They’re young, gifted, hip, hungry and fiercely committed to jazz.
Though they’re still unknown to most listeners, they believe that won’t be the case for long.
For now, they’re content simply to pay their dues in neighborhood clubs or as sidemen to the big names. And though they’re only in their late teens and early 20s, they’re breathing hard on the heels of the thirty- and twentysomething stars who are their elders.
For those who doubted the depth of the jazz resurgence that began in the 1980s, the new players affirm that America’s reawakened interest in jazz continues to inspire young talent. In a jazz world already brightened by the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Marlon Jordan, Delfeayo Marsalis, Eric Reed and others in their early 30s and late 20s, a group of still-younger players is beginning to make its voice heard, loudly and clearly.
Consider a few recent developments:
– Elvin Jones, the revered percussionist, decided roughly a year ago that he needed a new trumpeter-and turned to a little known, 18-year-old New Orleans player named Nicholas Payton. Within months, Payton became the talk of the jazz world as possibly the next formidable star of his instrument.
– Red Rodney, the famed be-bop trumpeter who played with Charlie Parker, a couple of years ago discovered a tenor saxophone phenom in Miami who had just turned 20. Today, Chris Potter is probably the most prodigious of all the young tenorists and stands on the verge of a major career.
– Ray Brown, the esteemed bassist, in the past couple of years began performing with and otherwise championing pianist Benny Green, a precocious improviser who has the kind of technique, imagination and charisma that Harry Connick Jr. thinks he has.
– Nationally, a long roster of young players is surfacing, the list including the fervently lyric trumpeter Ryan Kisor, hard-hitting tenor saxophonists Greg Tady, Eric Alexander and Joshua Redman (son of veteran jazz artist Dewey Redman), New Orleans drummer Adonis Rose and many more.
– In Chicago, young players are reflecting the national scene, with trumpeter Peven Everett and pianist Brandon McCune leading the pack of gifted teenagers working in and around the city.
So why are these kids defying the stereotypes, turning to jazz instead of rock or rap?
“Well, I dig hip-hop, too,” protests 18-year-old Chicagoan Peven Everett.
“Hip-hop is fun, but jazz is real music from here,” he adds, pointing to his head.
“I mean, the rap guys are taking credit for things that are not theirs. They’re `sampling’ stuff all over the place, they’re stealing bass lines from funk players. The pop people are even worse.
“What’s great about jazz is that it is truly the person-it’s what the individual has to say. I mean, everyone has their own rendition of jazz, it’s never the same.”
If that sounds a bit lofty-youngsters embracing jazz because of its musical and technical sophistication-that’s precisely the point. Inspired, perhaps, by the seriousness and integrity of trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis, the young players are approaching jazz not merely as entertainment but as art.
“You would not believe how devout Nicholas is about this music,” says Elvin Jones, Payton’s boss. “He’s always in his room practicing or lubricating the valves on his horn or listening to music on his tape player.”
Indeed, “the other guys in the band always tease me,” says Payton, “because I have the most baggage. I’m always carrying music and bags full of CDs and earphones and tape players and everything.”
Yet the zealousness of Payton’s approach has paid off, with Jones recently appointing Payton musical director of the band, a notable honor for any musician, let alone a teenager.
“It’s really been wonderful being in Elvin’s band, though it’s hard in some respects-like just getting over the anxiety of playing with him,” says Payton, who’s now 19.
“I mean, the amount of energy he plays with is unlike any other musical individual I have ever played with. So sometimes it’s overwhelming.
“You’re just so overwhelmed that it’s very hard to play. You get so excited with him that you overplay and overblow. I’m trying to get to the point where I’m playing with intensity and excitement but yet being more focused and concentrated at the same time.
`Still, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that, man, I’m playing with Elvin Jones! Every time I hear him, which is every night, it’s like hearing him for the first time.”
There are other rigors associated with the jazz life, too. For Payton, “a lot of the times we’re so tired from traveling, because often when you’re in Europe you do a lot of one-nighters, you’re traveling, getting up the next morning, staying up until late at night, then catching a plane to the next city.”
For Chicagoan Peven Everett, “you find out that when you’re in jazz, you can’t find your own (artistic) voice right away. It takes time, and it’s hard, because it seems like so much has been done already, like maybe everything that has to be said has been said.”
Add to that the challenge of balancing individual practice time with evening gigs and daytime classes (Everett attends Cosmopolitan Preparatory School and will go to Rutgers University in the fall), and you have a relentlessly demanding schedule.
“Actually, I try not to take too many jobs,” says Everett, whose gently melodic style has placed him in demand across Chicago and beyond. “I don’t want to play too much because I need time to think about what I’m playing, and you can’t always hear yourself doing that in a club. So I only take a few club dates.”
Yet for Payton, Everett and the rest of the young players, the rewards of jazz improvisation apparently outweigh the difficulties. All of these young artists say they experienced a single, unforgettable moment when it became obvious that jazz was the only option.
“I knew about jazz in the seventh grade, but I didn’t really get the confidence and the feeling of jazz until the summer of ’92,” recalls Everett. “That’s when I heard a Miles Davis record with Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, George Coleman.
“It was that sound-the togetherness of that group that knocked me out.
“And, of course, Miles. I mean, even when he played ballads, the way he played a note, it made me scared.
“Now, I’m an emotional person, and back then I was even more emotional, so when I heard that music, it really hit me. It was like finding something that I could have for me.”
The same kind of revelation touched Kimberly Gordon, a Chicago singer in her early 20s who says, “The first time I realized what jazz was about was when I heard Art Blakey’s version of `A Night in Tunisia.’ I was totally scared of it, but I was enthralled, too.”
Fortunately for these young musicians, they are coming up in the midst of a jazz resurgence. Though there still isn’t a fortune to be made playing a musical form as erudite as this, at least there are clubs where youngsters can develop, as well as youngish stars on whom they can model their dreams.
“Right now, jazz is all over the place,” says Gordon. “It’s on TV, on the ads, everywhere. I just saw an ad on TV with a lady riding a bike and scat singing!”
Adds Everett, “And look at those soft drink commercials. They’ve got Louis Armstrong right there on the screen with his horn! I mean, it’s right out there. It’s like it has become officially OK to like jazz.
“When I play clubs, I see kids walking in like bumpkins, walking into clubs to hear jazz. Now, they don’t exactly know what they’re hearing, but they seem to think it’s hip to be there, and they want to learn.”
In Payton’s case, the efffect of the jazz resurgence was even more direct, with Wynton Marsalis himself intervening in the course of Payton’s musical life.
“Actually, I found out about Nicholas when I was calling his house to talk to his daddy,” says Marsalis, referring to New Orleans bassist Walter Payton.
“Nicholas answered the phone, I asked to talk to Walter, and then in the background I heard Nicholas playing his horn.
“And when I found out that was a 13-year-old kid playing, I asked his daddy to send him over.
“Let me tell you, Nicholas is something else. Finding a trumpeter of any age with the kind of emotional involvement that Nicholas has is very unusual.”
From that point forth, “Wynton has been one of the most influential and significant people in my musical development,” says Payton.
“He spent many hours of his time talking with me, teaching me specifics of what it takes to play this music, to develop as a musician as well as to be a man and how to carry yourself in the eyes of the public.
`Wynton also has given me instruments-in fact, he turned me on to this gig (with Elvin Jones, who had asked Marsalis if he knew any good trumpeters who were available).
“I’ve done several things at Lincoln Center (in New York, where Marsalis is artistic director of the jazz program), and he’s just been a beautiful person. He’s like my older brother.
“When I go up to New York, he always has a place for me to stay. And when he does interviews, he’ll take me with him so I can see exactly how it’s supposed to go.
“He tells me how to deal with people publicly and he tells me about the business aspects of the music, which has been very helpful to me, dealing with record companies and managers and so forth.”
Marsalis’ generosity apparently has rubbed off on the younger players, many of whom seem to go out of their way to help their peers get work. The desire to spread the gospel of jazz by helping one’s colleagues-a strategy epitomized by trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clark Terry-apparently is taking hold among the new crop of artists.
The New Orleans drummer Adonis Rose, for instance, just signed on with pianist Marcus Roberts thanks to Payton, who put the two in touch with each other. And Elvin Jones’ talented tenor saxophonist, 24-year-old Greg Tady, got the job thanks to an audition arranged by-guess who?-Payton.
Chicagoan Peven Everett, meanwhile, was just signed to play a week in April with no less than jazz singer Betty Carter, thanks to a similar fraternity among young jazz artists.
“I met Roy Hargrove (an already established young trumpeter) in 1987 at a jazz educators’ conference,” recalls Everett.
“So when he was recently in Chicago playing the Jazz Showcase, Roy and his band and I went to the Bop Shop after his set and played together.
“Well, Roy’s drummer, Greg Hutchinson, knew that Betty Carter was looking for someone new, so he told her about me, and I’ll be playing with her in Brooklyn next month. Thank the Lord for Greg Hutchinson.
“And you won’t believe this, but we had so much fun hanging out with Roy’s band and playing with them that they’ve stayed in touch ever since.”
Of course, there’s more than just pleasant camaraderie and noble intentions fueling the new generation of jazz artists. In fact, the setting for their achievements has been established over the past three decades, with jazz educators across the country developing curricula, training young artists and building new audiences at the college level.
Add to that the heavy public-relations campaigns waged by Columbia, Verve, Blue Note and other major labels, and young musicians have-for the first time since the ’60s-an alternative to the rock industry. Now, at last, gifted young musicians can pursue a musical tradition worthy of their talents.
Even at the periphery of jazz, new opportunities are encouraging new talent.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, it was extremely difficult to be a jazz tap dancer,” says 21-year-old Chicagoan Leela Petronio, who ought to know. Her mother, the jazz tap dancer Sarah Petronio, fought to be recognized as a musical artist.
“My mother tells me that it wasn’t easy to get anyone to take you very seriously as a musician if you were a jazz tapper back then,” adds Leela. “But now people do.
“Not that being a jazz tap dancer is easy. When I started to get interested in this, my mother used to say: `I don’t want you to have to go through what I did.’
“So I’m majoring in arts management at Columbia College, but I’m performing jazz tap, too, and the other musicians treat me like one of them.”
As most of these youngsters will find out sooner or later, life as a serious musician in America is never easy and rarely lucrative.
For all the increase in jazz activity, Payton knows full well that “there isn’t as much as there could be. There aren’t that many working bands out on the road, and in every city I go to there are really talented players of all ages, young and old, who haven’t gotten the recognition they deserve.
“So every chance I get, I try as much as I can to help as many musicians as I can, because of all the people who spent so many hours of their time helping me, people like Clark Terry and Marcus Roberts and Wynton Marsalis. I owe that.”
Perhaps Everett, one of the most gifted of the young Chicago players, sums up the challenge and purpose of the young jazz musicians best.
“The old players are dying,” he says, “so it’s up to us to keep it going. Now, that’s a lot of big shoes to fill, when you’re talking about people like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.
“But they must have felt exactly the same way we feel now. They were in awe of the people who came before, too, but they filled the shoes very well.
“The thing about jazz, the great thing, is that you can never complete the puzzle, because it’s never going to be finished.
“That’s what makes jazz so great-there’s room for everyone who has something to say.
“Now, I know it’s going to take a long time for me to get it, but I’m willing to go my whole life trying.”
