Uncharted Multipotential Planes
The coming week offers a smorgasbord of activities of interest to the Boston jazz fan; for once it is not only possible but necessary to exercise some selectivity. Boston Jazz Week (April 27-May 6) begins tomorrow, and its sponsor, the Jazz Coalition, has coordinated a rich and varied program of events to help fulfill this year's theme of "Celebrating the Duke" (they don't mean John Wayne). Boston Jazz Week lacks the financial and promotional resources of the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, but it also lacks the crass commercialism that characterized that event; the committment is to real jazz, music that deserves to be heard, not to artistically bereft beg-money drawing cards. Many of the Boston Jazz Week activities are free.
Several continuing events provide an excellent excuse to spend a sunny reading period afternoon wandering around Boston (exams are weeks away...) The lobby of the John Hancock Building and the mezzanine of Boston City Hall share an exhibit called Jazz...A Visual Experience which brings together the work of eleven local artists and photographers. Jazz artists lend themselves to this sort of treatment--the music is inseparable from the men who make it--and both exhibitions are free.
Evenings are likewise filled. Concerts, concerts--Jaki Byard, George Russell, various local artists--even a screening of rare films that chronicle the history of jazz dance. The climax of the week-long event is a performance by the Art Ensemble of Chicago at the Church of the Covenant (67 Newbury street) on Friday, May 4th at 8:30 p.m. "If you don't know the Art Ensemble, I can't possibly describe them," Louis Armstrong' said about "jazz", but then the Art Ensemble represents jazz in its most courageous and highly distilled form. Their playing reflects rigorous discipline in a context of almost total improvisational freedom, and the Art Ensemble's physical appearance--facepaint and costumes ranging from African to hardhat--makes them a "visual experience" in themselves. Probably the most important group in contemporary music, the Art Ensemble deserves to be heard and seen. For Boston Jazz Week information call 262-1300.
Just like when TV networks pit recent movies against Monday Night Football, this effluence of jazz activity will force some hard and painful decisions. Close to home, Jonathan Swift's is hosting two events of particular interest this week. Sunday and Monday they will present Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra, a happening by any standard. Sun Ra is simply outrageous; his age and background are unclear, but he wanders around our planet saying things like: The intergalactic music in its present phase of presentation will be correlative to the key synopsis of the past and to the uncharted multipotential planes outside the bounds of the limited earth-eternity futre... and playing music that is both startlingly contemporary and firmly rooted in jazz traditions on a variety of keyboard instruments. The Arkestra is a splendid big band, and also apparently a kind of communal venture; they all live together with Sun (Sunny?) in a big house in Philadelphia. He has been called a charlatan, a genius, and a madman, but the power and longevity of his art make indifference to Sun Ra impossible. Check out the original spaceman.
Wednesday night, the Charles Mingus Reunion Band is playing at Swift's. The Master had definite ideas about how his music was to be played, and no one left his Jazz Workshop Group without a solid background in Mingus-Music. Trumpeter Ted Curson, saxophonist Booker Ervin, drummer Dannie Richmond, and the other members of the band all worked extensively with Mingus--their performance should be very special. The awesome bass chair will be filled by Charlie Haden, reason enough to hear a set of swinging inspiration.