreme Court nominees are dumped through inaction without a single hearing; and the Soglin Dynasty is in its third epoch. But while the format, venue and custodianship have all changed since its humble beginnings, the event now known as Isthmus Jazz Festival is alive and well and preparing to celebrate its 30th birthday.

But before we get too caught up in the anniversary hoopla, it bears asking: Is this is indeed the 30th Isthmus Jazz Festival? To wit, Isthmus hoopla’d the 2008 festival as the 20th. That would make this one the 29th, not the 30th, right? So what gives? It turns out that the past decade has brought improvements in anniversary calculation methodology. By 2012, Isthmus co-founder and former publisher Vince O’Hern had revised the numbering, having figured out that there was a fest-less year somewhere along the line.

When the first festival took place in 1987, it wasn’t called the Isthmus Jazz Festival, and there was no reason to assume it was going to be an annual thing. It sprouted out of a different event. A group of Madison cultural elites decided this town needed some sort of arts festival, and they came up with Festival of the Lakes.

“They had arranged with Mikhail Baryshnikov to bring the Junior Moscow Ballet to the Madison Civic Center the year before the first Festival of the Lakes as sort of a preview,” O’Hern recalls. “The Civic Center director, Ralph Sandler, asked me to stage a musical event the same weekend to make it sort of a mini-festival. That was the genesis.”

A stage was set up on State Street, and a musical lineup was hastily assembled. The headliner was one of Madison’s most famous personalities, Ben Sidran, who began the concert announcing it would be a birthday party for Charlie Parker. Those plans got sidetracked when even-more-famous Steve Miller dropped by to deliver some pop numbers along with some jazz ballads.

Despite the critical response (see review highlights, below), the mini-fest was a hit, so the following year Isthmus decided to make it an annual event at the Civic Center, dubbing it Isthmus Jazz Festival. For that first official Isthmus Jazz Festival, organizers went out and booked themselves a real jazz act: Miles Davis.

Nobody knew at the time that the festival would become a Madtown fixture, but O’Hern was optimistic about its future, writing in his October 1988 Isthmus column: “We plan to do this again next year if the community finds value in the event.”

Apparently the community found value. The festival scored another musical giant, Ray Charles, to headline the festival in 1989. More giants followed over the years. One of saxophone great Sonny Rollins’ first performances upon returning from one of his frequent self-imposed hiatuses was at the Isthmus Jazz Festival. Herbie Hancock played the festival, as did Diana Krall. The list of luminaries who have played it over the years is long and impressive. But homegrown jazz was, and still is, the heart and soul of the festival.

“We would just get scores of applications from local musicians every year,” says former Isthmus editor Dean Robbins. “We all just sat there and listened to all the tapes and CDs that bands would send, and we would discuss and argue and go over our favorites and vote. It really was a pretty amazing democratic process. And then we would have like 25 bands booked for this thing, and the Civic Center would just be crawling with people, people spilling out of the building. That was very exciting and rewarding.”

The Civic Center gave way to Overture Center, and the festival went on, featuring scads of local performers playing in various rooms throughout the facility. Then, in 2006, O’Hern was ready to pass the torch, and Isthmus handed over management of the festival to the Wisconsin Union Theater. The festival was moved to the Memorial Union Terrace, with the ticketed headline act performing in the Union Theater.

That was a smart move. It was hard to sell enough tickets to headliners’ shows to fill Overture. That’s less of a problem in Shannon Hall, which seats about half as many people as Overture Hall.

As in the early days, the festival is still booked by a committee, which is chaired by a UW student, currently Chelsia Tong. Ralph Russo, director of the Union Theater, says the committee ensures that the festival represents different facets of the jazz community. Madison’s many jazz-related organizations are included as well as jazz DJs from WORT-FM, UW students and Johannes Wallmann, the music school’s director of jazz studies. “It really is a programming collective representing a lot of different parts of the jazz community,” says Russo.

So what’s the secret of Isthmus Jazz Festival’s longevity? Robbins believes it may have something to do with the fact that the festival has never been about making money.

“It seemed like it was the furthest thing from a business decision for Vince,” he says. “He truly loves the art form and he had a sense that the local scene needed a boost. It really was a labor of love, and he devoted a lot of our staff time to it, and he just kept it going in a quixotic way for all those years.” 

A critical timeline

Ben Sidran, 1987

Okay, Steve [Miller] drops by for a few numbers — no problem. He’s got a palatable, velvet smooth voice that’s appropriate for his style of bluesy hep-cat pop. If Miller had just done a pop set it wouldn’t have been bad. But to keep the concert true to its JazzFest billing, he sleepwalked his way through ballads like “God Bless the Child” and “Willow Weep for Me.” The rest of the band snoozed right along, led by Sidran’s tape-loop, music-box backing riffs. In a way, this set represented one of the most disturbing trends in contemporary jazz. With ‘80s coolness selling everything from jeans to beer, jazz has been reduced to an attitude, trivialized into an airbrushed, urban-cool state of mind that really has nothing to do with the music.

— Paul Gerard

Miles Davis, 1988

Miles Davis’ Saturday concert at the Isthmus Jazz Festival was a perfect expression of his restless spirit. He paced up and down a ramp on the Civic Center stage. He fiddled with the knobs on his keyboard. Occasionally he hunched over, pointing his trumpet toward the floor and squeezed out a few mournful notes.

Davis’ seven sidemen followed him closely, waiting for the body language or musical cue that would tell them what to play next. As a result, the music seemed to spring directly from his wanderlust. Watching him (and watching the rest of the band watch him), the audience was drawn into his private world, in which the passage of time is, to say the least, idiosyncratic. It was an unsettling type of intimacy.

— Dean Robbins

Ray Charles, 1989

Ray Charles lit up last weekend’s Isthmus Jazz Festival on Saturday night with a rousing gospel-blues-jazz sermon before a 2,200-strong congregation of the already converted. Any doubting Thomases among those crammed into the Civic Center’s Oscar Mayer Theatre — including one overzealous fan/heckler — were quickly overcome by Brother Ray’s heartfelt songs that have secured him a place in contemporary music history.

— Kent Williams

Betty Carter (almost), 1990

It was rough week for festivals. On Friday evening, the Isthmus Jazz Festival got off to an inglorious start when headliner Betty Carter languished at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, hostage to inclement weather, while nearly 2,000 awaited her at the Oscar Mayer Theatre.

— Vince O’Hern

Sandra Reeves Phillips,1991

Sonny Rollins,1992

Betty Carter (for real), 1993

Draped in blue silk, Carter swaggered onto the stage and for almost two solid hours, gave us everything. She worked her material for all it was worth, transforming standards into sublime monuments of self-expression. Carter specializes in erotic declarations — a sophisticated, adult version of romance. And on Saturday, she projected the kind of passion that can only be earned through years of painful (or pleasurable) experience.

— Dean Robbins

Newport Jazz Fest on Tour, 1994

Herbie Mann, 1995

Herbie Hancock, 1996

An oddly offhanded Hancock took to the Oscar Mayer Theatre’s big stage last Saturday, joking around with the crowd and the other members of his all-star quartet before launching into Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street.” Even with the chords altered and saxophone up-and-comer Craig Handy showing off his warm, full tone, the Gabriel selection lacked much in the way of compelling improvisation. … Hancock’s playing seemed most inspired on the encore, his own standard “Maiden Voyage.” A cool, aqueous blend of R&B and musical “impressionism,” the tune has aged extremely well, and on Saturday it gave Hancock an opportunity to explore the sort of subtle dynamics that contemporary pop generally negates.

— Tom Laskin

Nancy Wilson, 1997

Mose Allison, 1998

Charlie Haden, 1999

Dianne Reeves, 2000

Rather than dwelling in her place in the jazz world, she charmed a large, remarkably diverse audience with a selection of tunes that ranged from Joni Mitchell’s folkie pop song “River” to Leonard Cohen’s lugubrious “Suzanne” to the bedrock Ellington standard “Mood Indigo.” These performances offered a full view of her capacious talent. They also made one hope that, at 44, the maturing Reeves becomes ever more skillful at balancing her pop predilections with the grand tradition of the Divine Sarah, et al.

— Tom Laskin

Joe Lovano Nonet, 2001

Dee Dee Bridgewater, 2002

Bobby Sanabria, 2003

(No Jazz Fest due to Overture opening, 2004)

Meshell Ndegeocello and Patricia Barber, 2005

Roscoe Mitchell, 2006

Composer/woodwind player Roscoe Mitchell turned in the most exciting set I witnessed over the weekend. As always, the Art Ensemble of Chicago mainstay sampled a variety of instruments, from a huge bass saxophone to a complex rack of bells, cymbals and other percussion instruments. His playing went from jaunty to intense, and an adamantine display of circular breathing technique on soprano toward the end of the set was nothing short of remarkable.

— Tom Laskin

Madeleine Peyroux, 2007

Roy Haynes, 2008

Richie Cole, 2008

For five minutes on the Memorial Union Terrace last Friday night, one man’s gentle command of an alto saxophone beat back the honky-tonk energy of a few thousand beer drinkers. “I’d like to play something beautiful for a beautiful evening in Madison,” Richie Cole said before revealing his emotional interpretation of the Hoagy Carmichael classic “Stardust.” With every breath he pumped into his horn, Cole evoked the bittersweet feel of life’s loves and disappointments. Every pause was timed to perfection. Every rise and fall of the melody stirred a tide of personal reflection. Cole’s set was the highlight of last Friday’s portion of the Isthmus Jazz Festival because his showmanship took no backseat to his instrumental virtuosity.

— Rich Albertoni

David Sánchez Quartet, 2009

Tierney Sutton, 2010

Dianne Reeves, 2011

Mary Stallings, 2012

Carmen Lundy, 2013

Joan Wildman, Richard Davis and Willie Pickens, 2014

On Friday, my first cheer of the Isthmus Jazz Festival was for an inanimate object. The Joan Wildman Quartet inaugurated the UW Memorial Union’s renovated Fredric March Play Circle, and it proved to be a dramatically improved space. My second cheer of the evening was for Wildman herself, the emeritus UW professor who has been pushing musical boundaries here since the 1970s. With a synthesizer at her right and a grand piano at her left, she made a triumphant return to the festival with a set that explored the tension between structure and improvisation.

Iconic bassist and UW music professor Richard Davis, brilliantly paired with Chicago piano man Willie Pickens, quickly made [newly renovated Shannon Hall] feel like home during the headlining performance. Davis, 84, and Pickens, 80, slowly took the stage from opposite sides — piano at stage right and bass at center stage — and proceeded to reinterpret a variety of jazz standards, beginning with saxophonist Charlie Parker’s “Crazeology.” Each man capitalized on his signature style: Pickens’ spry fingers and dramatic delivery complementing Davis’ melodic versatility, as the bassist alternated between plucking and bowing.

— Dean Robbins

Freddy Cole, 2015

Joey Alexander, 2016

2017 Headliner Terence Blanchard

Jazz with a message

The best jazz has always had a social conscience, from its roots in African American communities of the South to the free-form experimentation of the 1960s and beyond. In his most recent work, acclaimed composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard sustains that tradition. For their headlining concert at this year’s Isthmus Jazz Festival, Blanchard and his band, the E-Collective, will be performing much of the material from their upcoming album, tentatively titled Travel Ban.

“The album is all about what’s been happening with unarmed African American men and law enforcement,” Blanchard says. “In certain communities, people of color are essentially banned from just walking down the street; you can’t exist without getting accosted for some reason.” The album continues the theme from his 2015 release Breathless, whose title refers to “I can’t breathe,” the last words of Eric Garner, the New Yorker who died after being put in a chokehold by an NYPD officer in 2014.

Blanchard is no stranger to politically charged art. He’s written the score to every movie made by director Spike Lee since 1991. In all, he’s recorded 30 albums as a leader or co-leader and written the music for about 50 movies.

Born in New Orleans in 1962, Blanchard got his start touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra from 1980 to 1982 while studying music at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He got his big break in 1982 when he was tapped to replace fellow Crescent City native Wynton Marsalis in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where he served as music director until 1986. Blanchard started leading his own combos in the early 1990s. Since then, he’s picked up five Grammy awards out of 13 nominations, served as artistic director for various institutions and even written a jazz opera, Champion, which premiered in 2013.

Blanchard has been collaborating with Lee since early in the filmmaker’s career. Lee hired Blanchard as a session musician on some of his earlier films, including School Daze and Do the Right Thing, before making him his go-to composer starting with Jungle Fever. “We’ve developed an approach to film scoring that’s kind of specific to him, because his cinematic style is so unique,” Blanchard says.

Like Lee, Blanchard doesn’t shy away from controversial topics. “What we are is the social conscience,” he says. “I can’t change any laws. But what I can do is appeal to some people’s hearts and consciences, and hopefully open their eyes to some truths.”

— Bob Jacobson

Local luminaries on the Terrace

One of the highlights of the free, outdoor portion of this year’s Isthmus Jazz Festival is Saturday’s world premiere of a new composition commissioned for the festival’s 30th anniversary.

The UW Jazz Orchestra will debut “Scenes from Lake Mendota” by Madison-based composer and trumpet player Paul Dietrich. It’s a three-movement ode to the Union Terrace, the very site of its maiden performance. “From a listening perspective it sort of describes what you might see if you spent a whole nice summer day at the Terrace,” Dietrich says.

Before and after the premiere of “Scenes,” listeners on the Terrace will be treated to a musical feast that highlights Madison’s local talent as well as some regional acts. Friday’s program kicks off at 4:30 p.m. with a set by the Isthmus High School Jazz All-Stars. This group, led by Edgewood College Jazz Ensemble director Dan Wallach, brings together Dane County’s best high school jazz players into a single prep jazz supergroup. The high schoolers are followed by Alyssa Allgood, a Chicago-based vocalist whose 2016 release, Out of the Blue, received glowing reviews in the jazz press; and the Kevin Hayden Trio, a drummer-led, Milwaukee-based combo that plays a lively mix of jazz, R&B, pop and hip-hop. The evening wraps up with the Darren Sterud Orchestra, a big band led by trombonist Sterud and featuring some of the Madison’s top jazz practitioners.

Saturday’s main themes are collegiate jazz and Latin flair. The program on the Terrace begins at noon with UW-Whitewater’s top jazz ensemble. They will be followed by Wallach’s Edgewood College Jazz Ensemble and Jazz I, UW-Platteville’s flagship jazz band. Next up is the Tony Castañeda Latin Jazz Band, with special guest vibraphonist Tom Mattioli. At 6 p.m., the UW Jazz Orchestra takes the stage for “Scenes from Lake Mendota.”

While headliner Terence Blanchard and the E-Collective heat up Shannon Hall starting at 8 p.m., Madison jazz mainstay Jan Wheaton and her quintet will be doing their thing outside on the Terrace. Two of Madison’s most popular Latin music groups will close out the festival Saturday night. Edi Rey y Su Salsera, led by Colombian import Edi Rey on saxophone, will offer up a spicy melange of salsa, merengue, cumbia and related genres starting at 10 p.m. And rounding out the schedule at 11 p.m. is Orquesta SalSoul, a Madison-based ensemble that blends salsa and soul grooves, topping it with layers of vocals. (Full disclosure: Your humble author plays trumpet with Edi Rey y Su Salsera. But that won’t stop me from telling you that these two Latin groups will have you shaking your rump all over the Lake Mendota shore.)

Missing from this year’s schedule is the educational component that has been a part of the program during many of the previous 29 festivals, most recently in the form of “Jazz With Class” workshops coordinated by the Madison Music Collective. Union Theater’s Russo hopes the programming committee can find a way to restore the workshops in the future.

Part of the magic of the Isthmus Jazz Festival is that for most of the local performers, the Terrace will be their biggest audience of the year. “Everybody likes to bring their A-game to the festival,” Russo says. “It’s a chance to play before a whole bunch of new people who have never seen them before but love to come down to the Terrace.”

— Bob Jacobson