Jazz & Blues Festival adds fourth night
By B. K. Lake, Nov 17, 2006

International Jazz & Blues Fest November 23–25, 7pm Teatro Ángela Peralta Workshops at noon, Bellas Artes Reception for the artists Wednesday, November 22, 8–11pm La Cava de la Princesa, Recreo 3 100-peso

A fourth night has been added to the Festival Internacional de Jazz & Blues, which opens on November 23, reviving a Thanksgiving tradition that was interrupted in 2005 after an 11-year-run.

Denise Perrier, a popular San Francisco nightclub singer and recording artist, and Doug Robinson and his Mo’ Ritmo group will perform at 7pm, November 26, in the Teatro Ángela Peralta, said executive director Antonio Lozoya.

“We’ve had an enthusiastic public response since announcing the return of the jazz festival and decided to add more of the great musicians who wanted to come to San Miguel or who already live here,” Lozoya added.

Instead of scat singing, Perrier said she wants her audiences to feel all the emotions a song can arouse rather than marvel at her vocal prowess. To do that, a reviewer said, “she opens herself to her audience and invites them to participate in the ambience she’s creating.”

Perrier, who has performed throughout the United States, Europe and the Far East, is still remembered in the San Francisco area for her sultry voice that aired every 15 minutes on a former radio station, saying “Ooo, KJAZ.” 

Doug Robinson was a San Diego-based musician and record producer before moving to San Miguel two years ago. He recently formed a group, Mo’ Ritmo, with guitarist Ken Basman, and performed in and produced a sold-out concert in tribute to the late Ray Charles. He also heads Jazzoo Productions, which makes custom music CDs as corporate business gifts.

Opening the festival’s second concert on November 24 will be the Bob & Joe Blues Show, featuring Bob Kaplan and Joe Warner. After studying percussion at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Kaplan moved to New York, where he was active in the avant-garde “new music” of the 1960s. He has participated in numerous US and international jazz festivals and has played with such jazz figures as Gato Barbieri, Etta James and David “Fathead” Newman. He also has played drums with Dexter Gordon and Pharoah Sahnders. In 1998, he was a semi-finalist in the Theolonious Monk vocalist competition. He appeared at several of the former jazz festivals and performs regularly in San Miguel. 

A local resident, Warner grew up playing blues professionally in southern California. He studied guitar with folk blues legend Stephan Grossman and was mentored by the late Buddy Smith, a renowned California blues guitarist. 

Warner has played with such artists as Snooky Prior, Kim Wilson and Junior Watson and played in numerous blues festivals, including the Ojai Bowlful of Blues and the Irvine Jazz and Blues Festival.

Also appearing will be two international performers from Cuba: pianist Gabriel Hernández and percussionist Roberto Vizcaíno. A past winner of the national prize for best orchestration in Cuba, Hernández and his group, Fervet Opus, have played in several jazz festivals in that country, accompanying Leon Thomas and Dizzy Gillespie. Hernández has appeared in Montreal, London, New York and in Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Holland, Poland, Yugoslavia and Mexico. He has played in concerts and recording sessions as pianist in the Band Crisol directed by the trumpeter Roy Hargrove. His most recent CD, On the Thrill, included two performers at the San Miguel festival as accompanists, Cody Moffett and Ken Basman.

Vizcaíno played with the Chucho Valdes quartet, which received two Grammy nominations for the discs Bele Bele in Havana and Brivuma Palo Congo. Their 2000 CD, Live at the Village Vanguard, was named the Latin Jazz album of the year. He has taught at the Berklee College of Music and at universities in the US, Spain, Holland and Germany and now is on the faculty of the conservatory at the University of Morelia. 

The November 24 workshop at Bellas Artes, “El Jazz en Mexico,” is a double event. It includes a book presentation by author Alain Derbez, a musician and writer from Mexico City, and a session on “The Jazz Language” by the Rodrigo Villanueva trio at noon. It is open to the public. Born in Mexico City, Villanueva received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music, in jazz studies, at the University of North Texas and is assistant professor of jazz studies at Northern Illinois University. He performs regularly in the US and Mexico with several groups, among them his own trio and the Nick Fryer Trio/Quartet. Villanueva has toured Europe, South America, Mexico, and the US with the Mexican pop singer Lucero.

The festival’s first concert, on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, features one of Mexico’s top jazz vocalists, Magos Herrera, and her group, along with Cody Moffett and Jambalaya. The Betsy Pecanins Blues Group and the Trio de Jazz from three US universities perform on November 25. The San Miguel Jazz Cats and festival participants will give a free public concert at 5pm, November 26, in the Plaza Cívica.

Hernández will lead a workshop on November 23 on “Latin Rhythms in Jazz,” and Kaplan and Warner will give a workshop November 25 on “The Blues.” 

Tickets at 100 to 300 pesos each and 300 to 1,050 pesos for four evening concerts are on sale at the Angela Peralta box office, Border Crossings, La Conexión, Bagel Café and Casa de Sierra Nevada. 

For more information on the program, consult the web site www.jazzybluessma.com  to volunteer to work for the festival, call Antonio Lozoya at 152-7599.




Jazzy lit and a little jazz
By Vicki Gundrum

Jazz & Lit Performance Wednesday, November 22, 5pm Teatro Santa Ana, Insurgentes 25, 50 pesos

This performance is inspired by a book, inspired by jazz, inspired by the sounds found all around the Louisiana delta, like the slow, soulful imagined sound of molasses over pancakes or, heading north, the woo-woo of a train pulling into Chicago and met by streetcars, crowds, horns—and the hard life, the club life, the night.

Athea Marcos Amir, a veteran of Off Broadway and local theater, reads brief excerpts from Geoff Dyer’s But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz. The book features anecdotes from the lives of jazz giants written in the style of their music. To illustrate this literary feat—and to provide some jazzy entertainment on Thanksgiving eve—jazz saxophonist Claude Lawrence plays in response to each excerpt in the musical style of the artist. He’ll also perform some jazz standards and original compositions. 

Lawrence played in New York City clubs in the Claude Lawrence Trio before moving to San Miguel a year ago.

You’ll hear words inspired by music, words that evoke music and the jazz life, and the music that started it all—the sounds of John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis….

Here’s an excerpt from But Beautiful, describing while evoking the life and sound of Art Pepper, in this case as he flirts with a girl, talks about his music, and describes the blues:


-You like jazz?

-I’ve never listened to it properly. I heard some Duke Ellington records once and some Charlie Parker.… Richard—my husband—keeps promising to take me to a concert.

-He’s into jazz?

-Not really, she said, laughing through her nose. He says it’s undisciplined, too reliant on improvisation.

-And this guy teaches music?

She opened her mouth, there was the sharp intake of breath that precedes speech, but he went on hurriedly, burying the implied insult:

-You ought to go to one of the clubs. Maybe I could take you?

She said nothing, and then...

-What instrument do you play?

-Guess.

-Trumpet?

-No.

-Saxophone.

-Yeah, alto.

-And you’ve made records?

-Not in a while…. You hear that? he said, gesturing toward the café, the source of the music that breezed around them. That’s me playing.

-Really?

-Yeah. She cocked her head to one side, listening.

-Is it really you?

-You don’t believe me?

-Is it you?

-Sure. Who else could play the blues like that? he said, laughing.

I don’t know. What is the blues?

-The blues? Man, that’s a big question. The blues is a lot of things, a feeling…

-What kind of feeling?

-Well, it’s… Maybe it’s a guy alone, locked up some place ’cause he got in some trouble that wasn’t his fault. And he’s thinking of his girl and how he hasn’t heard from her for a long time. And maybe it’s visiting day and all the other cats are down there seeing their wives and their girls. And he stays in his cell, thinking about her. Wanting her and knowing he’s lost her, hardly able to remember her properly because for a long time all he’s seen are the girls pinned on the wall, not like real women at all. Wishing there was somebody waiting for him, thinking how his life is passing by and how he’s messed everything up. Wishing he could change everything, knowing he can’t.… That’s the blues.

When he had finished speaking she listened even more intently to the music, like someone staring at a photograph of a lover’s parent, straining to spot an elusive likeness.

-All that hurt and pain, she said at last. But… but…

-But what?

-But …beautiful. Like kissed tears, she said, smiling at how silly that sounded. Is it really you?

-Can’t you tell?

-I don’t know you. How can I tell?

-You don’t have to know me. You can tell.… Listen. That’s my voice, my hands, my mouth. Everything. It’s me.

Concert of Iraqi music

Safaafir – Iraqi Maqam Wednesday, November 22, 8pm Teatro Ángela Peralta Mesones & Hernández Macías Students 2x1, 50 pesos, 100 & 150 pesos

Baghdad’s sug al safaafir (coppersmith’s market) is memorable for the din of hammers on copper and the glowing beauty of each creation. The sound of Iraqi maqam music has often been likened to the sug al safaafir for the metallic timbre of the instruments and the percussive hammering of the ancient rhythms. Brother and sister musicians Amir and Dena ElSaffar come from a family of coppersmiths, and the name of their ensemble, Safaafir, comes from this legacy. Since its inception in 2005, the ensemble has performed throughout the US in concert halls, museums and universities and at private parties.

The group had its genesis in 2002 when Amir ElSaffar traveled to Europe and the Middle East to learn to sing Iraqi maqam and to play the santoor, a 96-stringed hammered dulcimer. This was a significant departure from the jazz and classical trumpet playing for which he was well known, having performed with Daniel Barenboim and Cecil Taylor and having won two international jazz trumpet competitions.

When he returned to the US, he brought back a djoze (spike fiddle) for his sister Dena and a pair of naqaraat (small kettle drums) for his brother-in-law, Tim Moore. They, too, became inspired by Iraqi maqam and began to learn the repertoire from ElSaffar. Johnny Farraj, a percussionist from Beirut now living in New York, joined the fledgling ensemble in 2004. Many people are surprised to encounter a group of musicians from the US who are dedicated to keeping alive the centuries-old traditions of Iraqi music, particularly since there are few masters remaining either in Baghdad or abroad. Fuad Mishu, an esteemed Iraqi musician, remarked that the Safaafir ensemble was “a miracle.” Through their concertizing, the Safaafir ensemble continues breathing new life into the ancient Iraqi maqam music against the backdrop of the 21st century.

Jose White Quartet offers “course” in chamber music 

Pro Musica Concerts
By Jose White String Quartet
Saturday & Sunday, November 18 & 19, 5pm
St. Paul’s Church, Cardo 6, 50/150 pesos

By B. K. Lake

The Jose White String Quartet concerts amount to a survey course of chamber music styles. The six pieces range from the intimate and emotional String Quartet No. 23, K590, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to the String Quartet, Opus 10 by the impressionist Claude Debussy to the 12-tone String Quartet, Opus 28, by Anton Webern.

Also included will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 3 in F major, Opus 73, which invokes the horrors of war; the String Quartet Opus 18, No. 41 by Ludwig van Beethoven and a selection of romantic poems set to music by Antonín Dvorák under the collective title of “Cypresses.”

The Saturday concert begins with one of Mozart’s three so-called Prussian quartets written in 1789–90. The piece is known for the musical jokes in the opening movement’s development with its dialogue between first violin and cello. This dialogue also forms the coda and leads to an ethereal ending. 

Webern’s quartet, written in 1937–38, was his last piece of chamber music. Webern described the atonal piece as “purely lyrical” and compared it to Beethoven’s two- and three-movement piano sonatas. 

Shostakovich composed Opus 73 in 1946 after Soviet authorities censured his Symphony No. 9. The quartet caused a furor and was denounced for the horrors the music portrays and for its ambiguous ending. 

Sunday’s concert opens with the Beethoven quartet, one of the composer’s works from the early Romantic period said to have marked the point of departure for many composers of the 19th century. 

During his youthful years in Prague, Dvorák fell in love with a young student and set to music a group of romantic poems known as the “Cypresses.” The young woman was unmoved by his efforts, and Dvorák later married her younger sister. 

Debussy’s quartet is distinguished by its plucked and bowed Spanish rhythms of the second movement and the warmth of the third. He was the leader of the developing impressionist movement of the late 19th century and replaced traditional chromatic harmony with what one writer called “a new concept of tonality.”

Tickets are available at Casa de Papel, Mesones 57; La Conexión, Aldama 3; the Sierra Nevada Hotel, Hospicio 46; and at the St. Paul’s church office, weekdays from 11am to 2 pm. Tickets can be reserved by calling 152-0387 during those hours and purchased at the door one hour before concert time.