This month, Cal
State East Bay will present its annual Jazz Festival with special guest artist,
three-time Grammy winning percussionist Terri Lyne Carrington. The festival
features an evening concert with Carrington and the East Bay Jazz Orchestra
Friday, April 13 and two stages on Saturday, April 14 where a variety of
talented middle school, high school, and college jazz bands will perform for
the public while being adjudicated (visit
https://www.csueastbay.edu/class/departments/music/areas/jazz-studies/annual-jazz-festival/schedule.html
for schedules). Carrington will also perform on Saturday at 12:15 p.m.
On the occasion
of this exciting and important event, it is worth noting the festival format is
a late development in the history of jazz.
This uniquely
American music, largely the result of experimentation and sophisticated
innovation by African American musicians, has spent much of its life in small
clubs, bars, and other intimate settings. Not because this was where the
musicians preferred to play, but because that’s where the jobs were, where jazz
formed the soundtrack to drinking, dining, and dancing. The great jazz
districts of the past, such as Fillmore Street in San Francisco, Central Avenue
in Los Angeles, and Greenwich Village in New York City all attest to the fact.
Concert settings, such as auditoriums, theaters, and concert houses weren’t as
available to jazz musicians, most often because of the color of their skin.
One of the great
breakthrough moments in jazz history, therefore, was the establishment of the
Newport Jazz Festival, first held in Newport, Rhode Island in 1954. The early
popularity of the event underlined jazz’s acceptance across racial boundaries.
Even though the white socialite of environment of Newport offered a degree of
resistance to the influx of the younger audience that jazz attracted, subsequent
years saw the festival changing venues multiple times because annually increasing
numbers of concertgoers put a strain on existing facilities.
Newport became
the model for many famous subsequent festivals across the country. The Monterey
Jazz festival debuted in October of 1958; the first Playboy Jazz Festival
happened in 1959 (though the second had to wait until 1979) and in 1967, the
famous Montreaux Jazz Festival arrived on the shores of Lake Geneva in
Switzerland. A survey of the top-drawing jazz festivals across the U.S. reveals
their presence from Monterey, San Diego, and Long Beach to Detroit, Chicago, and
New Orleans, to North Carolina, Connecticut, and New York.
The Cal State
Jazz Festival is somewhat unique because the adjudicative aspect of the event
focuses attention on jazz education, a topic important to headliner Carrington,
an instructor and ensemble leader at the esteemed Berklee College of Music in
Boston.
Carrington, the
first female artist to win a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, has been
in the music business more than 40 years, first having made a name for herself
as a whiz kid prodigy, who at age ten was the youngest musician in Boston to
ever get a union card. Magazines featured her, and TV shows employed her. Icons
in the jazz world have played with her, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter,
Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, David Sanborn, Woody Shaw, Cassandra Wilson, and
countless others.
In 2005,
Carrington returned to her hometown where her alma mater conferred an honorary
doctorate and appointed her a professor. She holds the position of Zildjian
Chair in Performance in the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. She is also the
Artistic Director for both the Beantown Jazz Festival and Berklee Summer Jazz
Workshop, and Co-Artistic Director of The Carr Center of Detroit.
Reviewers have
acclaimed all eight of Carrington’s albums. Her 2015 release, ‘The Mosaic
Project: Love and Soul.’ featured an exclusive cast of female singers and
musicians. Said James Reed of the Boston Globe, the album “is so good that the
performances and the caliber of musicianship overshadow any distinctions based
on gender or even genre. It doesn’t need to come with an ingenious backstory;
it just needs to be heard.”
As an educator
Carrington realizes the difficulty of teaching the unteachable essence of
improvisation; however, she also says, “I think education creates a solid
foundation for people that really want to learn the music, but it’s just a
foundation. You have to do a lot more work to become a great player or a great
writer or whatever you’re trying to do …Just because you [get the foundation],
that doesn’t automatically put you in the jazz community. I tell my students
that is a process of self-discovery. There’s a lot of work to do after the
foundation is laid but it gives you a head start.”
As a female in
the jazz world for four decades, Carrington has had time now to consider the
relationship between women and jazz. “At this stage of my career,” says
Carrington, “I find myself speaking more about gender and equity, issues we’ve
faced with this music all along.
“I’ve had a
great career, but that’s not good enough; its not about the exceptions, it’s
not about being accepted into a boys club, it’s about changing the environment
to be more welcoming to women. I take ownership of this music, it’s my music,
and a lot of women don’t get to that point.”
Jazz at it stands
today embodies a simultaneous acceptance of all the developments that have made
it what it is. The blues, traditional jazz, bebop, fusion, free jazz,
afro-cuban, and more all find their way into today’s recordings. “I think this
is a really exceptional time,” says Carrington, “because so many people have
had permission to merge indigenous music based on their cultural background,
traditional music—if that’s where their heart is—as well as the things they
grew up listening to, be it indy rock, or R&B. This kind of genre merging
is very exciting.”
Concertgoers to
the East Bay Jazz Festival are sure to encounter a variety of styles, but if
anything is true about the music, in the words of Terri Lyne Carrington: “Once
you get bitten by the jazz bug, you’re there forever.”
Cal State East
Bay Jazz Festival
Friday, Apr 13
7:30 p.m.
University
Theater
Saturday, Apr 14
8:15 a.m. – 5:00
p.m.
University
Theater (Stage A)
Studio Theater
(Stage B)
Saturday, Apr 14
12:15 p.m. Guest
artist performance
University
Theater
Cal State East
Bay
25800 Carlos Bee
Blvd, Hayward
(510) 885-3000
$10 General
admission
