The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 5. 1985 - Page 7 KOOL ditches Jazz Fest Verdi masterpiece performed By arwulf arwulf H ELLO THERE. I'm an American. I drive down high- ways at night and stare up at billboards illumined in the sky. I open magazines and get the full- color full-page ads full in my face. Here, half way through the 1980's, there's stunning examples of bad taste right out in front where you can scarcely avoid it. Did you see the way they used Jazz in advertising? Kool cigarettes, ('KOOL JAZZ'; get it?), sponsoring Jazz festivals in the mid- 80's, showed us the white guy blowing a horn or clutching a guitar, his hair carefully spun, face contor- ted in a grimace of pseudo- inspiration. The caption: THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO PLAY IT. What? Think about this for a minute. What makes jazz so vivid and exciting is the fact that THERE ARE SO VERY MANY DIF- FERENT WAYS TO PLAY IT. But we are not dealing with logic. Or with music. Or, indeed, with the real world. This is advertising. And it is in the name of advertising that the Kool cigarette company has an- nounced their decision to cease fun- ding jazz festivals across the coun- try after this year. Their reason? A shift in 'marketing strategy'. The white guy with the horn is being replaced by the white guy with the cowboy hat. This is what deter- mines the future of the careers of American Jazz musicians in the 1980's. Another factor in this mess is George Wein, concert promoter. Wein dates back to the dixie. revivalist cheese of the 1940's. Very opinionated fellow, is George. He ran the Newport Festivals in the 50's and 60's, became notorious in the early 70's for refusing to hire in- novative young New Yorkers at his Newport in New York festivals. George likes to hire the same people over and over again. Talent proven decades ago. Very safe. George would always hire Dexter Gordon. George likes Dexter. So do I. However there are countless other musicians who suffer from anonymity despite years of ex- perience. Promotion is a cyclic thing. If George Wein never features the in- novators in Creative Black Music, then they never get the exposure that an appearance at a major festival would provide. Any records they might make go out of print, and for some strange reason, nobody's ever heard of them. George Wein was entrusted with most of the hiring for the KOOL festivals. Luckily, he didn't preside at Mon- treux/Detroit. If he had, we might not have heard Griot Galaxy at Hart Plaza. Last September, right before Montreux/Detroit, Kim Heron quoted Wein as saying "You have a whole bunch of jazz musicians all over the world, who say they are musicians, musicians who are ar- tists, and their job is not to com- municate but to play whatever they want to play and the world is sup- posed to come to them. Well, the world isn't coming to them!" George Wein has possibly more power than anyone in the industry to give innovative Jazz musicians wide exposure. Having turned his nose up at any forms of communication that fall outside his narrow limitations as a listener, he gloatingly tells us that 'the world isn't coming to them.' But the rest of the world loves them, George. Japan, the #1 jazz market, and Europe, the #2 jazz market, have shown empathy and terrific marketing abilities with this strange new music. People like George Wein have been strangling Jazz since it began some 80 years ago. Here in America, the #3 jazz market, we can only hope for another sponsor for the two dozen jazz festivals which KOOL cigarettes is abandoning in '86. By Mike Gallatin Innocence violated, love betrayed, an old man's bitter curse. . . these are the powerful images of Verdi's Rigoletto. The New York City Opera National Company founded in 1981 by Beverly Sills under Columbia Artists Management will be performing this undisputed masterpiece tonight at the Power Center beginning at 8:00 p.m. The opera itself is a fascinating ex- ploration of complex characters and complex emotions. More than one hun- dred years after its first performance in 1851, Rigoletto's power to move and captivate an audience remains un- diminished and it is now universally acclaimed as Verdi's first masterpiece. The mise en scene is the decadent courts of sixteenth century Italy. The libretto is written by Piave based on Victor Hugo's Le Roi Samuse. Originally entitled, La Maladizione (The Curse), the opera was changed to Rigoletto. Censorship was averted by changing names and locale. Paris became Mantua and Triboulet became Rigoletto. Originally, conservatives were shocked and offended by what they perceived as the composer's lack of taste in depicting characters from the lower and middle classes as sym- pathetic figures. Verdi's celebrated aria, "La donna e mobile" (woman is fickle), captures both the charismatic appeal and deplorable decadence of the rakish Duke. Gilda shines forth as the very image of unselfish devotion while Sparafucile's sister, Maddalena em- bodies earthly sensuality. The deftly- drawn musical portraits find their culmination in the ensemble quartet in which four distinct emotions are ex- pressed simultaneously in this mesmerizing tale of love and revenge. The New York City Opera National Company provides a national showcase for some of America's foremost young talent. The Company tours cities featuring seasoned performers as well as the best of the up and coming new talent. Special production projects in- cluded La Boheme, La Traviata and Carmen. Tonight's performance of Verdi's Rigoletto will likely be an un- forgettable evening of that rare com- bination of music and drama known as opera. ANN ARBOR Yh.oh A70 0ihA venueotUbertyst - 6.9700 COMING MARCH 8th "Electrifing anger ... the heart of the film is the performance of Richard Burton ..." -Newsweek JOHN HURT ILIZJR. ....... RICHARD BURTON TITLE THEME "SEX CRIME 1984" PERFORMED BY THE EURYTHMICS Doily Photo by KATE O'LEARY Jazz pianist Mkoto Ozone spoke with WCBN disc jockey Marc Taras last Friday afternoon. In his show at the Blind Pig that night, he let his fingers do the talking. U vh-C AV W !"mT 4 q "'S i 1 B K- P 0 ) SENIORS EVENINGS ONLY $3.00 * NEW TWILIGHT SHOWS MON. THRU FRI. $2.50 TIL 6 P.M. i** i* "!"!!"********i***"*"* e * $1 0with this entire ad $1 .00 off any " 1 $4.00 admission. 1 or 2 tickets. " OFF Good all features thru 3/7/85 * 7 ACADEMY AWARDS * HELD OVER! I ncl. BEST PICTURE, i " WINNER BEST DIRECTOR BEST DIRECTOR & BEST ACTOR * SBERTRANT TRAVENIER SAM ! 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