National Jazz Museum in Harlem Events

Eugene Holly

The Jazz World of Charles Mingus 

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem invites you to join us this month as we explore the jazz world of the great bassist and composer Charles Mingus over four weeks; have in-depth discussions with South African vocal icon Sathima Bea Benjamin and the founder of the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band, Al Vollmer; experience the live saxophone/piano duo of Dave Liebman and Phil Markowitz; and illuminate a Jazz Vision of Harlem in sound, on film and photographs, and in conversation. And don’t miss a special tribute to Lady Day, Billie Holiday, by Loren Schoenberg and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem All Stars as they  accompany vocalist Lainie Cooke at the Dwyer Cultural Center. From traditional jazz to avant garde, from Harlem to South Africa, we’re providing our audience of new and established jazz fans programming to whet artistic appetites. Join us!

 

Special Event NJMH All Star Big Band

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS The Jazz World of Charles Mingus: The Bassist 7:00 – 8:30pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300 or register online

One of the most important figures in twentieth century American music, Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church—choir and group singing—and from hearing Duke Ellington over the radio at the age of 8. He studied double bass and composition formally (five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while absorbing vernacular music from the great jazz masters, first-hand. His early professional experience, in the 40's, found him touring with bands like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and Lionel Hampton.

Eventually he settled in New York where he played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950's, such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington himself. One of the few bassists to do so, Mingus quickly developed as a leader of musicians. He was also an accomplished pianist who could have made a career playing that instrument. (Pianist Jason Moran recently recalled being astonished by a recording of Mingus playing piano.) By the mid-50's he had formed his own publishing and recording companies to protect and document his growing repertoire of original music. He also founded the "Jazz Workshop," a group which enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings.

Mingus soon found himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. His recordings bear witness to the extraordinarily creative body of work that followed. They include: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, Let My Children Hear Music. He recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over three hundred scores.

Although he wrote his first concert piece, "Half-Mast Inhibition," when he was seventeen years old, it was not recorded until twenty years later by a 22-piece orchestra with Gunther Schuller conducting. It was the presentation of "Revelations," which combined jazz and classical idioms, at the 1955 Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts, which established him as one of the foremost jazz composers of his day.

Thursday, November 5, 2009     HARLEM SPEAKS Sathima Bea Benjamin, Vocalist 6:30 – 8:30pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

Professor Robin D.G. Kelley, author of the long-anticipated Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, penned these words about our guest:

The cosmopolitan and international character of Sathima Bea Benjamin's music is partly a reflection of her family's roots. Born Beatrice ("Beattie") Benjamin in Johannesburg, October 17, 1936, her father, Edward Benjamin, descended from the island of St. Helena off the coast of West Africa. Her mother, Evelyn Henry, had roots in Mauritius (an island off the East African coast) as well as the Philippines. Benjamin's parents had been living in Cape Town, but job opportunities compelled Edward to relocate to Johannesburg just months before Beattie's birth. Her parents divorced soon thereafter, and after a few years living with her father and his new wife, Beattie and her sister Joan moved in with their paternal grandmother in Cape Town.

Benjamin grew up listening to phonograph records, radio, and her grandmother's humming of the old popular songs from operettas and early Tin Pan Alley musical theater. She also built her repertoire watching British and American movies, and she kept a note pad handy to write down the words of songs she heard on the radio since she had no money for songbooks or sheet music. It was through the radio that she discovered Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and other jazz and pop singers who would influence her early singing style.

At age 16, Benjamin graduated from high school and went on to complete two years of teacher training. By the late 1950s, soon after securing her first teaching job at an elementary school in Cape Town, she began to perform at various nightclubs, community dances and social events. However, once the principal found out about her 'moonlighting', he issued an ultimatum - either she stop singing or quit teaching. Benjamin chose the life of a jazz singer.

So in 1957, at the age of 21, Beattie Benjamin went on the road with Arthur Klugman's traveling show, ‘Coloured Jazz and Variety’. While the show gave Sathima experience, the entire production was a commercial failure and she, along with friend and fellow band member, Jimmy Adams were stranded in Mafeking until they were able to make enough money performing locally to make it to Johannesburg. There they befriended the great modern alto saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, who assisted them financially. The pair eventually found work with an African band in Maputo, Mozambique, and traveled wherever they had to in order to make ends meet.

She returned to Cape Town around 1959, at a moment when the music scene really flourished but the vice grip of apartheid tightened. There she met and fell in love with the young, innovative pianist/composer Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) who even then was reputed to be one of South Africa's greatest jazz musicians. They began working together and in that same year, 1959, recorded what should have been the first jazz LP in South Africa's history. Titled ‘My Songs for You’ with accompaniment by Ibrahim, Joe Colussi on bass and Donald Staegemann on drums, the recording of mostly standards was never released. In addition to working with Ibrahim, she became a regular member of Harold Jephthah's trio, which included the talented but virtually unknown pianist Henry February, with whom she would collaborate on her 1999 release, ‘Cape Town Love’ .

Benjamin and Ibrahim's life together in the Cape Town jazz scene was cut short by tragic events in Sharpeville and Langa on March 21, 1960. In the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, Benjamin and Ibrahim decided to join the growing South African exile community in Europe. The couple, along with Ibrahim's rhythm section - bassist Johnny Gertze and drummer Makhaya Ntshoko - settled in Zurich, Switzerland, and worked throughout Germany and Scandinavia. Through various gigs they met some of the greatest American jazz musicians either passing through or living in exile, including Don Byas, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Ben Webster, Bud Powell, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk. The artist who would have the greatest impact on Benjamin, however, was Duke Ellington.

Benjamin met Duke Ellington while he was in Zurich for short engagement in February of 1963. Standing in the wings during most of the Ellington band's performance, once the concert ended she insisted that Duke hear her husband's trio at the Club Africana, one of the few local jazz spots where the couple could work fairly regularly. Duke obliged and liked what he heard, but he also insisted that Benjamin sing for him. He adored her voice and promptly arranged for the couple to fly to Paris and record separate albums on the Reprise label (at the time, Ellington was the A&R man for Reprise Records). Ibrahim's record, ‘Duke Ellington Presents The Dollar Brand Trio’, was released the following year and subsequently helped him build a following in Europe and the US. Benjamin's recording, unfortunately, languished in the vault because Reprise executives did not think she was "commercial" enough. It was eventually released under the title ‘A Morning in Paris’, but not until 1996.

Throughout the 1960s Benjamin and Ibrahim [who married in 1965] moved back and forth between Europe and New York City, where they struggled to make it in the jazz world. For Benjamin, who had yet to release a recording of her own, gigs were few and far between. She gave birth to her son, Tsakwe, in 1971 and spent much of her time as a mother and supporter of her husband.

1976 marked a turning point for Benjamin. She and Ibrahim returned to South Africa to live, she gave birth to her daughter Tsidi, and she went into the studio and recorded ‘African Songbird‘, the first album of hers to be released. The LP, made up entirely of original compositions by Benjamin, not only unveiled her talent as a composer but it revealed an interest in the freedom struggle in South Africa. A few months later, that interest became a full-blown engagement after the schoolchildren of Soweto rose up to protest the state's decision to teach math and social studies in Afrikaans instead of English. Once again, the police retaliated against the protesters but the damage this time around was worse than Sharpeville: at least 575 Africans were killed and 2,389 wounded. This was enough to convince Benjamin and Ibrahim to go back into exile. So in 1977 they returned to New York, settled into the Chelsea Hotel, and they both became politically active in behalf of the African National Congress. As a result of their activities as cultural workers for the liberation movement, the apartheid government of South Africa revoked their citizenship, thus compelling them to become US citizens.

Artistically, Benjamin began to take greater control of her career. In 1979, she launched her own record label, Ekapa, primarily to produce and distribute her music. Between 1979 and 2002, she released eight albums: ‘Sathima Sings Ellington’, ‘Dedications’, ‘Memories and Dreams’, ‘Windsong’, ‘Lovelight’, ‘Southern Touch’, ‘Cape Town Love’, and ‘Musical Echoes’. Each of these recordings received rave reviews, and ‘Dedications’ was nominated for a Grammy in 1982. A mix of standards, old Tin Pan Alley songs, and original compositions, these recordings reveal the full range of her talent as a singer, songwriter, and bandleader. Indeed, she brought together some of the most talented musicians on the scene to accompany her, including pianists Kenny Baron and Onaje Allan Gumbs, drummers Billy Higgins and Ben Riley, and bassist Buster Williams. Like other great vocalists in the jazz tradition, she is a remarkable storyteller, delivering lyrics with such patience and emotion that listeners are compelled to hang on to every word. She doesn't rely on vocal acrobatics or melisma -- just pure, crystalline sound. As New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote [over 20] years ago, "In song after song, Miss Benjamin could make a word cry out with just a flicker of vibrato."

Saturday, November 7, 2009 SPECIAL EVENT All of Me: A Tribute to Billie Holiday 7:00pm Location: Dwyer Cultural Center (258 St. Nicholas Avenue, New York, NY) General Admission $15.00, Seniors and Dwyer Cultural Center Members $10.00 | Reservations: 212-222-3060 or visit www.newheritagetheatre.org

This performance is part of the 19th season of the Roger Furman Music Series, and features the National Jazz Museum in Harlem All Stars and Harlemwood Records artist Lainie Cooke. In the words of jazz journalist Harvey Siders, "Lainie can cook on the kind of quality standards she prefers—the Porter-Gershwin-Rodgers & Hart classics that challenge her dramatic bent for story-telling. She has an unerring ear for melodic invention, and an instinctive feel for time that allows her to take unusual rhythmic liberties. And her intonation is 'right on.'" (The Los Angeles Daily News, circa 1985.)

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS The Jazz World of Charles Mingus:  On Film (Part1)

7:00 – 8:30pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300 or register online

In 1971 Mingus was awarded the Slee Chair of Music and spent a semester teaching composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the same year his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published by Knopf. In 1972 it appeared in a Bantam paperback and was reissued after his death, in 1980, by Viking/Penguin and again by Pantheon Books, in 1991. In 1972 he also re-signed with Columbia Records. His music was performed frequently by ballet companies, and Alvin Ailey choreographed an hour program called "The Mingus Dances" during a 1972 collaboration with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company.

He toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States until the end of 1977 when he was diagnosed as having a rare nerve disease, Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. He was confined to a wheelchair, and although he was no longer able to write music on paper or compose at the piano, his last works were sung into a tape recorder.

From the 1960's until his death in 1979 at age 56, Mingus remained in the forefront of American music. When asked to comment on his accomplishments, Mingus said that his abilities as a bassist were the result of hard work but that his talent for composition came from God.

Hearing Charles Mingus on record can be astounding enough; seeing him on film will secure the impression of musical power and insight. Don’t miss this chance!

Rare Recordings with Charlie Parker 7:00 – 8:30pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300 or register online

Charles Mingus was the bassist on the famous date with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and Bud Powell at Massey Hall in Canada dubbed “The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever.” Such hype takes nothing away from the genius of Bird and Mingus, who also recorded together on other occasions to much success. Tonight, you’ll experience recordings rarely heard by any other than collectors and cognoscenti.

Thursday, November 19, 2009     HARLEM SPEAKS Al Vollmer, Founder, Harlem Blues & Jazz Band 6:30 – 8:30pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band, founded in 1973 by King Oliver's trombonist/blues singer Clyde Bernhardt and jazz aficionado Al Vollmer, is dedicated to keeping the significant side-men of the Classic Jazz Period working and not forgotten.

The band has always had a strong link to Louis Armstrong from its inception. George James, the first saxophonist in the band, was with Armstrong in the '30's and participated in Armstrong's first triumphant return to his Native New Orleans. Bassist Johnny Williams joined and remained with the band for 25 years until his death in 1998 at the age of 90. He had been with Armstrong in the late '30's and again in the early '40's. (On occasion he would vocalize with Louis on the famous number "Rockin' Chair".)

"Fats" Waller's guitarist, Al Casey, joined the band in 1981. He had recorded with Armstrong and also performed with him at the Metropolitan Opera House in N.Y and the Shrine Auditorium in L.A. after winning the prestigious Esquire Jazz Critics Award for best guitarist in 1944 and 1945. Vollmer created the Harlem Blues & Jazz Band in 1973 as a labor of love, never suspecting that it would become one of the longest continually performing jazz groups in existence. An impressive number of musicians from the Classic and Swing eras have graced the various groups throughout the years, thereby giving an enviable authenticity and historical significance to the band's performances and recordings.

The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band was showcased in a documentary film by Anja Baron and Albert Vollmer titled "The Last of the First". The documentary was acclaimed (2004) at prestigious film festivals in New York (Tribeca), Los Angeles and Newport R.I. Dr. Vollmer served as jazz consultant and Executive Producer for this crucial documentation of a significant part of jazz history.

Friday, November 20, 2009 HARLEM IN THE HIMALAYAS Dave Liebman and Phil Markowitz 7:00pm Location: Rubin Museum of Art (150 West 17th Street) $18 in advance | $20 at door | Box Office: 212.620.5000 ext. 344

About the duo recording by Dave Liebman and Phil Markowitz, Manhattan Dialogues, musician Mike McMullen wrote: “This is a great opportunity to hear two amazing musicians let it all loose. Everything is here, communication, interaction, interpretation, emotional tension and release, artistic vision, amazing technical virtuosity; unencumbered and uninhibted. . . An inspirational recording on all levels.” Saxophonist Liebman and pianist Markowitz have been performing together for over 15 years. Come see the musical magic for yourself! Dave Liebman Over the past several decades, Liebman has often been featured with top European musicians such as Joachim Kuhn, Daniel Humair, Paolo Fresu, Jon Christensen, Bobo Stenson and in the World View Trio with Austrian drummer Wolfgang Reisenger and French bassist Jean-Paul Celea. His reputation in Europe has led to big band and radio orchestra performances, such as with the WDR in Koln, Germany, the Metropole Orchestra of the Netherlands and the new music Klang Forum in Vienna, Austria playing music specially commissioned to feature Liebman's unique soprano saxophone style. He has consistently placed among the top finalists in the Downbeat Critics' Poll since 1973 in the Soprano Saxophone category. As of the present, David Liebman has been featured on nearly 300 recordings, of which he has been the leader and/or co-leader on nearly 100. Well over 200 original compositions have been recorded. His artistic output has ranged from straight ahead classic jazz to chamber music; from fusion to avant garde. Phil Markowitz According to Tony Miceli, Markowitz has performed and/or recorded with such notables as Mel Lewis, Marion McPartland, Phil Woods, Lionel Hampton, Nick Brignola, Joe Chambers, Miroslav Vitous, Joe Williams, Paul Winter and, an association that continues to this day, Bob Mintzer. Phil is the regular pianist in Bob’s quartet and big band, and can be heard on such recordings as “Softly”, the Grammy Award-winning “Homage to Count Basie”, “Quality Time”, “Latin in Manhattan”, “Big Band Trane”, “Only in New York”, “Departure”, “Art of the Big Band”, and “Spectrum.”

Like his first big break as a pianist, where he joined the Chet Baker band in 1979, Phil’s big break as a composer also came in the late 1970’s. Phil was playing in a NYC club with legendary jazz harmonica player, Toots Thielemans, and, as they were playing Phil’s composition, “Sno’ Peas”, pianist Bill Evans walked in, loved the song, and asked Toots to bring it to their upcoming recording session. Evans' and Thielemans' subsequent recording of “Sno’ Peas” on the classic Grammy-nominated album, “Affinity”, put Markowitz on the map as a jazz composer.

Phil’s biggest break of all, however, was meeting and “clicking” with Dave Liebman. They have been playing, touring, and recording together for fifteen years. Phil has served as pianist, composer, and/or producer on such albums as “A Walk in the Clouds”, “Meditations”, “New Vista”, “Voyage”, “Return of the Tenor”, “Songs for My Daughter”, “Miles Away”, “Turn It Around”, and “Classique”. They have also recorded two live duo albums, “But Beautiful” and their newly recorded “Manhattan Dialogues”, recently released on ZOHO records.

Saturday, November 21, 2009 SATURDAY PANEL HARLEM VISIONS 10:00am – 4:00pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300

Please join Edward Hillel, Isaac Diggs and friends of the Harlem Biennale for a day of discussion, live performances and the viewing of photographs, films and art that displays the aesthetic of jazz as practiced over time in Harlem. Filmmaker and photographer Edward Hillel is founder of the Harlem Heritage Documentary Project, which is in the process of documenting contemporary Harlem through photography and film. He is also an active community spokesperson in the present discussion on zoning, land-marking and the future of Harlem. Isaac Diggs is a photographer and an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts. Educated at Bard, Columbia, and Oxford, Mr. Diggs has had solo exhibitions of his work in New York, Philadelphia and Tokyo.

The Harlem Biennale, current under the artistic directorship of Mr. Hillel, is slated to take place every two years from March to June, starting in 2010. During this period, local, national, and international artists will present contemporary art (visual, theater, dance and multidisciplinary) including indoor and outdoor exhibitions, site-specific installations, performances and educational seminars, in public and private spaces, historic buildings and new developments, museums and cultural institutions, street-corners, parks and unutilized land, throughout Harlem. The Harlem Biennale will strive to act as a catalyst for the new Harlem Renaissance and the city’s zoning plans for 125th Street, bringing money to be spent in Harlem and Upper Manhattan through cultural tourism, private-public partnerships, and private investment. The project includes a year-round educational component, placing established artists to work with students in the area’s public schools. The event creates collaborations and economic affiliations between local and international institutions. It connects Harlem to a global circuit of arts biennales and brings renewed attention to Upper Manhattan. The Harlem Biennale intends to train the local population to fill between 5-100 sustainable local jobs through each edition of the event.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS The Jazz World of Charles Mingus:  On Film (Part 2)

7:00 – 8:30pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300 or register online

Mingus received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He also received an honorary degree from Brandeis and an award from Yale University. At a memorial for Mingus, Steve Schlesinger of the Guggenheim Foundation said: "I look forward to the day when we can transcend labels like jazz and acknowledge Charles Mingus as the major American composer that he is." From the New Yorker: "For sheer melodic and rhythmic and structural originality, his compositions may equal anything written in western music in the twentieth century."

He died in Mexico on January 5, 1979, and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River in India. Both New York City and Washington, D.C. honored him posthumously with a "Charles Mingus Day."

After his death, the National Endowment for the Arts provided grants for a Mingus foundation called "Let My Children Hear Music" which catalogued all of Mingus' works. The microfilms of these works were then given to the Music Division of the New York Public Library where they are currently available for study and scholarship. Repertory bands called the Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Orchestra and the Mingus Big Band continue to perform his music. Biographies of Charles Mingus include Mingus by Brian Priestley; Mingus/Mingus by Janet Coleman and Al Young and Myself When I Am Real, by Gene Santoro.

Mingus' masterwork, "Epitaph," a composition which is more than 4000 measures long and which requires two hours to perform, was discovered during the cataloguing process. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the piece itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller, in a concert produced by Sue Mingus at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after Mingus' death.

According to the New Yorker, "Epitaph" represents the first advance in jazz composition since Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown, and Beige," which was written in 1943. The New York Times said it ranked with the "most memorable jazz events of the decade." Convinced that it would never be performed in his lifetime, Mingus called his work "Epitaph," declaring that he wrote it "for my tombstone.”

Mingus’s music and composition live today, as does his image and sound on film, as you will hear and see in Part II of our focus on Charles Mingus on film.