(Reprinted from the April 2022 issue New York City Jazz Record)
In April 2021, vocalist Alexis Cole served as Artistic Director for the first Vocal Jazz Summit, co-produced with the Zeiders American Dream Theater (The Z) in Virginia Beach, Virginia. At the time, a year into the pandemic, the weekend workshop was 95% virtual—at once a concession to the inevitable and an innovative response to an unmet need. By then, Cole, a dedicated vocal jazz educator, had set herself apart as an early adopter of remote music instruction: In May 2020 she’d launched JazzVoice.com, an online platform for jazz learning that connects far-flung singers, both emerging and established, with celebrity jazz vocalists. The Vocal Jazz Summit 2022 uses this model, too, in a boon for anyone who wants to know more about vocal jazz and how to do it.
This year’s Vocal Jazz Summit (April 8-10) is fully in person, with a Zoom option for those who can’t make it to Virginia Beach. Even from a distance, however, the lineup makes for an intense weekend. There are performances by Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter (from the funk-driven SuperBlue), rising star (and Cole former student) Samara Joy, and Cole herself. Masterclasses by singers Melanie Charles, Greta Matassa, René Marie, Stephanie Nakasian and Dominique Eade. Plus specialist panels, teacher showcases and a nightly jam, led by veteran host Jocelyn Medina.
These names, familiar to those who follow the awards and the jazz headlines, bring an astonishing level of expertise to this gathering. And Zoom—loved, hated, always there for you—makes all of this wisdom available to anyone, anywhere, with just a click.
The arts space Roulette, too, was quick to embrace digital platforming in 2020, to the benefit of trans-Atlantic collaborations that suffered from lack of access to their like-minded musicians abroad. This month German label Jazzwerkstatt returns to Roulette for a two-day festival celebrating its Berlin-New York cultural exchange. On April 20 The Wolfgang Schmidtke Orchestra plays a set honoring composer Kurt Weill—no singers (a shame), but lots of opportunity to study the compositional mastery of the mind behind such spectacular vocal works as The Three Penny Opera and Street Scene. On April 21 composer Thomas Krüger interprets two historic sound poems by Berlin multi-disciplinary artist Kurt Schwitters—“Die Ursonate” and “To Anna Bloom”. Though unintelligible to the uninitiated ear, Schwitters’ poetry broke new ground in understanding vocalizations as art. (According to American poet/critic Kenneth Goldsmith, “Die Ursonate” was the “greatest sound poem of the 20th century.”) Berlin’s stunning brass quintet Potsa Lotsa, led by saxophonist Silke Eberhard, backs Krüger for this performance.
National Poetry Month, an educational initiative launched in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, reminds us each April that poetry matters. Safe to say, song would not exist without it. Neither would rap or military cadences or nursery rhymes. The Academy elucidates poetry’s influence on world culture this April 28 with the 19th annual edition of Poetry & the Creative Mind, an online event (this year) featuring popular actors reading powerful words.
This past February, Mayor Mike Spano of Yonkers named Golda Solomon the first Poet Laureate of Yonkers. Solomon, now 84, has four albums to her credit, each exploring the connection between jazz and poetry. In addition, she created Po’Jazz (Poetry in Partnership with Jazz) and is a founding member of The Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective. Clearly, for Solomon jazz and poetry spring from the same creative place. In accepting the title, she read from one of her poems: “We are all Artists/We are All Writers/We ARE ALL POETS”.
Fred Moten, a professor of Performance Studies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, has gained impressive distinctions as a poet—including finalist spots for the L.A. Times Book Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry. On April 14 he joins forces with bassist Brandon Lopez and drummer Gerald Cleaver at Public Records in Brooklyn “to bring the new vanguard of jazz and poetry”. The gig officially launches their debut LP, Moten/López/Cleaver, on the Reading Group label.
Blossom Dearie and Dave Frishberg, singer/pianists from opposite ends of the vocal spectrum, performed as a duo back in the day, each contributing to the other’s idiosyncratic jazz persona. Daryl Sherman, a singer/pianist herself, investigates the overlap between these two distinctive performers at Birdland on April 11.
Two chamber recitals at Carnegie Hall feature young, impressive scatters: Yoon Sun Choi sings with pianist Jacob Sacks in Weill on April 6, and Jazzmeia Horn fronts her band in Zankel on April 29.