Young artists create new 'Minneapolis Sound': jazz
BY MATT PEIKEN
Pioneer Press
Two decades ago, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü defined the "Minneapolis Sound" for a rock-starved nation. Today, an adventurous generation of jazz musicians is staking claim to that label.
Happy Apple, Fat Kid Wednesdays and a handful of players connected to those bands are bringing indie-rock sensibilities into improvisation-laden, avant-garde jazz. After sewing their sound into the fabric of local music for years, they're now being recognized in New York and abroad for expanding the art, aesthetic and audience of jazz.
Jean Rochard, a record producer in Paris, grew so excited with the jazz brewing in the Twin Cities he has almost single-handedly opened a European market for local artists — French record deals, European tours and recording projects with experimental Euro jazzers.
This French connection comes to the Twin Cities with the debut of Minnesota Sur Seine, a weeklong jazz festival featuring homegrown movers and European shakers, often onstage together. Performances at various venues run Monday through Saturday.
Local avant-garde jazzers feel validated by the international interest and infusion and, in turn, hope local audiences take stock in this avenue of Twin Cities jazz. "It's very exhilarating, very lively and quite unpretentious," Rochard says.
As for the musical exchange he has fostered, Rochard is "into building bridges. I like the idea of two stories being told at the same time."
Topping the short list of visiting artists is Michel Portal, a composer and multi-instrumentalist who turns 69 later this month and is regarded as the godfather of French modern jazz. Others of international acclaim on the festival bill are keyboardist Tony Hymas, bass clarinetist Denis Colin, cellist Didier Petit and saxman Corneloup Francois.
JAZZ IN THE BASEMENT
To understand this new generation of Twin Cities jazzers, show up around 11 any Monday night at the Turf Club's Clown Lounge, a basement space beneath the University Avenue rock club. There, Fat Kid Wednesdays drummer JT Bates has taken on the role of a curator for experimental jazz.
The evening largely draws people in their 20s and 30s who might not otherwise know Ornette Coleman from Gary Coleman. By extension, they know Fat Kid Wednesdays more as Monday's unofficial house band than as a hot new import into the European jazz scene.
"We want to play to our generation, to people our own age, to people who have no references for jazz," says Adam Linz, the bassist for Fat Kid Wednesdays who, in another incarnation, spins records from behind a pair of turntables.
"Kids who come to see us know they don't have to know jazz," Linz says. "They just feel the energy, and that locks 'em in."
Musicians in this scene grew up with jazz in one ear and rock in the other. They found one another at school or music camps and by spending countless nights hanging out at the back of St. Paul's jazz clubs. Walker Art Center's presentations of John Cage and other exploratory musicians cast deep impressions, and when young avant jazzers here saw bassist Anthony Cox and pianist Craig Taborn find success outside the Twin Cities, it fueled their own ambitions.
Rather than cozy up to stock-in-trade jazz standards, the emerging avant-garde of the Twin Cities experimented with their own songs, with simple structures strong enough to support torrid improvisation. The music was dexterous and virtuosic. Chops were a necessity, but so was playfulness, and musicians who met the demands of both performance and personality began to thrive.
GETTING IN MOTION
The Motion Poets, a sextet, were the first local group of this generation to tour with their own music. But the first breakout artists, during the late '90s, were drummer Dave King, saxophonist Michael Lewis and raised-on-metal electric bassist Erik Fratske. As the trio Happy Apple, they combined Coltranesque romps, classic jazz balladry, stylized musicianship and between-song comic banter into explosive and expressive shows.
Audiences followed Happy Apple from the Cedar Cultural Center to the Uptown to the Artists' Quarter. They didn't care that it was jazz; they just knew it was special.
Happy Apple also hit the road like any hungry rock band, dashing off to play in front of college kids in Madison and Iowa City.
"Happy Apple didn't play in rock clubs because they wanted to be a rock band. They played rock clubs to get their music out there, and because they didn't want to play jazz clubs," Bates says. "They came from the same aesthetic of avant jazz guys playing in CBGB's gallery in New York. They were anti-elitist, but they never compromised the music, and I think they're responsible for a lot of what's happened here."
Around the same time, Rochard, whose partner and young child live in Minneapolis, discovered drummer Michael Bland and bassist Sonny Thompson, both formerly of Prince's band. Rochard connected them with Michel Portal, who had dispatched Rochard to find "dancers" for his next musical project.
Bland and Thompson performed and recorded with Portal for a trio of Rochard-produced CDs — largely guitar-oriented fusion — collected into a boxed set called "Dipping in Minneapolis." Rochard also went on to produce discs and find major-label recording deals in Europe for Happy Apple and Fat Kid Wednesdays.
"You can work and be successful here, but I think it's easier in Europe, to tell you the truth, especially if you want to do the noncommercial jazz," Thompson says. "Europeans are still listening to music, and Americans aren't. We're listening more to grooves."
THE BAD PLUS
In 2002, the Bad Plus, a trio featuring high school friends drummer Dave King and bassist Reid Anderson, caught a major-label deal and the attention of critics with a debut featuring a cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." (King was astonished to learn that pianist Ethan Iverson, who grew up in Wisconsin, had never heard of Nirvana.)
Not surprisingly, the Bad Plus has been marketed as if it's a rock band — its follow-up album includes covers of songs by the Pixies and Black Sabbath, and the Pixies have invited the Bad Plus to open shows along its North American tour.
The Bad Plus never really was a part of the local jazz scene — two members had moved to New York before the band formed. Still, the band's success has cast residual light on avant jazzers in the Twin Cities.
"People (here) are spoiled now," Linz says. "I had a girl come up to me and say she was in San Francisco and couldn't find any good jazz there. The thing is, we travel all over the country, and we don't see it, either. So maybe what we have going on really is unique."
Rochard certainly thinks so. He tells of pianist Francois Tusques, who 40 years ago made the first free-jazz record to come from France, watching Fat Kid Wednesdays perform at a festival in Paris. "His first words to me were 'I didn't know people were still making music like this,' " Rochard recalls.
Spurred by that reaction and others, Rochard is developing a record label of his own solely to examine the connections between French jazz artists and their free-jazz counterparts in the Twin Cities and elsewhere in America. To date, he has produced nine albums featuring Twin Cities artists.
"I hope this isn't a repeat of the only other so-called Minneapolis Sound," Bates says. "The only guy from that bunch still making music is Paul Westerberg."
"There is something very genuine and natural happening here, and it might be tough to preserve that," Rochard says. "Right now, they are like little kids having such fun."
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