A year ago, they were thriving–New Orleans jazz musicians giving voice to the culture of a city unlike any other in America (or anywhere else).
Today, they’re struggling to put their lives back together, yet they remain determined to bring the sound of their battered city to anyone who wants to hear it.
It is our good fortune that several of the Crescent City’s greatest musicians will be heading to Chicago starting Monday, for Chicago Jazz Festival week. Though each of the artists endured particular tragedies when Hurricane Katrina tore into New Orleans last August, none has given up on the music of that city, or his personal connection to it.
That they’re venturing to Chicago for the festival seems fitting, for last year’s fest unfolded in the days immediately following Katrina, when New Orleans expatriates of all kinds were finding refuge in Chicago.
During the 2005 festival, the main topic of discussion was whether New Orleans ever could reclaim its musical soul–a question that remains unanswered. This time, their forthcoming appearances in Chicago suggest that, at the very least, the sound of the city endures, so long as these artists are still at work.
4 jazz greats
DR. MICHAEL WHITE
Through most of his career, the brilliant clarinetist-bandleader has been a champion of the earliest chapters of New Orleans jazz history. Music of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and George Lewis–as well as timeless hymns and marches–has been his specialty.
Few New Orleans musicians of today play this music with comparable authority or authenticity, for White has devoted his life to studying this repertoire and collecting its artifacts.
But therein lies his trauma, for Hurricane Katrina dumped nine feet of water into his home, which was where he kept his trove of musical scores, antique instruments and other precious ephemera.
“When I first went into my house, after the hurricane, I felt like I had died,” says White. “It was almost surreal to see so much of my life scattered about.
“It was very difficult to hear cracking of recordings and videos under my feet as I walked in, to see remnants of old musical instruments covered in mold and mildew.”
The anguish of these losses has been intense, says White, but he believes the experience has transformed him as a musician.
“This has been the most difficult year of my life,” he says. “But, on a personal level, it has created some of the necessary pain and emotion to put a little deeper feeling in my sound and in my music. I think there’s more passion in it.
“That whole [New Orleans] expression is in jeopardy, so I feel a greater urgency to play the music more, and get the word out, and get more musicians more seriously involved.”
At the same time, because so many players have fled New Orleans since the hurricane, he struggles to find Crescent City musicians who can master the repertoire he plays.
Will White, who now lives in Houston but commutes into New Orleans, ever return to his hometown full-time?
“I do know my heart and soul are in New Orleans, that I can’t see living somewhere else. Yet I know I’d feel safer and more comfortable and more secure somewhere else.
“I’m in a conflict between common sense and how my heart feels.”
Where to hear him: Dr. Michael White’s Original Liberty Jazz Band plays at 5 p.m. Sept. 1 at the Petrillo Music Shell, Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard; free.
MAURICE BROWN
Local listeners remember the ebullient young trumpeter from his teen years in Chicago, in the late 1990s, when he was sitting in with jazz masters at the long-defunct Alexander’s Steak House on the South Side. On some lucky evenings, Brown improvised with the stars playing the Jazz Showcase downtown.
But in 2001, the musician moved to Louisiana, quickly becoming the most talked-about young trumpeter in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina changed all that, forcing Brown to return briefly to Chicago before heading to New York at the end of last year.
Brown, however, considers himself one of Katrina’s luckier survivors. Though he lost much original music when his Crescent City apartment was flooded, he can re-create most of it from memory, he explains. The swank clothes that were ruined can be replaced. And he even was able to have his ebony, 1989 Caddy Brougham refurbished (though it wasn’t cheap).
For Brown, then, Katrina expedited his journey to New York, where he figured he would venture sooner or later.
More important, the hurricane altered his understanding of himself as man and artist.
“I feel I’m here for a reason, and the fact that I survived Katrina makes me feel prepared for anything that might come my way in life,” he says.
“When I was playing before Katrina, I loved to play, but I took it for granted, what I was doing. But now it’s so much more meaningful to me. Every note that I play, it means so much to me.
Moreover, Brown is keenly aware that the four years he spent in New Orleans, early in the decade, redefined him as a musician.
“It had a great effect on me,” he says. “I really got exposed to the whole culture, I got a chance to get deep into that culture and what was going on in New Orleans.”
Brown realizes, of course, that the New Orleans he loves no longer exists.
“Right now, it’s a different place,” he says. “The people who are in New Orleans now are the hard-core New Orleanians. They want to stay there and keep up the city. They’re giving it all the energy they can, but there’s not many of them.
Where to hear him: With Chicago trumpeter Corey Wilkes at 1:10 p.m. Sept. 3 at the Jazz on Jackson Stage, near Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard; free.
NICHOLAS PAYTON
The most gifted young trumpeter to come out of New Orleans since Wynton Marsalis, Payton practically embodies a Crescent City trumpet tradition stretching back to Louis Armstrong.
The clarion quality of Payton’s tone and the brilliance of his technique certainly make him an exemplar of the music of his hometown, as well as one of the most creative under-40 jazz trumpeters in the world.
Though Payton was on tour when Katrina struck, it rattled his life. After briefly relocating with his family to Houston, Payton returned to New Orleans last Thanksgiving, then in April suffered an auto accident that forced him to cancel performing for several months.
The devastation of his city, in tandem with his own recuperation, have been life-altering experiences for him.
“I consider myself very, very fortunate–so many people have lost so much,” says Payton. “My family is all alive. I’m still here.
“But to come back and see places that I remember looking one way when I left, and to see the wreckage that it has become and still is, today–that has quite an effect on you,” says Payton.
“I think this experience has forced many people to strip down to the bare essentials in life. We’ve learned that the fundamentals are important.
“When there’s such a catastrophe, all the mundane things–the pursuance of certain endeavors career-wise and professionally–all those things fall by the wayside.”
For Payton, the double-impact of the hurricane and auto accident had one up side: It enabled him to indulge his passion for another art form.
“I have a love for writing poetry–I had a week when I couldn’t put the pen down,” says Payton. “It has enabled me to look at other aspects of my personality–I’m not just a musician, not just a jazz musician.”
Payton has returned to writing music and will play in Chicago the first works he has composed in the aftermath of the hurricane and the accident.
“The advantage of being an artist,” says Payton, “is that we have a medium in which we can express our feelings and have an outlet to arrange our thoughts and emotions.”
Next week, we’ll get to hear what Payton has been thinking.
Where to hear him: “Still Miles Ahead: A Tribute to the Legacy of Miles Davis” at 8 p.m. Tuesday in the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Drive; $15-$45; phone the Harris box office at 312-334-7777 or the Jazz Institute of Chicago at 312-427-1676.
DONALD HARRISON
One of the most admired saxophonists in jazz, Harrison has been equally effective in contemporary jazz idioms and ancient New Orleans musical traditions (such as the incantations of the city’s Mardi Gras Indian tribes).
Unlike many of New Orleans’ most famous players, however, Harrison was at ground zero during the first four days of Hurricane Katrina, after which he escaped with his family to Baton Rouge.
“We looked like homeless people,” recalls Harrison, which is exactly what they were.
Shortly after fleeing, Harrison went to extraordinary lengths to get to Chicago to play his scheduled date at the Jazz Festival, a heroic performance that drew richly deserved ovations.
Having lost instruments, music, photos and other documentation of his career when his home was nearly destroyed, Harrison gained new insight into life, he says.
“It makes you cherish whatever you do have left and it enables you to let go of things you lost,” says Harrison. “You have to let go, man. “I think I’ve learned that what’s important is to be the best person you can be, man, because that’s all that you can really have. All you have in life is your actions.”
On musical terms, as well, Harrison sees his work in a new light.
“I think it has intensified my need to do as much as I can to develop whatever talent God has given me, because I realize it has a purpose,” he says. “A lot of times I’ve been in the music industry, and they told me that other people were really chosen [for success], and I should not really follow what I think.
“And from my perspective, if God didn’t want me here, he wouldn’t have put me here.”
Where to hear him: With his quintet at 5 p.m. Sept. 3 at the Petrillo Music Shell; free.
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Chicago Jazz Festival
When: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. through Sunday
Where: Grant Park Price:
Free; 312-744-3370; www.jazzinchicago.org
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A week of jazz
These events, programmed by the non-profit Jazz Institute of Chicago, lead up to the 28th annual Chicago Jazz Festival in Grant Park. For more information, phone 312-427-3400 (unless otherwise noted) or visit www.jazzinchicago.org.
Monday: 6:30 p.m., Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park — “Basie Meets Ellington,” The Chicago Jazz Orchestra and the Count Basie Band face off; free; 312-742-1168.
Tuesday: 12:15 p.m., Claudia Cassidy Theater in the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. — Havard Wilk, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and Ken Vandermark record an album live; free; 312-744-6630.
5:30 p.m., Mid America Club, 200 E. Randolph Drive — Gala Reception; $150 (includes ticket to “Still Miles Ahead” concert at 8 p.m.); 312-427-1676. 8 p.m., Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Drive — “Still Miles Ahead: A Tribute to the Legacy of Miles Davis,” featuring the Nicholas Payton Sextet; $15-$45; 312-334-7777.
Wednesday: 6 p.m. to midnight: Jazz Club Tour, with buses traveling to 15 jazz clubs: Andy’s, 11 E. Hubbard St.; Backroom, 1007 N. Rush St.; Bernice’s Twilight Zone, 2914 E. 79th St.; Buddy Guy’s Legends, 754 S. Wabash Ave.; Cuatro Restaurant, 2030 S. Wabash Ave.; East of the Ryan, 914 E. 79th St.; Green Mill Jazz Club, 4802 N. Broadway; Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia Ave.; HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo Drive; Joe’s Bebop Cafe, on Navy Pier, at 700 E. Grand Ave.; Lee’s Unleaded Blues, 7401 S. South Chicago Ave.; Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln Ave.; Velvet Lounge, 67 E. Cermak Rd.; $30; phone 312-427-1676.
Thursday: 5 p.m., Preston Bradley Hall in the Chicago Cultural Center– Critic Larry Kart interviews saxophonist Lee Knotiz; free; 312-744-6630. 7:30 p.m. in Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. — “A John Coltrane 80th Birthday Anniversary: Ballads and Brass,” featuring Joshua Redman, Kurt Elling and Ari Brown; $10-$55; 312-294-3000.
