For jazz, it was a rare opportunity to bask in the national media spotlight.
Though rock, pop and even classical performers often appear on national television and receive vast coverage from mainstream media, jazz rarely has enjoyed those opportunities in the United States. Europe and Asia may honor American jazz with all manner of TV, radio and related media attention, but back home, jazz generally has been marginalized in the cultural arena.
That’s why the 10th annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, held recently here, seemed poised to mark a turning point for both the music and the nation in which it was created.
With ABC-TV signed on to tape a special Kennedy Center concert honoring the 10th anniversary of the Monk Institute, with several young saxophonists converging on Washington to compete for $35,000 in prize money, and with a horde of critics flocking to town to cover the festivities, jazz finally was going to have a moment in the sun.
What a pity, then, that the Monk Institute, based in Washington and Boston, fumbled the extraordinary opportunity on not one but two counts.
The most stunning disappointment was “The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz 10th Anniversary Gala Celebration,” to be broadcast nationally on ABC-TV on Dec. 28. Ostensibly conceived as an homage to a distinctly American art form, the evening seemed to go out of its way to disrespect the music it was intended to celebrate.
It does not take a rocket scientist to determine why pop screamers James Ingram and Patti Austin, Latin crooner Jon Secada, country queen k.d. lang and the like turned up on the program: Even Monk Institute insiders acknowledge, off the record, that ABC-TV wanted as much star power as possible to maximize its viewing audience.
But by stacking the deck with performers who couldn’t swing a tune if their lives depended on it, the program seemed almost ashamed of the very music it claimed to honor.
How else to explain the bare-chested male dancer who slithered onto the stage on his belly, while Secada bleated into the microphone. Or the ensemble of gaudily garbed hoofers who shimmied directly in front of Stevie Wonder as he tried to sing. Or the shrill and tasteless way that Natalie Cole ripped into “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”
With comedian Sinbad using his routine to lampoon jazz musicians and emcee Bill Cosby very nearly acting the role of Fat Albert run amok, this evening was hardly the last word in dignified cultural celebration. In fact, singer Tony Bennett and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis were among the few stars who didn’t take the low brow route, though one wondered if that’s why their sets were kept so brief.
Remarkably, the program’s various hosts disseminated mountains of misinformation about jazz. Should these statements be included in the national telecast, be advised that:
– The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz is not the first such institution in the country (the Berklee College of Music, in Boston, and the jazz departments of the University of Miami and Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, among others, have been around a lot longer and enjoy bigger reputations).
– Trumpeter Miles Davis was not a jazz artist who “refused to compromise” (as his excursions into fusion, rock, rap and the like attest).
– Davis did not play his last public performance in Montreux, Switzerland (but, rather, in Los Angeles, immediately following a Chicago date in Grant Park).
– Quincy Jones, who received a lifetime achievement award from the Monk Institute, did not devote his life and career to jazz (rather, he has spent the past two to three decades working almost exclusively in pop, soul, rap and you name it).
Clearly, this televised “celebration” is not going to advance the cause of jazz or enhance the credibility of the Monk Institute, but that’s only part of the opportunity lost in Washington.
A couple of days earlier, the semifinals of the 10th annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition were held in the Smithsonian Institution’s Baird Auditorium, with 13 saxophonists competing before a panel of judges and a large public audience.
The competition, which each year features a different instrument, in the past has helped bring attention to several gifted young musicians, including saxophonist Joshua Redman (who won the top prize in 1991), trumpeter Ryan Kisor (1990) and pianist Marcus Roberts (1987).
This year, however, the competition judges startled many listeners not only by moving the bland Jon Gordon to the finals but by keeping the unusually poetic Joel Frahm from advancing.
In general, the level of playing was not particularly high, with several of the contestants failing to keep up with the all-star rhythm section (pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Lewis Nash).
Thus one New York critic quipped to a Chicago visitor, between sets, “I think the winner this year ought to be Lewis Nash.”
By the time the finals had ended, in the Kennedy Center just before the start of the gala concert, a pattern had emerged. By awarding the $20,000 top prize to Gordon, a solid but undistinguished soloist, the jury may have settled on a compromise candidate.
With such formidable judges as Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, Jackie McLean, Joshua Redman and Wayne Shorter casting the votes, Gordon may have emerged as the least offensive to each. Certainly that has been the pattern in classical music competitions, where the boldest, most daring players rarely finish first.
In this case, that meant that the most gifted, versatile and audacious of the musicians, Detroit’s John Wojciechowski, had to settle for the $5,000 third prize. If an artist as technically accomplished, musically profound and harmonically daring as Wojciechowski can’t walk away with top honors, then one has to wonder about the validity of instrumental competition in the jazz field.
The sad irony is that neither Wojciechowski, nor Gordon, nor second-place winner Jimmy Greene Jr. will be seen on the televised Monk concert. They’re the future of jazz, yet they’ll have to yield to lang, Secada and the fellow who slithered in on his belly.
