The 31st Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival kicked things off last night with a highly energetic performance from the Stefano Bollani Trio (shown in photo above). The festival continues tonight with living legend Ahmad Jamal and his quartet featuring drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Reginald Veal and Puerto Rican-born percussionist Manolo Badrena gracing the stage at Davies Symphony Hall. Across the street at the SFJAZZ Center, Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa will be making his much-anticipated U.S. debut in the Joe Henderson Lab, the first of a four-night residency.
To view all events at this year's 31st Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival, CLICK HERE.
This week, we conclude our first season in the new SFJAZZ Center with the 1st Annual SFJAZZ Poetry Festival in the Joe Henderson Lab. The four-night run of the festival, which begins this Thursday, was curated by SFJAZZ Poet Laureate Ishmael Reed and features a diverse cast of poets that include the current California state poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, the celebrated feminist poet Lorna Dee Cervantes, the elegant Beat Generation writer Michael McClure and numerous others. Not only will the festival feature some of the most prominent poets the Bay Area has to offer, many of the readings each night will include improvising instrumentalists in an attempt to highlight the strong connection between poetry and jazz.
Even though this is our first festival that focuses solely on the powerful combination of the two expressive art forms, poetry and jazz have had a rich history together dating all the way back to the 1920s when we saw the first emergence of "jazz poetry", the rhythmic improvisational poetry style adopted by notable poets like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, and Langston Hughes. This melding of art forms continued to evolve during the fifties and sixties, especially with Beat Generation poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) who often included musical accompaniment during their poetry readings. The seventies saw artists like Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets become leading voices of their generation by incorporating jazz, spoken-word and poetry into their music. For almost 100 years, the collaboration of poetry and jazz has been a strong form of artistic expression that is rooted deeply in American culture, making this new annual Poetry Festival a very exciting yearly event.
As we gear up this week for the 1st Annual SFJAZZ Poetry Festival, here are just a few audio excerpts of notable recordings that have combined jazz and poetry.
Gil Scott-Heron - "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (1971)
Arguably the most popular song to ever incorporate poetry and music. Due to the overall success of the recording and it's politically driven lyrics, the song's title became a popular slogan among the 1960s protest movements in the United States.
The Last Poets - "Bird's World" (1972)
One of the many powerful recordings by this group, which like Gil Scott-Heron been credited as one of the earliest influences on hip-hop music.
Frank Foster - "The Loud Minority" (1974)
Dee Dee Bridgewater's powerful use of poetry on this song is arguably saxophonist Frank Foster's most defining recording moment as a bandleader.
Jujus & Sarah Webster Fabio - "Sweet Songs" (1976)
This lesser known recording features poet and educator Sarah Webster Fabio, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley. During her time there, she played a pivotal role in establishing the universities' first Black Studies department.
Billy Harper featuring Amiri Baraka - "Knowledge of Self" (2008)
A more recent example of the two art forms coming together featuring the highly acclaimed and controversial poet Amiri Baraka, is considered by many as one of the most respected and most widely published writers of his generation.
To learn more about the 1st Annual SFJAZZ Poetry Festival and/or purchase tickets, visit the SFJAZZ website.
I was asked to write a blog post that examines the link between jazz and the Beat Generation for the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco's exhibition of Allen Ginsberg's photography entitled Beat Memories. Considering the great timing with our SFJAZZ Poetry Festival this week, I decided to post it on our own blog as well.
Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie
Music is reflected in the literature of every era in American history, and the soundtrack, indeed the heartbeat, of the Beat Generation was modern jazz. Specifically, it was the propulsive, adventurous and boundary defying sound of bebop, which had evolved during the early and mid-1940s out of the swing era of the previous decade that captured the imagination of the Beat writers and their followers.
With its concentration on small-group dynamics and solo virtuosity, bebop could be seen as a necessary reaction to big band swing’s stifling rigidity of form and structure. Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and other giants provided the rhythm for the work and a model for the lifestyle of the Beats, who adopted the “hep cat” lingo of the musicians and in many cases unfortunately, their taste for heroin, Benzedrine and other drugs. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were known to frequent the after-hours basement jazz clubs of Greenwich Village and Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, considered to be the birthplace of bebop, absorbing the improvisational spirit of the musicians who performed there. It’s not difficult to see why. The stylistic parallels between jazz and the Beats are clear — stream-of-consciousness poetry mirrored by the freely improvised solos, impassioned prose like Charlie Parker’s ecstatic melodic lines on the alto saxophone, rapid fire delivery akin to drummer Kenny Clarke’s lightning-fast syncopations with pianist Bud Powell — but of course, it runs deeper than the sound. In jazz, the Beats heard a startling new art form born of innovation and freedom, practiced largely by artists considered to be living on the fringes of society and often involved in crime, drugs and excess. Understandably, music made by one definition of a counterculture that flew in the face of the social and musical establishment resonated deeply with another artistic movement breaking free from literary conservatism. Allen Ginsberg claimed that his immortal Beat cornerstone, Howl, was inspired directly by tenor sax great Lester Young’s classic “Lester Leaps In”, which Ginsberg became aware of through Kerouac’s influence. Arguably one of the greatest contributions to Beat culture and American literature, Kerouac’s On The Road, took specific inspiration from Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray’s 1947 blowing session “The Hunt.”
Beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Rexroth often integrated live jazz into their readings, and commercial voiceover actor Ken Nordine successfully melded words and the music with his Word Jazz albums of the late 50s, though the link between jazz and the Beat Generation was largely one-sided. Over time however, some jazz artists began infusing spoken elements into their music, notably in the work of bassist Charles Mingus, whose 1957 albums The Clown and A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry contained narration, and the incantations in saxophonist John Coltrane’s “Acknowledgement” from his 1965 masterwork A Love Supreme. The blending of spoken texts and music would evolve over the ensuing years with the work of Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets, whose influence led to the rise of rap and hip-hop as we know them today.
Resident Artistic Director and acclaimed saxophonist Miguel Zenón is currently in the middle of his four-night residency at the SFJAZZ Center. This week, Zenón presents a series of projects that showcase his ever-expanding vision as a composer inspired by West Africa and the music roots of Puerto Rico. Below is a great photo of Zenón, captured by photographer Bill Evans, from last night's Rhythm Collective show.
Photo by Bill Evans
To learn more about Miguel Zenón and his SFJAZZ Center residency, click here.
We were saddened to learn that jazz pianist great Mulgrew Miller passed away today at the age of 57. Miller suffered a stroke this past Friday and had been in critical condition ever since. Over the last 30+ years, Miller was a widely accomplished artist, leading both his trio and his Wingspan band, as well as playing alongside some of jazz's most notable names like Art Blakey, Woody Shaw, Ron Carter, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Kenny Barron, Tony Williams and many others. Younger generations of jazz musicians were also heavily inspired by the pianist including Robert Glasper, who recorded in 2007 an original ballad titled “One for ’Grew,” as a tribute to his primary influence. SFJAZZ is proud to have presented the dynamic pianist several times over the years. He leaves behind an incredible legacy and will truly be missed.
Here is a great photo of Mulgrew Miller when he performed alongside Javon Jackson, Jimmy Cobb and Nat Reeves during the 2011 San Francisco Jazz Festival.
Here is a great new video by Jonathon Rezonable and Jarod Taber of Thrasher Magazine that highlights some of the best moments from Jason Moran's presentation of live skateboarding and jazz inside the SFJAZZ Center. A truly incredible groundbreaking performance that has everyone talking!
Season 1 at the SFJAZZ Center has seen many once-in-a-lifetime collaborations and some daring performances that push the envelope, as witnessed during last week's Jason Moran residency. As we begin to approach the last remaining weeks of our inaugural season here at the SFJAZZ Center, it's always enjoyable to look back at some of the season's most memorable moments.
Arguably one of the most incredible week's we had this season, took place during Zakir Hussain's residency, which featured four very unique and brilliantly original performances. The video above is a short excerpt taken during the opening night of his residency back in March when the table virtuoso shared the stage with three other great percussionists in Giovanni Hidalgo, Eric Harland and Steve Smith. A truly impressive performance!
This past weekend, Resident Artistic Director Jason Moran presented live skateboarding and jazz inside SFJAZZ Center's Robert N. Miner Auditorium. Ten skaters on both Saturday and Sunday night skated on a massive half-pipe that was installed inside the auditorium, while Moran and his Bandwagon combo simultaneously provided the evening's soundtrack to the sold-out crowds. The performance helped show the fascinating link between jazz and skateboarding, which is the improvisational nature of both art forms, as well as showcase the incredible unlimited flexibility of the auditorium.
The video above is just a short excerpt of the exciting groundbreaking performances that took place over the weekend. Enjoy!
