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All Jazzed Up

The 19th annual
Ford Montreux Jazz
Festival will once
again jazz up
Labor Day weekend
this year, with more
than 750,000 music
lovers expected to
converge on
Hart Plaza.

This year's Montreux Jazz Festival
will feature more than 120 free per-
formances on five stages.
With a lineup including a dozen
international headliners, more than
40 Detroit and Michigan-area artists
and two dozen award-winning high
school and college bands, the non-
stop music will run from noon-11
p.m. Friday, Sept. 4, through Mon-
day, Sept. 7. The festival kicks off
with a Picnic on the Plaza, featuring
the Sun Messengers and special guest
Diane Schuur, at 6 p.m.
Thursday, Sept. 3.
Headlining the
schedule will be a first-
time-ever collabora-
tion between Schuur
— often compared
to the late Ella
Fitzgerald — and the
Duke Ellington

Orchestra directed by Paul Ellington.
Other top national acts include the
Sun Ra All Star Project, Ruth Brown,
Michael Brecker and David Liebman
with the University of Michigan Jazz
Ensemble, Ray Barretto and New
World Spirit, the Louis Hayes Quin-
tet with special guest Curtis Fuller,
the Brad Mehldau Trio, Houston Per-
son and Etta Jones, and Eric Person
and Meta-Four.
The festivals lineup covers tradition-
al, swing, bebop, Latin, cutting edge,

Kathy Kosins is one of
more than 40 Detroit
and Michigan-area
artists who will per-
form at Montreux.
She appears 8 p.m.
Friday, Sept. 5, on the
Hudson's/Live Jazz
Stage in Hart Plaza.

in the 'hood by the black gods on Sev-
Simultaneously he was
concentration camp at
enth Avenue.
working with pianist Richard
Dachau.
The counter-culture middle-class
Beirach in the Lookout Farm group.
Unlike many other jazz performers,
kids — who hustled into Manhattan
That evolved into the group Quest,
Liebman takes teaching seriously. The
to steal away moments in dark clubs
which won wide acclaim in the late
International Association of Schools of
with their contraband cigarettes and
'80s after drummer Billy Hart and
Jazz (IASJ) that he created a decade
cocked-eyed berets — were beginning
bassist Ron McClure joined up. His
ago brings together young professional
to learn the riffs, and they needed a
current Dave Liebman Group was .
musicians from around the world as
place to play.
formed in 1991.
apprentices to established players.
Liebman helped make it happen.
Liebman has recorded extensively
Groupings are often designed so
"In the '60s, the only place you could
— 75 CDs with him as the leader or
that members of the group do not
play was in loft buildings that were
co-leader, 150 as a featured sideman.
know each other's language, thus
basically converted factories in
He constantly tests new ideas —
encouraging them to express them-
Chelsea," he recalled.
his New Vista recording last year fuses
selves primarily through their instru-
He hooked up with young saxo-
Latin forms with the expressionism
ments.
phonists Michael and Randy
"Who knows what will be the
long-term result" of a particular
Brecker. Dave Hollins, Chick
Correa, then Miles Davis came
grouping, Liebman said. "It could
be maybe just a song that goes
over to play. "You could play late,
into the air, never to be repeated
stretch our and nobody cared. I
again. Or maybe some future seed
had a place where anybody could
being planted."
come any time to play, and it
IASJ is Liebman's way of giving
became a famous building for jam
something back. "You can be an ,
sessions."
accountant or a lawyer," he says,
But four walls and a lot of
"but you have to do something on
woven rugs weren't enough. After
the side to help out."
graduating from New York Uni-
The IASJ's latest meeting in
versity with a degree in American
Cologne, Germany, was highlight-
history, Liebman began employing
Tenor saxophonist and composer Michael Brecker, a ed by the performances of a suite
his organizational skills by starting
seven-time Grammy winner, joins David Liebman
of original pieces, written by five
a "grass-roots, hippie-type, self-
and the University of Michigan Jazz Ensemble in
different composers associated
help" organization he founded to
the American premiere of U-M's Ed Sarath's three-
with
the group, including Ed
find places for jazz musicians to
movement work, "Rites of Passage."
Sarath's Rites of Passage, the piece
play. The organization, Free Life
that will be performed at Mon-
Communication, was one of the
treux.
that Coltrane and Davis developed;
first jazz cooperatives.
Throughout his career, Liebman
Voyage, released a year earlier, adven-
In 1970 he joined Ten Wheel
has kept coming back to Coltrane. His
tured with new harmonics and a sen-
Drive, a group that was trying to fuse
definitive work is his study of
suous lyricism. It included a free jazz
jazz and rock styles. That led to work-
Coltrane's Meditations, a project on
piece, "The Gravel and The Bird,"
ing with Elvin Jones and, from 1972
which he worked together with his
that was a memoir of a visit to the
to 1974, a stint with Miles Davis.

acid jazz, funk and smooth jarz, as well
as blues, rhythm and blues, and soul.
Daily activities for adults and chil-
dren include Harold McKinney's
"Jazz for a New Generation" and
"Meet the Artist" sessions for those
who want to learn more about jazz.

For more information or a Ford
Montreux Jazz Festival brochure,
call Music Hall Center for the
Performing Arts, producer of the
festival, at (313) 963-7622, or
visit the Web site at www.mon-
treuxdetroitjazz.com . Detroit's
Channel 62/CBS will air a two
hour live broadcast from the festi-
val, "The Motor City All Star
Celebration," with some of the
city's most popular jazz perform-
ers, 9-11 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4.

wife, Canis, a jazz oboist who tran-
scribed the lengthy composition.
He often plays the piece in concert,
has recorded it on an album and has
programmed the track onto his Web
page (www.upbeat.com/lieb/index.htm)
so listeners can download it to their
home computers.
The piece "is much more dissonant,
not gentle sounding, not soft," Lieb-
man said. "During Coltrane's last two
years of playing, he was moving into a
more abstract direction, both harmon-
ically and rhythmically, much more
sophisticated and complex."
The piece is at the root of who he
was, a proponent of fusion both musi-
cal and cultural: Liebman, who was
raised in a liberal, Reform Jewish fam-
ily, noted that the piece "is based
upon the Phrygain scale that's corn-
mon in Jewish prayers, and the scale
most common for melodies we hear in
the temple." ❑

David Liebman performs 4 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 6, with Michael
Brecker and the University of
Michigan Jazz Ensemble on the
Ford/AirTouch Cellular Stage. He
joins Dan Lewis & Friends, with
Rick Margitza, 8 p.m. Saturday,
Sept. 5, on the Hudson's/Live Jazz
Stage, and plays 5:15 p.m. Sunday,
Sept. 6, with the Scott Cutshall
Quartet on the DTE Energy
Stage, all in Detroit's Hart Plaza.
All Ford Montreux Jazz Festival
concerts are free.

8/28
1998

Detroit Jewish News

87