By Grace Sankey-Berman

LINCOLN, Neb.—I had the pleasure of hosting the Berman Music Foundation board members in a reception at our office after our annual meeting June 15. In the past our meetings had been scheduled in the winter, which sometime presented travel challenges for board members that came from out of town. Also, we thought it would be fun for those members to experience the great Lincoln tradition that is Jazz in June.

After the meeting we all went to the Sheldon Sculpture Garden where Kansas City songstress Angela Hagenbach was to perform. It turned out to be a beautiful evening for great jazz. Angela and her band, along with one of my favorite pianists, Roger Wilder, serenaded us with familiar and always pleasing standards like “Summertime,” and she also featured some songs from her own recordings. It was the perfect way to relax after a busy day.

Then we headed to the BMF office for a reception. It was nice to catch up with Dan Demuth, who despite storm, snow or sleet unfailingly makes it to the annual board meeting from his home in Colorado. I always look forward to spending time with Wade Wright of San Francisco, who is the longest-serving board member. We have the best conversations on just about any subject. Russ Dantzler came for the meeting from New York City, despite his very busy summer schedule. I can’t wait to make it back to the city because he is the best host. Even though bassist Gerald Spaits had a gig that same night in Kansas City, he made the 3½-hour drive to Lincoln for the meeting and drove back right after.

We are lucky and grateful to be working with such great friends, especially Kay Davis. She worked with Butch for many years and even though she has retired to Arkansas, she continues to make the annual trip back to Lincoln for the board meeting. Kay was kind enough to spend a few days with me while she was here. Our time together is always fun and goes by too fast. Kay is recovering from a bout with pneumonia and we wish her a speedy recovery.

BMF was happy to host two more receptions during this year’s Jazz in June series. Jeff Newell and his New-Trad Octet were great fun to hang out with after their June 22 concert, and guitarist Jerry Hahn graciously joined us after a great performance June 29, the final concert of the season. Thanks go to Martha Florence, Laurie J. Sipple and all the Jazz in June volunteers who were able to join us. I would like to extend my appreciation to Ruthann Nahorny for always being there, and to Laura Hansen. Thanks for all your help.

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By Tom Ineck

LINCOLN, Neb.—As Berman Music Foundation consultant Russ Dantzler noted, a trio of BMF friends who also were frequent collaborators were reunited with the June 26 death of trombonist Benny Powell at age 80. Preceding Powell were bassist Earl May in January 2008 (also at 80), then Jane Jarvis in January of this year at age 94.

The three shared the stage here on Oct. 8, 1999, at the Cornhusker Hotel, a fundraiser for the Lincoln Seniors Foundation that was partially funded by the BMF. “Lifelong Living and All That Jazz” was the theme that night, and it proved to be a valid philosophy for Powell, Jarvis, and May. The trio at that time had already lived a combined 225 years, and much of that time was spent performing the music they loved.

When the trio received a standing ovation before playing the first note, Powell quipped, “We chose the right time to become older persons.” As I later wrote, the performance “joyfully illustrated that creativity need not be stifled by longevity. Indeed, it offered ample evidence that the creative arts can help prolong a youthful approach to life.”

The trombonist was also a fine vocalist of great sensitivity. That night in 1999, he sang the Jarvis composition “I'll Make it This Time,” a tune the pianist wrote for a Broadway production. Later in the evening, Powell used his trombone to state the melody of the Jarvis-penned tearjerker “Here Lies My Love,” another tune written for the stage. Powell summed up the poignancy of the evening (and of aging) in his vocal rendering of “For All We Know.”

Born in New Orleans, March 1, 1930, Powell was admired equally as a performer and an educator. He attended Alabama State Teachers College before going on the road with the King Kolax band. He also worked with Ernie Fields and Lionel Hampton until joining the Basie band in 1951. He remained with Basie for 12 years, winning DownBeat magazine’s critics’ poll in 1956.

After leaving Basie, Powell was became a popular studio musician, making many small group dates and big band sessions. He played in the Broadway pit orchestra for “Funny Girl” in 1964. As an occasional actor, he had a small role in “A Man Called Adam” (1966), starring Sammy Davis Jr., and played in the onscreen Basie band in “Blazing Saddles” in 1974. Powell’s adventurous sound bridged the gap between swing, bop and world music, later working with Abdullah Ibrahim, Randy Weston and John Carter.

As an educator, Powell helped to direct the Jazzmobile program, which brought jazz to disadvantaged areas of New York City. He also taught at the New School University until the close of his career. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

Powell died at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, apparently of a heart attack, while recovering from successful spinal surgery. Three times divorced, Powell is survived by his daughter, Demetra, and grandchildren, Faith and Kyle, and by his sister, Elizabeth.

A traditional jazz service was held July 12 at St. Peter’s Church in New York City. Among those who performed were Randy Weston and African Rhythms and Nextep, a group featuring saxophonist Frank Wess (and the group with whom Powell recorded a 2008 release). One of Powell’s nieces performed a classical piece on violin. Weston also gave a moving nine-minute eulogy in honor of his longtime friend and bandmate.

“Benny Powell represents the essence of our music,” Weston said. “Our music is more than notes and scales. It’s more than paper and gigs. It’s spirit, and musicians have been given the gift of spirit.”

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NJO, Lied and Brownville concert series

By Tom Ineck

LINCOLN, Neb.—Jazz and other great American music are on the bill in coming months at various area venues. Mark your calendars and support live music!

After a year of financial struggle, reassessment and retrenchment in which most of its concerts featured members of the band the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra is back with one of its strongest seasons in years. It all begins Oct. 15 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts, where the NJO again will feature famed trumpeter Wayne Bergeron, who was in less than stellar condition when he appeared with the band last October. Having just suffered a lip injury that curtailed his playing, he had to rely on able protégé Willie Murillo. Rest assured, Bergeron fans will hear from the man himself at the Lied.

On Dec. 14, local actress and singer Melissa Lewis will join the NJO for its annual Christmas concert at the Cornhusker Marriott. Well known for her skills on the theatrical stage, Lewis is also garnering raves as a vocalist of formidable technique and crowd-pleasing showmanship.

Multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson will appear as guest soloist with the NJO Feb. 18 at the Marriott. A 1981 graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he joined its staff the next year to become the youngest faculty member in the school’s history. He stayed until 1984, when he moved to New York City, later working with Buck Clayton, Lionel Hampton, and Paquito D’Rivera. He has also written film music and has been awarded four fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts. Among the unusual reed instruments he plays are the contrabass saxophone and C-Melody saxophone.

On April 26 veteran NJO bassist Andy Hall will be featured in “Ace of Bass,” a program devoted to the music of Jaco Pastorius as arranged for big band by Peter Graves, whose band Pastorius played with when still quite young. Graves has produced two all-star CD collections of his big-band arrangements of Pastorius tunes, 2003’s “Word of Mouth Revisited” and 2006’s “The Word is Out!” Hall’s aggressive, virtuosic bass style, which owes much to Pastorius, should be ideal for these challenging tunes.

In addition to the NJO appearance Oct. 15, the upcoming Lied Center season includes several other notable jazz concerts. Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard will team up for a Feb. 25 performance that brings together two New Orleans natives who are among the leaders in mainstream jazz of the 21^st century.

A concert Dec. 11 will feature the Boston Brass and Brass All-Stars Big Band in a holiday tribute, with 14 horns and a rhythm section performing the famous Stan Kenton Christmas carols and other holiday hits. The ensemble’s recording of the Kenton pieces was released in 2005.

More than 26 years after the death of its founder, the legendary Count Basie Orchestra continues to thrill audiences with its unique style of blues-based Kansas City swing. The band will appear March 18 at the Lied. Now directed by trombonist Bill Hughes, the band has never stopped touring and recording. Its most recent release is “Basie Is Back,” recorded live in Japan in 2005.

Down the road about 80 miles, the Brownville Concert Hall continues its 20^th anniversary season with additional performances booked in Lincoln and Omaha. The “Cavalcade of Cabaret” will feature world-class cabaret singer KT Sullivan and singer-pianist Mark Nadler in a series of concerts beginning Aug. 13 in Brownville and continuing Aug. 14 at the Omaha Community Playhouse. A month later, they return to the area for performances Sept. 9 at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln and Sept. 10-12 in Brownville.

If you want to venture still further down the road, the Folly Theater in Kansas City continues another excellent jazz concert series with performances Sept. 25 by The Bad Plus, Oct. 14 by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Dec. 10 by singer Sachal Vasandani, Jan. 15 by the Earl Klugh Quartet, April 2 by Joe Lovano Us Five, and May 7 by Karrin Allyson. 

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Essay

Charles Mingus and the Racial Mountain

The following essay was written for a class in African-American literature that I took at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln during the spring 2010 semester. It was a mid-term paper required by course instructor Megan Peabody. Since it deals with the music and personal struggle of Charles Mingus, I thought it appropriate for BMF readers. I also liked the idea of recycling the essay for a broader audience. I have altered the scholarly formatting and page citations for a more journalistic approach.  

By Tom Ineck

“Our folk music, having achieved world-wide fame, offers itself to the genius of the great individual American composer who is to come.”

When this prophetic statement by Langston Hughes first appeared in his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” in 1926, jazz was still in its infancy. Its earliest recordings were less than 10 years old, and its most influential artists—Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington—were just beginning to build a popular following at dance clubs and concert halls in Chicago, New York City and abroad. But in the ethnic idiosyncrasies of the music’s melodies, harmonies, rhythms and lyrics, Hughes already hears the free expression of his race as it draws material and inspiration from every aspect of life and transforms it into art that speaks to everyone. Since Hughes sounded his clarion call for black artists to draw on their own lives and the history of African American culture for inspiration, generations of black musicians have heeded the message. They find ample material in the spirituals of their religious practices, in the unfettered joy of their roadhouses, even in the drudgery of their workaday worlds.

Composer, bandleader and bassist Charles Mingus (1922-1979) is one of the most vivid examples of a black artist who draws on his own experiences in the context of African American history and culture and creates potent music. He combines the power of the blues, work songs, and spirituals with the complex rhythms of African folk drumming and black dance forms. He occasionally orchestrates his larger ensembles in the manner of European symphonic music, but always in a style that is distinctly—even defiantly—his own, an attribute that Hughes would have appreciated. By looking at just two Mingus recordings—"Blues and Roots" from 1960 and "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" from 1963—we can form a portrait of the artist and the impulses that stimulated his artistic vision, impulses rooted in the African American experience of which Hughes wrote. Original liner notes and re-appraisals by Mingus and others reveal an artist who struggles with racism and acceptance, emotional pain and depression, but always strives to create music that is genuine.

A man sensitive to racial discrimination, as well as the larger issues of human rights and world peace, Mingus tells jazz critic Nat Hentoff, “It’s not only a question of color anymore. It’s getting deeper than that. I mean it’s getting more and more difficult for a man or woman to just love. People are getting so fragmented, and part of that is fewer and fewer people are making a real effort anymore to find exactly who they are.” ("Blues and Roots" liner notes). He epitomizes the black artist whom Hughes envisions when he writes, “jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed with a smile.” The composer is brutally honest as he tells Hentoff, “music […] is, or was, a language of the emotions. If someone has been escaping reality, I don’t expect him to dig my music…. My music is alive and it’s about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It’s angry, yet it’s real because it knows it’s angry.”

Hughes singles out “the low-down folks, the so-called common element” as those most likely to create genuine art from everyday experience, including religious experience. “Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion soars to a shout…. These common people are not afraid of spirituals, as for a long time their more intellectual brethren were, and jazz is their child.” As Hughes urges, Mingus taps his spiritual roots for the fiery gospel tune “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting,” which the composer describes as “church music. I heard this as a child when I went to meetings with my mother. The congregation gives their testimonial before the Lord, they confess their sins and sing and shout and do a little Holy Rolling.” ("Blues and Roots" liner notes)

Hentoff helps us understand Mingus’ musical influences, writing in the liner notes to "Blues and Roots," “Mingus sure knew and felt his roots. He had played, after all, with the whole range of jazz—from Kid Ory to Charlie Parker. He knew the entire language—from the inside.” Most blues tunes are simple constructions of just three predominant chords repeated over and over, allowing jazz soloists to freely express themselves with infinite melodic variations within the finite chord structure. Both Hughes and Mingus understand the potential for black artists to relate a range of emotions using the blues. In the relations between blacks and whites, Hughes suggests a wealth of potential themes that “the Negro artist can give his racial individuality, his heritage of rhythm and warmth, and his incongruous humor that so often, as in the blues, becomes ironic laughter mixed with tears.” With “Cryin’ Blues,” “Moanin’,” and “Tensions,” Mingus thoroughly explore the blues, eventually shouting in ecstasy (or anguish?) near the end of the final piece.

Despite its thematic title and dance references, "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" is a large-scale symphonic piece comprised of four “movements” totaling 40 minutes. It contains no libretto or plot line other than that vaguely suggested by the provocative subtitles, such as “(Soul Fusion) Freewoman and Oh, This Freedom’s Slave Cries,” and “Of Love, Pain and Passioned Revolt, then Farewell, My Beloved, ’til It’s Freedom Day.” The music seethes with a range of emotions, the horns alternately weeping and crying out, the complex rhythms colliding or accelerating wildly, the result sometimes closer to cacophony than harmony. As Mingus asserts in the liner notes, “This music is only one little wave of styles and waves of little ideas my mind has encompassed through living in a society that calls itself sane.” It is a statement of personal integrity and bold defiance in the face of the dominant white culture, and it recalls Hughes’ ultimatum that, “If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

Aware that he has difficulty articulating—in words—the conflicted impulses behind the music of "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady," the composer asks psychologist and friend Dr. Edmund Pollock to shed light on the artist and this monumental work. Pollock quickly gets to the heart of the matter, writing of Mingus, "His music is a call for acceptance, respect, love, understanding, fellowship, freedom—a plea to change the evil in man and to end hatred. The titles of this composition suggest the plight of the black man and a plea to the white man to be aware. He seems to state that the black man is not alone but all mankind must unite in revolution against any society that restricts freedom and human rights." A note of hope arises near the end of the piece, and Pollock offers a cautious prediction about the composer, his music and his struggle to function in a dysfunctional world, writing, “It must be emphasized that Mr. Mingus is not yet complete, He is still in a process of change and personal development. Hopefully the integration in society will keep pace with his.”

As Pollock foresaw, Mingus continued to develop as an artist, releasing a dozen more recordings before his death at age 56 in January 1979, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). His music still resonates more than 30 years later. Summarizing "Blues and Roots," Hentoff writes, “As this album powerfully affirms, Mingus’ music will remain alive so long as there is life in the world.” In his immortal recordings and their impact on countless composers, musicians, writers and other artists, Mingus seems to echo the Hughes credo: “We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”

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By Tom Ineck

LINCOLN, Neb.—Even in the best of times, travel is a process of self-discovery. In the midst of cataclysmic natural disaster and the long-distance death of a loved one, the lessons you learn can assume epic proportions. For me, those lessons usually involve the healing power of music and the importance of friends and family. Of course, you don’t have to leave your home town to appreciate the resilience of life, love and friendship. Three recent events brought these thoughts home.

My wife and I arrived in New Orleans on April 28 for Jazz Fest music, food and fun. But just eight days earlier, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had exploded, killing 11 people and causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Already, experts were predicting the immense scale of ecological damage and economic misery that would follow. With typical fatalism, longtime New Orleans residents, like my cousin Jerry Siefken, took it in stride, mixing a healthy distrust of authority with the sense that life would go on. It was a lesson they had learned many times over, most recently in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina nearly wiped the city off the map. And what would help them get through the dark days ahead? Music!

In early June I returned to Northern California and the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, where I had spent a week last summer with friends who live near Occidental. While we were in the middle of a particularly profound performance by Charlie Haden, Geri Allen and Ravi Coltrane at the Raven Theater in Healdsburg, I learned that my brother-in-law Bob Doulas had died back in Lincoln. I knew he was near death when I left on the trip and had been in touch with my sister for updates on his condition. When the call came, my cell phone began to vibrate. Oddly, it felt like the passing of a spirit. What helped me cope with that sad realization? Friends and music!            

For the second consecutive year, the Jazz in June concert series offered five Tuesday evening concerts. They ran the gamut from the straight-ahead jazz of trumpeter Darryl White and his excellent combo to the Latin lilt of Otro Mundo to the sensuous vocals of Angela Hagenbach to the New Orleans swagger of Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet to the progressive guitar work of Jerry Hahn. The last two were especially delightful, allowing us to bring friends of the Berman Music Foundation back to Lincoln after an absence of several years. Newell had not performed here since 2006 and Hahn was last here in 2005.

Best of all, Newell and Hahn were able to join us at BMF offices for post-concert receptions. The entire New-Trad ensemble partied with us until midnight, and then ventured to the Zoo Bar to sit in with the local Jazzocracy band until closing. Hahn arrived alone, but stayed for a couple of hours, chatting about everything from the foundation’s 15-year history to his own 50-year career as a performer, recording artist and music educator.

Among other things, we revisited the meteoric rise and fall of The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, the legendary quartet that combined elements of jazz, rock and r&b. Hahn, bassist Mel Graves, and drummer George Marsh had been gigging as a jazz trio in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s when they were introduced to the brilliant organist and vocalist Mike Finnigan. Armed with a set of great tunes by Lane Tietgen, Ornette Coleman’s “Ramblin’” and a couple of originals by Hahn, they recorded a single self-titled recording on Columbia and toured behind it until the record company promotion fizzled and the money ran out. Left behind are the memories of those lucky few of us who attended a Brotherhood concert. My opportunity came in July 1970 at the band’s Denver stop, a performance also attended by a 19-year-old Bill Frisell, who I just saw in June out in California. Serendipity.

It seemed that talking about those events of 40 years ago allowed both Hahn and me to revisit our youth and an exciting period in American pop culture. What was the common bond? Music, of course!

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