On this Thanksgiving weekend, few Chicago musicians will be giving heartier thanks for their blessings than Orbert Davis, who at age 35 has seen life from the bottom and the top.
Five years ago, Davis was lying in a hospital bed, barely able to breathe from a stormy bout with the asthma that he has endured all his life.
Today, he’s one of the fastest-rising jazz trumpeters in the business, recent winner of the $10,000 top prize in a major jazz competition and star of an upcoming national television program.
“I remember thinking in the hospital how odd it was that every penny that I make comes from blowing air through a piece of metal,” says Davis, who learned early in life never to take for granted the simple act of breathing.
“But even in the hospital, I never really feared losing the ability to play the trumpet, even though I couldn’t touch the instrument all summer” of 1990, adds Davis. “I just had this faith that if God would allow me to get well, then I knew I’d be stronger than before.”
Though Davis had to rebuild his trumpet playing and his breathing technique “from square one,” as he puts it, he indeed came back to music with remarkable force and vigor. He may have been a little-known Chicago trumpeter before his illness, but immediately afterward he embarked upon a journey that would turn his life around.
Two months ago, for instance, Davis ventured to New York to beat a national field of competitors in the Cognac Hennessy Jazz Search, one of the more lucrative contests in jazz.
Three weeks ago, he played a brilliant trumpet-and-strings concert that was taped live by a small army of cameramen for broadcast early next year on the Black Entertainment Television cable network.
And last weekend, Davis made musical history playing the role of Miles Davis (no relation) in one of the first live performances of “Sketches of Spain” since Miles’ legendary recording of 1960. The standing-room-only crowd at the Park West gave the younger Davis the kind of ovation more typically reserved for his late, lamented namesake.
Those are just the highlights. Since jump-starting his life and his career five years ago, Davis has become:
– First trumpeter with the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, a nationally noted repertory jazz band that will make its New York debut next year with Davis as soloist.
– Director of the Greater Chicago High School Jazz Orchestra at Columbia College Chicago, where he has been artist-in-residence since last year.
– Instructor in the Ravinia Jazz Mentors program, which coaches gifted young musicians in the Chicago public schools.
– Solo recording artist on his debut CD, “Unfinished Memories” (Copia), which has received extensive national airplay since its release last year.
He stands apart
The marvel, however, is not how much Davis has done but how well he has done it.
“Orbert is technically an extraordinary player,” says William Russo, who conducted the Chicago Jazz Ensemble in the “Sketches of Spain” concert. “He’s up there with the best, he’s up there with Wynton (Marsalis). Certainly he’s far beyond almost any other trumpeter I can think of, technically speaking, and he’s a fiercely hard worker.”
So what makes Orbert run? And why would a fellow whose prospects “didn’t look too bright,” as Davis puts it, try to devour the world whole?
“Orbert always has been like that, at least since he was a freshman in high school, which is where I met him,” says Mark Ingram, the trumpeter’s partner in Orbark Productions, a commercial music firm they own.
“Even back then, when we were into Top 40 and practicing pop tunes, during every break in rehearsals Orbert would be listening to and studying someone else’s records. Every minute, every second he would be working on something else.”
Yet Davis came to the trumpet comparatively late in life. Born in Chicago and reared in Momence, near Kankakee, he started noodling on the trumpet at age 10 but didn’t begin formal lessons until high school.
A shrewd elementary school teacher in Momence, Charles Danish, saw the youngster’s potential and drove him to Chicago every Saturday morning to study at DePaul University.
“Mr. Danish never charged me a dime, not for gas money or anything,” recalls Davis, still a bit incredulous at the man’s generosity.
Recalls Danish: “I first had heard Orbert play when he was in 6th grade, and by the time he was in 8th grade, his playing just about knocked me off my chair.”
Davis eventually took his undergraduate degree from DePaul in classical trumpet, but it wasn’t until years later, in 1985, that he became wholly smitten with jazz. The love affair began in a small and obscure South Side club called The Other Place.
“I was working with (saxophonists) Andy Goodrich and Ari Brown, Fridays through Sundays in the wee hours of the morning–that was the training ground,” Davis recalls. “Andy took me under his wing, told me what records to buy, what I should be playing.
“I started listening to (trumpeters) Freddie Hubbard, and then Lee Morgan, Blue Mitchell and Clifford Brown. And I also was into Stevie Wonder.”
Those musicians obviously represent a galaxy of styles and sounds, yet they share a fervently lyrical way with a phrase as well as a formidable technical equipment. The description befits Davis, as well.
Suddenly, everyone’s listening
It wasn’t until after his illness, however, that Davis started to achieve his goals. Though he had been working just as hard before his sickness as after, something happened, something clicked that made listeners, critics and other musicians take notice.
“I think what happened was that getting ill actually gave me a chance to start over, from square one,” says Davis. “I really had to start all over, but this time it was as a more experienced musician.
“And by starting again, I suppose I started playing better. Maybe it’s because of all the time I had spent away from playing, I started getting serious about writing music and arranging, and that probably helped my playing, too.”
Whatever happened, the results were unmistakable. For those who have been listening to Davis regularly since 1990, the man’s playing has been getting more polished, more technically audacious and more distinctive with each season.
Davis reached a new high point in ’94, when he achieved a longtime dream by fronting a jazz rhythm section and a classical string unit in his “Strings Attached” show at the Green Mill Jazz Club. Rarely has any musician played the triple role of soloist, conductor and arranger in such a setting.
The project quickly captured the attention of Black Entertainment Television, which committed to airing the video version.
In September, when Davis won the Cognac Hennessy contest, there was no doubt that his star was ascending.
“After they announced that my band won, I got this big embrace from Grover Washington Jr.,” says Davis, referring to the noted saxophonist who headed the competition jury at the Bottom Line club in Greenwich Village.
“But the funny thing was that even as I was realizing that I had won this contest, all I could think about was the `Strings Attached’ taping coming up. I wasn’t so much thinking that I just won 10 grand, I was thinking, `Hey, this will help pay the musicians for the taping.’
“So I really haven’t had the time to pat myself on the back. I’ve been too busy.”
Is he wearing himself out?
Therein may lie one of the dangers ahead for Davis. Russo, who hired him at Columbia and remains one of his staunchest supporters, says point blank that “Orbert is working too hard.”
Others, also, have noted that in his zeal to perform, he may be stretching himself a bit thin.
Some observers also are wary of Davis’ flirtation with commercial studio work. Though his “Unfinished Memories” CD has been popular on radio, its slick studio sound has inspired mixed comments from critics who enthusiastically have applauded his live jazz performances.
“I fear,” says one observer who asked not to be named, “that Orbert may be leaning a bit too much toward commerce and away from jazz.”
Davis passionately disagrees.
“The goal that Mark and I had in starting our commercial music business never was to become megarich,” says Davis. “I’ve simply always loved pop music and still do.
“As for my workload, I actually cut down and changed my whole performing life when I got married,” in 1993, to a pediatrician.
“I used to play parties every Saturday night, and I just completely stopped doing those kinds of jobs when we got married.”
Regardless of what his critics believe, Davis appears to have found the rhythm that’s right for him. That much was obvious last weekend, during the “Sketches of Spain” concert.
Playing Miles Davis’ extensive, 45-minute solo part, the young trumpeter gave one of the more mesmerizing performances of his career. If there were a couple of bloopers early on, he quickly settled in to the elegaic spirit of the work and the poetic style of the trumpeter for whom composer Gil Evans wrote “Sketches.”
“To be honest, at first I didn’t want to do that concert, though I never told Bill (Russo) that,” says Davis. “I listened to the record, which I had owned forever, and I just realized that you never can sound like Miles.
“But then I started to think of it more as an acting situation in which I’m portraying Miles. That would be the challenge, and since I like challenges, I decided to do it.
“When you think that just a few years ago I was in the hospital unable to breathe, and five years later I’m onstage playing Miles Davis–it’s the kind of thing that can make you pretty humble.”
A BRIEF GUIDE TO ORBERT DAVIS LIVE AND ON DISC:
– Nov. 30, Signature Lounge, John Hancock Center, 875 N. Michigan Ave., 96th floor. Davis leads his quintet; phone 312-787-7230.
– Dec. 18 and 19, location to be announced. Davis appears with the Chicago Jazz Ensemble; phone 312-461-9708.
– “Orbert Davis: Unfinished Memories” (Copia). Davis’ debut CD features original tunes, including the propulsive “Cornucopia” and the atmospheric “The Covenant,” and standards “My Funny Valentine” and “Chelsea Bridge.”
