‘Poet Laureate of Jazz’ Leaves Students in Awe

For the first hour of their evening rehearsal together, the Harvard Monday Jazz Band and Kuumba Singers sat on the stage of Sanders Theater in complete silence. They were listening to a musician who is a symbol of American jazz.

Legendary jazz vocalist Jon Hendricks began a four-day stay as the 2006 Jazz Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University on Wednesday. While on campus, he will teach, rehearse, and perform with student musicians.

The residency will culminate with a concert tomorrow featuring the Monday Jazz Band and the Kuumba Singers. The musicians will perform selections from Duke Ellington’s “Concert of Sacred Music.” The work has never been performed at Harvard.

Harvard University Band Director Thomas G. Everett, one of the key organizers of the residency, said, “Hendricks has been on our list of major artists for about five or six years that we’ve been wanting to ask to Harvard.”

Everett started the jazz program at Harvard in 1971 to bring renowned jazz musicians to campus.

Everett said the program seeks “masters, artists that have contributed a great deal to the jazz canon but also have a very personal sound and approach. They’ve been innovators.”

Ideally, they are also teachers. At a rehearsal with the Jazz Band and Kuumba Singers on Wednesday night, Hendricks combined anecdotes from years past with advice for a young generation of musicians.

Hendricks said he was studying law when renowned saxophonist Charlie Parker told him he was meant to be a jazz singer. Parker told Hendricks that if he ever decided to pursue a career in jazz, he could find him in New York City.

Two years later, when Hendricks found Parker at a New York jazz club, he did not think Parker would even remember who he was.

“I walked in, and I walk past the bandstand, and [Parker] is playing this song,” Hendricks said. “He says ‘Hey Jon! How you doin’ man? You want to sing some?’ I had to hold on to the wall. My knees buckled. I couldn’t believe it.”

Hendricks also had advice for those whose performing careers will end with their graduation. “It’s dignified in a way, doesn’t matter what kind of work you do, to keep yourself able to play music,” Hendricks said.

Hendricks is a perfect choice for the residency, Everett said. “Jon may be the most significant living jazz vocalist. He has also perfected a style of performance called vocalese, which is the adapting of words or lyrics to instrumental music.”

Hendricks, who is 84 years old, was the first major jazz artist to set lyrics to recorded instrumental improvisations. According to David Berger, a faculty member at the Julliard School of Music, Hendricks’ innovation has value far beyond imitative glitter.

“He’s the poet laureate of jazz,” Berger said. “His lyrics get right back to the whole history of what everything is talking about. Nobody writes lyrics on the very deep level that he writes them.”

Hendricks and the student musicians are particularly excited about the music they will be performing. Berger, who will be conducting Saturday’s concert, transcribed recordings of the “Sacred Songs” to sheet music. He says he has transcribed roughly 500 of Ellington’s songs.

Ellington finished the “Sacred Songs” only a year before his death, and though Berger doesn’t “see them as Ellington’s greatest work,” he acknowledged that “there is a lot of really good music in it.”

Everett explained that in 1965, Ellington wrote the music for St. Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

“It’s non-denominational, but it combines the love one has for a master being with the individual creativity of jazz,” he said.

Hendricks said he recalls talking with Ellington about the piece as it was being written. He said someone asked about the large amount of dissonance in the music, “and Duke said there’s always a little dissonance in our lives. I thought that was a great explanation. It was wonderful.”

Hendricks participated in the work’s first performance, a fact which trumpeter Darryl J. Campbell ’06, said he finds slightly daunting. “It’s pretty intimidating when you’re playing with a guy who was there at the first performance of this. You just hope that you do it justice,” Campbell said.

Michael L. Vinson ’07, president of the Kuumba Singers, said the collaborative process has been worthwhile despite the challenges, especially for a group that usually does not perform with a band.

“It’s great to have a chance to hear live music and dance along with it,” Vinson said. He said that the band allows the Kuumba singers to “really feel the music itself rather than just trying to bring that extra ‘oomph’ ourselves.”

Hendricks said exposing younger musicians to America’s musical history is the most rewarding part of teaching.

“It’s passing on cultural heritage to young people who otherwise would be deprived of it completely,” Hendricks said. “Unless young Americans go to universities where jazz has taken sanctuary, they will know nothing about their culture.”

Hendricks also said he wants to come back. “Man, I’d love to do a concert with this band. They’re incisive, you know. They really hit it. They hit it well.”

For the Monday Jazz Band, that’s high praise.

“He’s the greatest jazz singer alive,” Berger said. “It’s not even close. I mean he’s 84 or something and he’s hardly got any voice left and still, as soon as he opens up his mouth, it’s jazz.”