One way to look at the music world is as a gigantic Indra’s Net, a web of connections where any one musician can be linked to any other with just a few degrees of separation. It’s not only a cool topic for the post-gig hang. It can be the catalyst that brings players together and catalyze the magic that happens on the bandstand.
That’s the story behind a concert Saturday presented by Arts Renaissance Tremont that features five New York-based players, none of whom seem to have played with any of the others. The concert, appropriately dubbed UnchARTed Territory, is Saturday at Pilgrim Congregational Church.
Let’s unpack that name, because it reveals a lot about the concert. The first thing to note is the text styling that incorporates an acronym for the presenting organization in upper-case letters. But beyond the cute text styling is another revelation: the great majority of concerts presented by Arts Renaissance Tremont feature performers from the concert music world. For ART, jazz more or less is uncharted territory.
The seeds of Saturday’s concert were planted 20 years ago when two nodes of the vast musical net, classical percussionist and artistic director of Arts Renaissance Tremont, Feza Zweifel, and multi-reedist Charles Pillow, met.
“We used to play in a chamber group together and I would say we’re pretty good friends and we throw ideas off of each other all the time,” Zweifel said yesterday on a video call, “Charlie’s very interested in a great many things, and so we talk a lot about all kinds of different things.”
One of those conversations involved speculating about what would happen if a group of high-level jazz players representing a diversity of ages and backgrounds came together in concert.
Collections of musicians coming together on the fly is common practice in the jazz world where and busy schedules collide and last-minute substitutions are a contingency bandleaders have to prepare for. But Saturday’s concert is intentionally ad hoc.
“I whipped this idea past him,” Zweifel said of his friend, “and he thought that, you know, that it would be possible and it would be interesting, not just for the players, but for the audience, maybe even more interesting for the audience.”
Inter-generational bands have a long history in jazz, an oral tradition where young hotshots apprentice in the bands of respected elders. Still Zweifel pointed out that drummer T.J. Reddick is 27 while his rhythm-teammate, bassist Todd Coolman is 70. Pianist Addison Frei played with Reddick at Julliard, but to Zweifel’s knowledge, the two have not occupied the same bandstand in a professional setting. Trumpeter Omar Lateef, while active in New York, has a teaching position in Florida and lives in Ft. Lauderdale.
There were other connections, too.
“At a festival that I played in 1988 in Colorado one of my colleagues on percussion was Kevin Garry who was one of T.J.’s teachers in high school. Todd Coolman used to be in the James Moody Quintet, which recorded a CD that was produced by Erica Brenner, ART’s CEO. And I played a gig last year in Detroit with the Paradise Big Band where I heard Omar playing these solos and I thought to myself, “Who is that?” So we met briefly backstage and he was a former classmate of one of the members of Burning River Brass.”
Connections. Like the music, they go on and on. But as interesting as these Six Degrees of Separation games can be, it takes something more to make a concert compelling, and Zweifel think he can put a finger on it.
“It’s somewhat based on connections, but very much based on immense talent and a willingness to come out and experiment with us.”
UnchARTed Territory, Saturday, Sept. 18, 7:30 p.m., Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ, 2592 W. 14th St,, Cleveland. Free.
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
