Educators and Musicians See Changes on the Way

The 27th International Assn. of Jazz Educators Conference, which concluded Saturday in New Orleans, was a virtually nonstop, often chaotic glimpse of the global jazz scene in a four-day microcosm.

Typically, numerous events, recitals, panel discussions and research presentations were happening simultaneously. And it was impossible to experience the full range of activities.

Aside from the pleasing performances by young artists from around the world, beyond the numerous valuable academic discussions, there were several themes that emerged from the conference--some with the potential to generate considerable change in the jazz world:

* The long-expressed desire for a jazz trade association finally seems to be coming to fruition. The value of an organization that would function like the Country Music Assn. has been in the wind for years. But several panels, with such industry heavyweights as Warner Bros.’ Matt Pierson, the San Francisco Jazz Festival’s Randall Kline and numerous others, laid the groundwork for the actual creation of such a group. It obviously will not be easy, and panel attendees from various parts of the jazz business raised pertinent points regarding funding, management and overall mission. But, under the initial guidance of Chuck Iwanusa, a former president of IAJE, the first important steps have been taken.

* Jazz and television have never quite established a compatible relationship--at least not since the ‘50s when producers such as Robert Herridge understood the connection between the music’s visual and aural appeal. Two panels, the first a general discussion of jazz and television, the second an introduction to a planned jazz awards show, revealed both promises and problems.

The general discussion focused on the potential in BET On Jazz, cable’s only full-time jazz channel. But when some of the specific difficulties were raised--the still limited availability of BET’s service, problems and costs of programming, etc.--Herbie Hancock took the discussion in a broader direction.

“We need to get our thinking out of the box,” he said. “Jazz musicians tend to think of the music as being inside a box. But jazz isn’t in a box; it’s their thinking that is in a box.” Hancock went on to urge musicians to “use the creative force that you have in your music to solve problems in other areas--like television.”

Regarding the awards show, it’s not surprising, given the current proliferation of presentations in other self-congratulatory areas of the entertainment world, that there should also be some rumblings regarding a televised jazz awards event. Magazines such as Down Beat and Jazz Times have been issuing their own annual honors lists for years. And organizations such as KnitMedia and the Jazz Journalists Assn. have attempted to establish their own awards events.

But the combination of Billboard Magazine and the BET On Jazz cable network brings a potent array of marketing firepower to the concept of a televised awards event. The panel discussing the preliminary plans, however, ran into a potential problem when BET On Jazz head Paxton Baker and Billboard’s Howard Appelbaum described a kind of dual track award process in which presentations would be made for best-selling albums as well as for best performances (which will be identified by a still-to-be-created academy of 600 jazz experts). It remains to be seen precisely how the process will work, and how the awards will be identified. (Will an album be labeled “best album” or “best-selling album”?) But with a televised performance date scheduled for early June, there’s still a lot to be sorted out. Stay tuned.

* Jazz will receive an enormous boost later this year when promotion begins for documentarian Ken Burns’ massive, 19-hour overview of the music. Giving one of the panels a brief view of the project, tentatively scheduled to air in the fall, Burns noted that it includes more than 350 pieces of music, almost all jazz except for a few examples of African music and klezmer.

“I believe that if someone were to be asked, a hundred years from now, about the major contributions of American society,” said Burns, “they would list the Constitution, baseball and jazz.” The common ground among those contributions, Burns noted, is their collectivity, their capacity to find union in diversity. “We have too much pluribus in this country,” he added, “and not enough unum. And that was one of my motivations for making this picture.”

* It may be time to take a somewhat revisionist view of the superhero theory of progression in jazz history. The music may currently lack an influential figure comparable to, say, a Louis Armstrong or a John Coltrane, but there is no lacking in quality or imagination. More to the point, the level of quality is extraordinarily high. And if anything was apparent at the conference, it was that players--from high school students to the numerous world-class professionals who performed--are functioning with remarkable skill, creative ingenuity and intelligent musicality. Jazz superheroes will undoubtedly continue to arrive from time to time, but in the interim, there’s no reason to be disappointed about the excellence of the music that is being made, every day, in locations around the globe.

Grammy Jazz: Grammy Fest at the Jazz Bakery will present a series of four concerts, starting Jan. 31, featuring performers with ties to the National Assn. of Recording Arts and Sciences. The programs, which are produced under a grant from NARAS, will be formatted in traditional Jazz at the Philharmonic style, with a different resident rhythm section for each program, four guest horn players and a guest vocalist. The lineup for the initial concert features pianist Mike Melvoin, bassist Chuck Berghofer, drummer John Guerin and guitarist Mitch Holder in the rhythm section. They will accompany two different front lines: trumpeter Steve Huffsteter, alto saxophonist Lanny Morgan, tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb, trombonist George Bohanon and singer Sally Stevens at 8 p.m.; and French horn player Richard Todd, alto saxophonist Gary Foster, tenor saxophonist Zane Musa, singer Bill Henderson and bassist Charlie Haden at 9:30 p.m. The remaining programs are scheduled for Feb. 7, 14 and 20.