Trible Keeps Horace Tapscott’s Music Going

When vocalist Dwight Trible first began ascending bandstands in Los Angeles after moving here from Cincinnati in 1978, he noticed someone often popped in briefly during performances. “It was Horace Tapscott. He always came around to check everyone out. He would listen to what I was doing and then disappear.”

Eventually Tapscott, the pianist-composer-bandleader who died in February, came to Trible and said he had a song for him to do. That song, Tapscott’s “Mothership,” is the focus of Trible’s new independent-label CD “Horace.”

At first it looked as if the disc, all but one track recorded at the studios of KPFK-FM (90.7) before Tapscott died, might feature the pianist on that very song. “During the time we were recording, Horace was going through a critical period of his illness,” Trible says. “One Saturday I went over to see him and he was in bed, and I asked him if I could do ‘Mothership’ for the album. He thought I was asking him to play and said, ‘Sure, I’ll be there.’ He was gearing himself up for this record. But when the day came, he didn’t have the strength to do it.”

The recording features drummer Billy Higgins, saxophonist Charles Owens, percussionist Derf Reklaw, pianist John Rangel, bassist Trevor Ware and others on various cuts, including John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes” and a collective improvisation, “Return to the Ethers.” Poet Kamau Daaood recites his tribute to Tapscott, “Papa Lean Griot,” to which Trible adds lines from “(Sometimes I Feel Like) a Motherless Child.”

Trible says his style, one that carries an expansive sense of phrasing and a message of goodwill, has been influenced by the late Betty Carter and, surprisingly, folk singer Richie Havens. “Here’s [Havens], who doesn’t have much of a voice, who doesn’t play the guitar very well, but ends up generating a tremendous amount of feeling. For me, it was a life-changing experience seeing him perform live. I may not sing like him, but I want to get that level of emotion.”

Trible keeps the Tapscott fires burning, rehearsing the 25-voice choir that is part of Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra every Monday in the late bandleader’s garage. “Before he died, Horace told me, ‘Keep the music going, keep the music going.’ And that’s what I’m doing.”

* “Horace” is available at local record stores or by calling Working Class Productions at (323) 692-8080.

Field Trip: About 2,000 Los Angeles County-area students in grades 5 through 7 are about to get jazzed, thanks to a traveling education program, “Get Hip,” sponsored by the New York-based JazzReach Performing Arts & Education Assn. The program, according to drummer and JazzReach founder H. Benjamin Schuman, seeks to demystify jazz by making it accessible to kids through music and narration.

“We try to have the program relate as many things as possible to the students’ experience. We present the jazz ensemble as a community and show how it requires teamwork and responsibility to make things work, just as it does in the community. We show how all the different cultural aspects come together on the bandstand, like in the community. We try to present the music in a context that promotes social values.”

The presentation includes Schuman’s quartet performing commissioned music written by keyboardist Larry Goldings, augmented by a narrator, a slide presentation and audience participation. Though the theatrical sets used during East Coast appearances that re-create the jazz club environment have been left behind due to weight, Schuman says banners and other visuals will carry the message.

The program, presented earlier this month at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, will be at the Colburn School for Performing Arts in downtown Los Angeles, Monday through next Friday, with later stops in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. Schuman’s quartet--with saxophonist Myron Walden, pianist Sam Yahel and bassist Dwayne Burno--will perform a free public concert at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s weekly jazz series next Friday, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Concert information: (323) 857-6000.

Scene and Heard: Much of bassist Hersh Hamel’s “Westcoasting,” a long jazz suite for seven-piece band and voice performed Sunday at the Madrid Theatre in Canoga Park, was in the cool spirit of the West Coast jazz scene of the ‘50s. But other sections, notably a tribute to Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and cronies, cooked with a Central Avenue flame. The front line of trombonist Andy Martin, trumpeter Ron Stout and West Coast veteran saxophonist Bill Perkins soloed as if to underscore that cool is only part of the California sound. . . . On Tuesday, at the 24th St. Theater, San Francisco-based composer Phillip Greenlief and his ensemble Covered Pages (with fellow reed player Vinny Golia and guitarists G.E. Stinson and Nels Cline) premiered music Greenlief composed last year in St. Petersburg, Russia. The five sections, pulled from a larger work, ranged from harmonic madness (“Cries for Dostoevsky”) to surprisingly supple melodies (“Last Light on the Neva”). . . . Pianist Billy Childs was the featured performer last Friday when Club Thelonious, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz’s weekly showcase for its students and guests, opened its season at the restaurant Otto’s in the Music Center. Pianist Danny Grissett leads a combo there tonight and Saturday. The Monk Institute presents another in its series of free “Jazz Informances” in the Grand Hall of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Nov. 7 at 2 p.m. The program, titled “Afro-Cuban Jazz in Los Angeles,” features the Pancho Sanchez Latin Jazz Band. Information: (213) 821-1500.

More Sanchez: Conguero Sanchez, who’s just released his 19th album for the Concord label, “Latin Soul,” plays a benefit concert tonight at the Wilmington Boys & Girls Club, 1444 West Q St., Wilmington, 8:30 p.m. Violinist Susie Hansen’s band opens. $15 in advance (before 2 p.m.), $20 at the door. All proceeds go to the Boys & Girls Club. (310) 549-8323.