Linda Kosut

Linda possesses a stage presence that is naturally relaxed while also being able to convey the emotions of each song’s story. The set was made up of songs from her Oscar Brown show with which she has been touring the country, interspersed with standards that shared similar emotional cadence and feel. In between songs Linda would talk with the audience, sharing the background of a piece’s history. This never disrupted the flow of the set and never felt show-bizzy. There was an instant rapport with the audience, which lent an intimacy to the entire set.

Art Tatum: Piano Starts Here

Yet Sony Music and Zenph Studios have done the seemingly impossible—they have released a “live” performance of Art Tatum at The Shrine in 1949 (Piano Starts Here). Only this live recording was made in 2007. Say what? Since I am not a recording engineer, this will have to be the Techno-Wizardry For Dummies explanation. What I understand is this: Zenph has developed a process of reconstituting old recordings, in this case one that was damaged goods, by digitally capturing the exact rendering of the music, even to the point of analyzing how the keys were struck by the original fingers, then replaying it through modern equipment, in this case a Yamaha Disklavier Pro Mark III Concert Grand placed in precisely the same spot on The Shrine Auditorium stage as Tatum originally performed, in front of a live audience. (This is termed a “re-performance.”) The result? An impeccable recording of Tatum’s artistry, complete with audience applause. The hype around this project is readily anticipated—we hear the “real” Art Tatum as did that audience in 1949, now with a record of every sound and nuance that defied capture and preservation six decades ago. (For a more in-depth technological description, see Gary Giddens’ column in the August issue of Jazz Times.)

Jazz on the Pentacrest: The Geoff Keezer Trio at the 2006 ICJF (Andrea Canter)

Nostalgia might have prompted my first trip to my hometown jazz festival in Iowa City, but the quality of the music and organization bring me back. Within a day’s drive of the Twin Cities (about 5 hours south), Chicago, Omaha and St. Louis, the Iowa City Jazz Festival has deservedly earned its “top ten” reputation among free public festivals nationwide. Beyond three stages boasting the best in national, local and student musicians, the ICJF supplies the classiest “street food” in mid-America, and the sum total is one hot holiday weekend, July 4-6.  

The 18th Toyota Scion Iowa City Jazz Festival is now a component of the Iowa City Summer of the Arts; long-time festival director and guitarist Steve Grismore remains on the scene as festival coordinator. Summer of the Arts brings several big events under one umbrella and calls attention to Iowa City as the cultural mecca it has become, featuring music, dance, theater and creative arts of all sorts throughout the summer (and, in fact, all year long). But the biggest draw to this college community in eastern Iowa is the jazz festival, bringing an average of 25,000 each summer to the heart of downtown and the University of Iowa campus. Now held on the partially shaded lawn of the famed Pentacrest (the center of the U of I administration anchored by “Old Capitol”—Iowa’s first statehouse), the festival has grown from a one-day local showcase in 1991 to a three-night/two-day jazz menagerie combining the highest level of international touring artists with local, college and high school bands, late night jams at the Sheraton Hotel, radio interviews, school clinics, and more.  

Steve Turre © Andrea Canter

Tuesday night was the first Twin Cities’ visit of Steve Turre’s shell ensemble, although Turre the trombonist was here last summer as part of the Dakota’s Trombone Summit. I caught his sextet at Dizzy’s in New York last fall. As a trombone master, Turre launched his career with the Escovedo brothers, then worked through a pantheon of legends, from Ray Charles and Art Blakey to Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Max Roach, Woody Shaw and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Kirk introduced Turre to the seashell as a musical instrument; while touring with Shaw in Mexico, he learned that his own relatives had played the shells. Shells, Turre told the Dakota audience, are the roots of the horns. Indeed it seems that the first wind instruments were seashells which indigenous peoples used to communicate as well as entertain. In the Mediterranean, a shell sounded as a fog horn; in Samoa, a blast of the shell announced the comings and goings of boats; Shinto priests still use a triton trumpet to summon their constituents to prayer. Turre has spent years refining the use of shells in music, specifically salsa-drenched jazz.