The Unconventional Jazz Convention
The circus comes to town! Officially, it's the International Association for Jazz Education's 33rd annual conference, which draws some 7000 registrants-equal to 57 capacity audiences at the Village Vanguard-from approximately 35 countries to midtown from January 11 through January 14. There will indeed be clowns, elephants and cotton candy.
The aforementioned clowns will be among all us conferees. As the late, great Lester Bowie, quoting Ishmael Reed, explained on Kip Hanrahan's Conjure years back, "You can always tell the fool-by his big mouf!" Regarding the elephants: one would be the National Endowment for the Arts, good 'n' grey, with a long memory and a big trunk. Its chairman, Dana Gioia himself, will hand out Jazz Masters honors (including $25,000 checks) to the six players and one artists' manager chosen for their career-long devotion to our ever-harder-to-define American vernacular music.
What's the definitional problem? This year's Masters are diverse and each in some way deserving, if not exactly iconic or essential to the canon. The honorees are Ray Barretto, who drummed with Charlie Parker in the late '40s and has stayed the course; Tony Bennett, a saloon singer who loves jazz and can swing, which is evidently mastery enough; Bob Brookmeyer, veteran trombonist-composer-arranger with a dry, cool style; pianist Chick Corea, youngster of the bunch at 64, who has just issued his second work based on Scientology writings; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet virtuoso of the era since clarinets fell from favor; trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, former enfant terrible whose chops are long gone, and octagenarian John Levy, a well-respected artists' manager-unusual in itself-whose success on jazz's business side was rare for a black man. What image of jazz does this coterie provide, besides that it's an all-male preserve? Do tell.
The Hilton New York and the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers serve as circus center rings, the sites of panel discussions, scholarly papers' presentations, instrument clinic sessions, and a huge exhibition space where purveyors of jazz camps, CDs, clothes, cruises, and pretty much whatever you can imagine ply their wares. All very nice, but you've got to have a badge to get in, and entry to almost everything-though not the fundraising dinners-is $363 (a year's IAJE membership included), or $165 for students. There are other discounts for spouses and retirees. And there are good deals offered to IAJE registrants for off-site festivities, such as JazzCorner.com's late-night Friday and Saturday Jazz Jams at Birdland, or similar gigs at Iridium, Sweet Rhythm, etc., where musicians known and unknown will be lining up to blow.
About the cotton candy: The real attraction of the IAJE conference is the networking, and you can indulge in as much of that as you like by casually trolling the hotel's halls or hanging out at the bars, because everyone will be passing through: teachers and scholars, recording industry types, booking agents, club owners, concert and festival producers, instrument manufacturers, new tech promoters, music journalists, representatives of organizations such as ASCAP, BM and the Jazz Alliance International and publications ranging from the big three jazz magazines to instruction book visionary Jamey Aebersold, the guy who perfected play-along-with albums.
And then there's the music. Far be it from me to suggest one might easily crash nightly concerts in the ballrooms; in fact, guards will check registrations. So pay up, or forget about hearing Cuban drummer Dafnis Prieto's Latin jazz quintet or pianist Makoto Ozone's Japanese big band, up 'n' coming Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke's trio, the Sisters in Jazz Collegiate All-Stars directed by pianist Geri Allen, the traditionalist Jim Cullum Jazz Band, a German-radio big band with gypsy guitarist Birelli Lagrene, the U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble (DeFranco sitting in), San Franciscan singer Kitty Margolis, Canadian composer Phil Nimmons, a Chick Corea-Eddie Gomez-Jack DeJohnette trio?
That's just a taste. For a full schedule go online to iaje.org. WBGO-FM will broadcast live chats between its regular hosts and conference notables at the Hilton, but not music.
If anything great happens, I'll let you know.