arts & life

festivals

Moving

Jazz

Forward

Trumpeter David Weiss gets inspiration for the

future by honoring the past.

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

D

avid Weiss — trum-
peter, band leader,
arranger and com-
poser — actually knew the local
music legends whose works he
will perform over the Labor
Day weekend at the Detroit Jazz

Festival.
Weiss will be joined by his
band, Point of Departure, to
give audiences a more complete
experience of the styles devel-
oped by the late pianist Kenn
Cox and the late trumpeter

details

The free Detroit Jazz Festival runs
Sept. 2-5 at various venues in the
heart of Detroit. David Weiss will
perform 2:45-4 p.m. Saturday on
the Water Front Stage.
David Weiss and Point of
Departure will appear
4:45-6 p.m. Sunday on the
Water Front Stage. For a complete
list of programming and
educational opportunities, go to
detroitjazzfest.com.

Point of Departure

66 August 25 • 2016

David Weiss

Charles Moore.
Besides long playing works
linked to both entertainers,
Weiss talked to them about their
work and found encouragement
for his own projects.
“Kenn stayed in Detroit for
most of his life and was a great
composer and a great force
in the local jazz scene,” Weiss
explains in a phone conversation
from his New York home. “I vis-
ited with Kenn’s widow, Barbara,
and went through a lot of his
music.
“I talked to Kenn on the
phone a couple of times, but I
talked to Charles a lot. What
attracted me to Charles’ music
— and it’s part of the credo of
Point of Departure — was the
focus on the late 1960s, when
soloists were taking the music
in many different directions and
making anything possible.
“We play it all quite differently
every night and quite differently
than Charles might have done
it. That was the point: to create
something that gave the band
more possibilities of what to do
than just playing melody, featur-
ing a solo over that form and
then going to melody again.”
Weiss, who has worked with
many top jazz performers, will
be returning to the Labor Day
festival, where he has enter-
tained in the past. He also has

played other Motor City venues,
including the Music Hall.
“Detroit musicians didn’t get
the credit in the world that they
probably should have gotten,”
Weiss says. “Musicians knew
about them. Cassettes of their
music were passed along when I
was in college.”
The two Detroiters performed
together as part of Kenny Cox
and the Contemporary Jazz
Quintet.
Weiss, who had resisted music
studies as a child, agreed to try
piano at the urging of his mom.
More interested in sports, he
moved on to trumpet when
he heard breathing exercises
for that instrument made for a
stronger athlete.
“I went to California Institute
of the Arts to study photog-
raphy,” Weiss explains about
his early career interests. “The
students were having bands so
I pulled out my trumpet and
started playing with them. It
soon became clear that trumpet
was my priority, and I went to
North Texas State University,
where they have a big jazz
department.”
Composing seemed to come
naturally as the musician sat at
the piano working on transcrip-
tions and arrangements, particu-
larly after returning to New York
for work opportunities. While