Lois Gilbert
June-5th-2008, 02:29 AM
Sam Rivers leads strong Topeka jazz lineup
By JOE KLOPUS
The Kansas City Star
The little jazz festival that could continues to grow and evolve in surprising ways.
The three-day Coleman Hawkins Legacy Jazz Festival, just a couple of gallons of gas away in Topeka, has a new location and an even stronger lineup this year.
It’s a far cry from its scraggly but spirited beginnings, but the music-loving and noncommercial spirit that got it all started is still in place. And so is the original admission price: It’s free, but donations are encouraged.
There’s the usual complement of the region’s best talent, plus an impressive roster of world-class artists, including Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, the Brazilian husband-and-wife team who make amazing voice-and-percussion magic; the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, a surprising New Orleans band that gave that city’s musical tradition a shot in the arm in the 1980s and is still helping to energize the place; and Garaj Mahal, a hot jamming band that fuses jazz and world music with great virtuosity.
Even with all that, the eye-opener for some jazz fans is the inclusion of Sam Rivers, tenor sax man and composer who’s been a leading light on the exploratory side of jazz since the 1950s. He and his quartet will be onstage Saturday.
Rivers has long advanced the causes of harmonic and rhythmic freedom in jazz, but the music he has made has so much purpose, so much dramatic focus, that even jazz neophytes are won over.
“I play quite a few ideas,” he says on the phone from his Florida studio, “but I also play with a certain emotion. Sometimes a rock kind of emotion, sometimes a blues emotion. And it gets over to people. It’s not how much ideas you have — it’s how you feel about the music.”
Rivers, now 84, comments on a part of his background that gets overlooked: “I came up playing the blues. That’s a different discipline from bebop, and different from the avant-garde.” His first big-league job was backing blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon, he says. He was on one of Billie Holiday’s last tours. And he was with T-Bone Walker when Miles Davis lured him away.
Rivers, reared in Little Rock and Chicago, went to Boston to study music in the late 1940s and became one of those local legends.
All those lessons, from the blues to the conservatory, were transmogrified into a skittering, inventive personal style. It worked beautifully when he was playing with Herb Pomeroy’s big band (with whom he once backed Coleman Hawkins) — but it also worked when the music started to evolve in more wide-open directions.
“It wasn’t a radical change, just an evolution,” he says. “When free jazz came along, I was ready for it.”
A contract with Blue Note Records introduced him to a wider audience beginning in 1965. He moved to New York and established Studio Rivbea, a center of the avant-garde scene there. His music was finding recognition, at home and abroad (some of his best recordings come from Europe). Night after night, he’d play exhaustive solos on tenor, then another on soprano sax, then another on flute, then another on piano, then back to the tenor….
But this revolutionary never forgot about the gospel, blues and bebop styles that shaped him. He’s proud to point out that he has backed B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Jerry Butler, Joe Cocker and Chaka Khan, and he was one of Dizzy Gillespie’s preferred horn partners in the 1980s. He even jammed with Jimi Hendrix.
“It’s been a rounded experience,” he said.
About 15 years ago Rivers did something that could have been a career killer: He moved away from the busy New York scene to Orlando, Fla. But it was hardly a retirement move: “We’ve got a lot of fine musicians right here in the neighborhood. Some are professors at the university. Some are working at Disney.”
And that community of musicians didn’t let his creative energy flag. He started his Studio Rivbea anew. He leads a big band that works out regularly in Orlando — “We perform every week, and we don’t have to rehearse.”
And best of all, he’s touring with a creative, energetic quartet of Floridians: Chris Charles on vibraphone and sometimes saxophone, Doug Mathews on bass and sometimes bass clarinet (Rivers loves his multiple-reed textures — ask Bobby Watson about it sometime), and Rion Smith on drums. That’s the band he’ll bring to Topeka.
At 84, Rivers says, “I’m still writing, still moving around. Mentally I’m sharper than I ever was. The physical prowess is diminished a little, but the mental is going forward.
“I’ve been doing this professionally since I was 18, because I’m a born musician. Here I am coming up on 85. I didn’t expect this, but here I am. It’s a good thing I didn’t abuse myself too badly. My son’s a doctor, and he’s amazed at me.”
The Coleman Hawkins Legacy Jazz Festival gets its name from the first tenor sax giant of jazz, who went to school in Topeka. (Hawkins was born and raised in St. Joseph, where they’ll have a Coleman Hawkins Jazz Festival of their own June 20 and 21.)
You’re encouraged, as festival founder Dan Kozak has always said, to “write your own ticket” to the free event. This year, it’s a charity fundraiser for the Kansas Children’s Service League.
And even with sky-high gas prices, you don’t want to miss this. This three-day festival is turning into one of the biggest jewels of jazz in the Midwest.
Noteworthy
•The jazz in Kansas City isn’t bad this weekend either. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St., has some high-powered out-of-town visitors at 8:30 p.m. Friday, when alto saxophonist Dave Pietro and trumpeter Darryl White lead a quintet. These guys have torn up the place separately before; imagine what they can do together.
They’ll be accompanied by Denver pianist Jeff Jenkins, former Kansas City bassist Craig Akin and current KC drummer Brandon Draper. Cover is $10. The reliably excellent Charles Perkins/Gerald Spaits Quartet plays at 7 tonight; that’s free. Vibraphonist Greg Carroll, who’s also executive director of the American Jazz Museum, and the Midnight Blue Quartet appear at 8:30 p.m. Saturday; cover is $10. Pianist Joe Cartwright is in charge of the Monday jam session at 7 p.m.; that’s free.
•Highlights at Jardine’s, 4536 Main St., include a return appearance by singer Megan Birdsall at 6:30 p.m. Sunday and a visit from Denver-based singer Wendy Fopeano at 6:30 p.m. Monday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the festival
The Coleman Hawkins Legacy Jazz Festival in Topeka moves this year to the south end of the Kansas Expocentre grounds, near 21st Street and Topeka Boulevard. To get there, take Interstate 70 west to the Adams Street exit, go south (that’s a left) on Adams to 21st, then west (that’s a right) on 21st. If there’s a rainout, the music moves to the Topeka Performing Arts Center, at 214 S.E. Eighth Ave. in downtown Topeka.
The schedule:
Friday
6 p.m.: Irving Curtis Group
7 p.m.: Luz d’Sol
8 p.m.: Carte-Blanc, featuring Miguel De Leon
9 p.m.: Flora Purim and Airto Moreira
Saturday
11 a.m.: Washburn University Jazz Ensemble
Noon: Kansas City Kansas Community College Jazz Ensemble
1 p.m.: Topeka Jazz Workshop Band
2 p.m.: Mike Moore Quintet
3 p.m.: Kevin Cerovich Quartet
4 p.m.: Gerald Spaits Quartet
5 p.m.: Sam Rivers Quartet
7 p.m.: Candace Evans
8 p.m.: Everette DeVan Quartet with Eboni Fondren and Christy Meinhardt
9 p.m.: Garaj Mahal, featuring Kai Eckhard, Fareed Haque, Alan Hertz and Eric Levy
Sunday
1 p.m.: Hutchinson Community College Jazz Ensemble
2 p.m.: K-State Faculty/Alumni Combo
3 p.m.: Ron Gutierrez
4 p.m.: Todd Wilkinson and the Goombahles
5 p.m.: Dirty Dozen Brass Band
7 p.m.: The Third Line with Rick Bruner
8 p.m.: A jazz benediction, with Dan Kozak
By JOE KLOPUS
The Kansas City Star
The little jazz festival that could continues to grow and evolve in surprising ways.
The three-day Coleman Hawkins Legacy Jazz Festival, just a couple of gallons of gas away in Topeka, has a new location and an even stronger lineup this year.
It’s a far cry from its scraggly but spirited beginnings, but the music-loving and noncommercial spirit that got it all started is still in place. And so is the original admission price: It’s free, but donations are encouraged.
There’s the usual complement of the region’s best talent, plus an impressive roster of world-class artists, including Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, the Brazilian husband-and-wife team who make amazing voice-and-percussion magic; the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, a surprising New Orleans band that gave that city’s musical tradition a shot in the arm in the 1980s and is still helping to energize the place; and Garaj Mahal, a hot jamming band that fuses jazz and world music with great virtuosity.
Even with all that, the eye-opener for some jazz fans is the inclusion of Sam Rivers, tenor sax man and composer who’s been a leading light on the exploratory side of jazz since the 1950s. He and his quartet will be onstage Saturday.
Rivers has long advanced the causes of harmonic and rhythmic freedom in jazz, but the music he has made has so much purpose, so much dramatic focus, that even jazz neophytes are won over.
“I play quite a few ideas,” he says on the phone from his Florida studio, “but I also play with a certain emotion. Sometimes a rock kind of emotion, sometimes a blues emotion. And it gets over to people. It’s not how much ideas you have — it’s how you feel about the music.”
Rivers, now 84, comments on a part of his background that gets overlooked: “I came up playing the blues. That’s a different discipline from bebop, and different from the avant-garde.” His first big-league job was backing blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon, he says. He was on one of Billie Holiday’s last tours. And he was with T-Bone Walker when Miles Davis lured him away.
Rivers, reared in Little Rock and Chicago, went to Boston to study music in the late 1940s and became one of those local legends.
All those lessons, from the blues to the conservatory, were transmogrified into a skittering, inventive personal style. It worked beautifully when he was playing with Herb Pomeroy’s big band (with whom he once backed Coleman Hawkins) — but it also worked when the music started to evolve in more wide-open directions.
“It wasn’t a radical change, just an evolution,” he says. “When free jazz came along, I was ready for it.”
A contract with Blue Note Records introduced him to a wider audience beginning in 1965. He moved to New York and established Studio Rivbea, a center of the avant-garde scene there. His music was finding recognition, at home and abroad (some of his best recordings come from Europe). Night after night, he’d play exhaustive solos on tenor, then another on soprano sax, then another on flute, then another on piano, then back to the tenor….
But this revolutionary never forgot about the gospel, blues and bebop styles that shaped him. He’s proud to point out that he has backed B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Jerry Butler, Joe Cocker and Chaka Khan, and he was one of Dizzy Gillespie’s preferred horn partners in the 1980s. He even jammed with Jimi Hendrix.
“It’s been a rounded experience,” he said.
About 15 years ago Rivers did something that could have been a career killer: He moved away from the busy New York scene to Orlando, Fla. But it was hardly a retirement move: “We’ve got a lot of fine musicians right here in the neighborhood. Some are professors at the university. Some are working at Disney.”
And that community of musicians didn’t let his creative energy flag. He started his Studio Rivbea anew. He leads a big band that works out regularly in Orlando — “We perform every week, and we don’t have to rehearse.”
And best of all, he’s touring with a creative, energetic quartet of Floridians: Chris Charles on vibraphone and sometimes saxophone, Doug Mathews on bass and sometimes bass clarinet (Rivers loves his multiple-reed textures — ask Bobby Watson about it sometime), and Rion Smith on drums. That’s the band he’ll bring to Topeka.
At 84, Rivers says, “I’m still writing, still moving around. Mentally I’m sharper than I ever was. The physical prowess is diminished a little, but the mental is going forward.
“I’ve been doing this professionally since I was 18, because I’m a born musician. Here I am coming up on 85. I didn’t expect this, but here I am. It’s a good thing I didn’t abuse myself too badly. My son’s a doctor, and he’s amazed at me.”
The Coleman Hawkins Legacy Jazz Festival gets its name from the first tenor sax giant of jazz, who went to school in Topeka. (Hawkins was born and raised in St. Joseph, where they’ll have a Coleman Hawkins Jazz Festival of their own June 20 and 21.)
You’re encouraged, as festival founder Dan Kozak has always said, to “write your own ticket” to the free event. This year, it’s a charity fundraiser for the Kansas Children’s Service League.
And even with sky-high gas prices, you don’t want to miss this. This three-day festival is turning into one of the biggest jewels of jazz in the Midwest.
Noteworthy
•The jazz in Kansas City isn’t bad this weekend either. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St., has some high-powered out-of-town visitors at 8:30 p.m. Friday, when alto saxophonist Dave Pietro and trumpeter Darryl White lead a quintet. These guys have torn up the place separately before; imagine what they can do together.
They’ll be accompanied by Denver pianist Jeff Jenkins, former Kansas City bassist Craig Akin and current KC drummer Brandon Draper. Cover is $10. The reliably excellent Charles Perkins/Gerald Spaits Quartet plays at 7 tonight; that’s free. Vibraphonist Greg Carroll, who’s also executive director of the American Jazz Museum, and the Midnight Blue Quartet appear at 8:30 p.m. Saturday; cover is $10. Pianist Joe Cartwright is in charge of the Monday jam session at 7 p.m.; that’s free.
•Highlights at Jardine’s, 4536 Main St., include a return appearance by singer Megan Birdsall at 6:30 p.m. Sunday and a visit from Denver-based singer Wendy Fopeano at 6:30 p.m. Monday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the festival
The Coleman Hawkins Legacy Jazz Festival in Topeka moves this year to the south end of the Kansas Expocentre grounds, near 21st Street and Topeka Boulevard. To get there, take Interstate 70 west to the Adams Street exit, go south (that’s a left) on Adams to 21st, then west (that’s a right) on 21st. If there’s a rainout, the music moves to the Topeka Performing Arts Center, at 214 S.E. Eighth Ave. in downtown Topeka.
The schedule:
Friday
6 p.m.: Irving Curtis Group
7 p.m.: Luz d’Sol
8 p.m.: Carte-Blanc, featuring Miguel De Leon
9 p.m.: Flora Purim and Airto Moreira
Saturday
11 a.m.: Washburn University Jazz Ensemble
Noon: Kansas City Kansas Community College Jazz Ensemble
1 p.m.: Topeka Jazz Workshop Band
2 p.m.: Mike Moore Quintet
3 p.m.: Kevin Cerovich Quartet
4 p.m.: Gerald Spaits Quartet
5 p.m.: Sam Rivers Quartet
7 p.m.: Candace Evans
8 p.m.: Everette DeVan Quartet with Eboni Fondren and Christy Meinhardt
9 p.m.: Garaj Mahal, featuring Kai Eckhard, Fareed Haque, Alan Hertz and Eric Levy
Sunday
1 p.m.: Hutchinson Community College Jazz Ensemble
2 p.m.: K-State Faculty/Alumni Combo
3 p.m.: Ron Gutierrez
4 p.m.: Todd Wilkinson and the Goombahles
5 p.m.: Dirty Dozen Brass Band
7 p.m.: The Third Line with Rick Bruner
8 p.m.: A jazz benediction, with Dan Kozak