Fifty years in the band still isn’t enough

Marshall Allen (photo: Alan Nahigian)

Paul Serralheiro

Montreal will be awash with jazz in the next few weeks, with a total of four festivals going on. There’s not only the International Jazz Festival that everyone around the planet knows about, but also two equally appealing festivals (if not more so, for hard-core jazz fans) following in short order, plus the festival Bryan Highbloom has been offering at the Jewish General Hospital. That spells a lot of music.

As usual, veteran musicians are a big part of the draw, whether they are jazzers, like pianist Hank Jones, or jazz-related like the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who is still belting it out. Locals like drummer Guy Nadon and pianists Oliver Jones and Vic Vogel are also in on the fun. All of these performers are appearing at the high-profile Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. The two other festivals, the Suoni Per Il Popolo (run by the Casa del Popolo) and the Off Festival (run by and featuring Montreal musicians), have an equally interesting lineup, and this year they are teaming up to present a couple of events, the most prominent being the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Led by Marshall Allen after Sun Ra’s passing in 1993, the Arkestra follows the big band tradition but with an avant-garde twist, as likely to play When You Wish Upon a Star or There Will Never Be Another You as they are to revisit Sun Ra’s quirky themes like We Travel the Spaceways or one of the many tunes Allen has penned. Formed in the 1950s, the Arkestra is still thriving. I spoke to Marshall Allen, who still lives in the Sun Ra house in Philadelphia, a couple of days before his 84th birthday as he was preparing for a celebration in New York at Sullivan Hall.

I asked him about his long association with the band and about his long life in music. “It contributes to my well-being and in my 80s, that’s what I’m doing,” he said. “When you’re younger, you’ve got adventure, you’ve got a strong drive to move forward and get something down. Now I’m not that youthful, but there are still things I want to do, and I don’t have to go through a lot of that stuff like when I was younger. Now I have more time to stay with the music and more time to concentrate.”

He went on to tell me about life before Sun Ra, playing in Paris, Germany, and England, and spending time in the Army until he met Sun Ra in Chicago. “He lived a few blocks away from me and he rehearsed his band, and I went to rehearsals and listened and his other band in New York was breaking up and I got into the new band.”

That was 1958, and Allen waxed enthusiastic when he realized that this year marks the 50th anniversary of his joining Sun Ra. “Back in those days I didn’t think I’d still be playing in the band in 50 years,” he said in his endearing Kentucky drawl.

He has a simple answer to what keeps him committed to the band: “It’s the music! Sun Ra was a good teacher and that was like a gold mine. All I had to do was put in the time.” The time, in this case, has meant a whole career devoted to the Arkestra, which has required a lot of study, given the founder’s unique vision.

But there are also more practical issues: “Through the years, music gets displaced, songs are there with no names on them. It’s quite a thing to try to get the parts back together. It’s like a puzzle.”

He also still studies the challenging music: “Sometimes there’s time against time, or different times together. He always had a large band and a lot of stuff going on. So I just do the main thing and sometimes rework some of the music. He has about a thousand pieces, some of which haven’t been played yet. He would write for different people, change things, chords, melodies, depending on the person who would be playing… tailor made. So I still got some challenges, interpreting the music.”

The audiences are still coming to the concerts and include lots of young people. “We make a little story with the band going way back and coming right on up, so it’s like a music lesson for those who weren’t born. We show them what they were doing in the 30s and early 40s and what they’re doing now.”

The Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen will perform at the Sala Rossa Sunday, June 14 at 8:30 pm.

Info: casadelpopolo.com

Older musicians bring depth to festival

Paul Serralheiro

With spring urging people out onto the streets, the festival season begins, and for music lovers, it starts with The Montreal Chamber Music Festival, which runs from May 1 to May 24. “In putting the festival together, I find the best comparison is haute cuisine,” says artistic director Denis Brott. “It’s like putting together a fine meal. A festival isn't just another concert — it has to be an event. There has to be something unusual about it, something special.”

One notable aspect of this 13^th edition is the artistic depth of the senior musicians on the program, the most seasoned of whom are pianists Gary Graffman, 80, Anton Kuerti, 70, and Oliver Jones, 74. “People get older, but not their careers,” says Brott. “When Oliver Jones retired, I said to him, ‘What are you doing, man?’ — and he’s continued playing and playing his best. Music has a renewal quality to it, it has a life force. Look at the program and you’ll see that several artists are past 60, yet listening to them has a rejuvenating quality.”

While the program’s choices are eclectic, with music from classical to contemporary performed by artists at all stages of their careers, Brott points to the quality that experience brings: “As we get older, we get more tolerant, more accepting of our ignorance. We know that we don’t know. There’s also more security in terms of ego. We’re more willing to share our knowledge and are more concerned about the search for the truth and what represents spirituality... A musician is a servant… like an actor whose duty it is to serve the playwright. A musician is at the service of the composer. We try to get across what the composer wants. And we’re better able to do this as we get older.”

The reasons for this ultimately have to do with experience. “Who do you think will have the deeper knowledge, the young musician who’s only played a few pieces by Beethoven, or the older musician who’s already performed all of Beethoven’s work? It’s about depth of understanding. And music keeps us young... like a fountain, and even if you’ve played the piece before and know it very well, there’s always that element of surprise.”

Montreal concert halls are active all through the year, providing fine music-making, but there is a significant difference between the Montreal Chamber Music Festival and other festivals or concerts. Brott maintains that this festival is “like having an affair. There’s that blush of newness, since musicians haven’t played together before. Unlike the usual concert where musicians come for one night, then are gone, it’s not a one-night stand. Our artists come here and get together for about 3 to 4 rehearsals to create a very exciting, intoxicating mix.” Brott himself, a well-respected cellist, will be performing in 4 concerts, and during the Festival’s run will also be making side trips to Quebec City and New York, the second stop with Claude Frank, an 82-year-old Artur Schnabel disciple. How does he find this double-duty of musician and manager? “I don’t think of it as difficult. I think of it as exciting.”

Along with the chamber music that forms the core of the program, jazz has found a place. “For me,” Brott explains, “jazz is chamber music and chamber music has an element of jazz. Jazz is very structured, which allows you to improvise on a note basis. In chamber music a performer is improvising on an emotional and interpretational level. Although in chamber music the whole is greater than the sum of the parts a performer has the ability to impact the whole in the realm of timing, colour, and articulation. The brush is broader in jazz, whereas in chamber music the brush works more on detail. Also, when you look at it, the best jazz musicians are often classically trained.”

For its first 10 years, the Festival was presented at the Chalet on Mount Royal. It has been held at the St. James United Church on St. Catherine Street for the last three years. “Accessibility was a big factor,” Brott explains, “although the mountain was a great locale and I still hope to go back there. But there aren’t the buses, and it was inconvenient if you wanted to go out for dinner before, etc.” The downtown location is not a compromise on acoustics, though — in fact, says Brott, quite the contrary: “All the critics have raved about it. The issue really has been accessibility and I’m hopeful that our audiences will continue to grow.”

The issue of accessibility is also addressed by Brott’s approach to the way the music is presented to the audience: “I give live program notes on stage. We have to think of future audiences. It’s our mission. There’s been an increase of 25% in our under-30 crowd due to cheaper tickets. Young people have come from as far as New York state, Aylmer, Ontario, and Jonquière to attend the festival. This means the festival will be better able to serve its purpose.”

For more details and program information, visit festivalmontreal.org.

After the flood, sound the trumpet

Paul Serralheiro

Tales of destruction by flood are retold in nearly every culture, wherein the event is endowed with mythical qualities, an act of God that forces reflection on its victims. The devastating storm that flooded New Orleans is no longer news, but its aftereffects are still real to the survivors who are trying to pull their lives back together. Musical stories of that flood are told by two jazz musicians from the Crescent City — trumpeters and composers both — in their most recent CD releases.

For his Tale of God’s Will: A Requiem for Katrina (Blue Note Records), Terence Blanchard, the elder of the two trumpeters, was awarded a Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. With Blanchard, the rhythms are recognizably New Orleans, starting with the march-like drum beat that opens the suite of pieces, announcing the requiem that this project presents. The title of the disc asks listeners to consider the storm as part of God’s plan — how else to explain the destruction and loss of life and home for so many? This must have been the reasoning behind the music, much as it is in the Old Testament story. Blanchard’s trumpet voice is compelling in its nuance as it dominates the varied textures of the compositions, some of which originally appeared in Spike Lee’s documentary film “When the Levees Broke.” Blanchard, one of the young lions from Wynton Marsalis’ generation, has scored many a film in recent years and knows how to create mood and meaning with sounds. Here his sextet (trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass, drums and percussion) is augmented in several pieces by the lush, yet subtle strings of The Northwest Sinfonia.

The tunes urge the acceptance of God’s will, as in “Ghost of Congo Square,” “Mantra Intro” and “Mantra,” mixed with clearly programmatic pieces like “Wading Through,” “In Time of Need” and “The Water,” and references to past storms in “Ghost of Betsy” and “Ghost of 1927.” Inevitably, there is also grief expressed in the blues laments of “Levees” and “Funeral Dirge.”

The younger trumpeter, Christian Scott, a couple of decades Blanchard’s junior, leads a smaller group, with sonorities that are more contemporary. However, the mood in Anthem (Concord Jazz) is equally reflective. The twelve pieces featured have titles that directly reference the flood, like “Katrina’s Eyes,” and the title cut appearing in two versions, “Anthem (Antediluvian Adaptation)” and “Anthem (Post Diluvial Adaptation)” — the first having a kind of ominous foreboding vamp that launches the quiet storm of melody and rhythm, and the latter featuring a lyrical commentary by rapper Brother J of X-Clan on the human struggle that was brought into relief by the storm and its aftermath. Through it all, Scott’s keening horn (he plays trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn and slide trumpet) is a lyrical, compelling voice addressing the drama that is both social and cosmic. He and his quartet (horn, drums, bass, and guitar) offer jazz with a contemporary urban beat, but with lyrical content that maintains a thread with tradition.

It is fitting that the trumpet is featured in these almost religious musical mediations. Considered by ancient people as the sound of the voice of God and used as a heraldic instrument to announce divine interventions, it is strikes a deep, resonating chord in the human soul.