Jazz is an art form that has its early beginnings in the blues, evolving over decades from early swing to bebop and jazz fusion; jazz music continues to evolve to this day.
Next weekend, the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Fine Arts Center kicks off its 2018 season with a “Jazz Flight” series showcasing a diverse range of acts that map some of the many branches of the jazz evolutionary tree: from the avant-garde jazz of the Angelica Sanchez Nonet on Sept. 27 to the Middle Eastern-tinged jazz of Amir ElSaffar & Two Rivers Ensemble on Sept. 28.
And on Sept. 29, legendary singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and her Memphis Soulphony will bring it all back home, exploring some of the roots of jazz with a melange of fiery blues, R&B, and vintage soul.
Aaron Shackelford, director of programming for the Fine Arts Center, said the Jazz Flight series is a way to present the wide range of what constitutes jazz music. The name is based on the concept of sampling jazz music, just as someone might try different flavors in a flight of beer.
“We wanted to highlight the breadth and flexibility of what that term ‘jazz’ means and to do so by bringing artists who are themselves undergoing some of those explorations,” Shackelford said. “It gives audiences an opportunity to sample something they might not be too familiar with.”
Angelica Sanchez, an experimental jazz pianist, opens the “Flight” series Thursday, Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. at Bezanson Recital Hall. The New York Times describes her as a musician who “seeks out the lyrical heartbeat within any avant-garde storm.” The nonet, a group of nine musicians in total including Sanchez, features eight other instrumentalists, including cornet, clarinet, saxophones, guitar, bass, and drums.
The following night, at 8 p.m. in Bowker Auditorium, jazz trumpet player Amir ElSaffar & Two Rivers Ensemble take to the stage to bring audiences a cross-cultural fusion of jazz and traditional Arabic music.
ElSaffar, who performs with a sextet of Middle Eastern jazz musicians, told the Gazette during a phone interview that there’s already a lot of preexisting relationships between traditional Arabic music, Western classical music, and jazz that includes a shared melodic vocabulary.
“Within this African American lineage, there’s an Islamic element, and so a lot of the slaves that were brought here up until the 1600s and onwards were Muslim and recited the Quran,” he said. “So there was some melodic components that were being transported as well.
“A lot of the microtonality and Eastern-leaning sounds of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, I attribute them to having this shared history,” he added.
ElSaffar, a composer with a classical background, said that when he’s composing music he tries to “follow the sound,” but as the compositional process develops, he begins to think more about how to orchestrate the music.
“I become aware of different emotions or different feelings that went into it and experiences,” he said. “It might be a particular conversation I’ve had with somebody or a feeling I’ve had about the condition of the world. It’s varied. It’s almost like they become a reflection of my daily experience.”
In addition to playing the trumpet, ElSaffar sings and plays the santur, a Middle Eastern instrument similar to a hammered dulcimer.
When performing music live, ElSaffar said he and members of his ensemble try to play as “honest and genuine as we can,” in following inspiration and the constant musical conversation of improvisation.
“There are certain situations where it’s the hall or the mood or the feeling,” he said. “It might be subdued one night. It might be reflective. It might be more ethereal one night. Another night the same repertoire could come off as fiery and full of energy and sparks. It can be different every time. That’s one of the beautiful things about improvised music — we set structures and room for each performance to be quite different.”
Although three-time Grammy and Tony award winner Dee Dee Bridgewater won’t be performing jazz at UMass Amherst next week, she has been performing as a jazz vocalist since the 1960s. With her nine-piece “Soulphony” — a vintage R&B lineup featuring electric guitar, bass, drums, piano, backing female vocalists, saxophone, and trumpet — Bridgewater aims to recapture the sounds of her youth in Memphis, Tennessee with blues, R&B, and soul classics.
Her show takes place Saturday, Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Concert Hall.
Her latest record, “Memphis … Yes, I’m Ready,” was released in 2017 and features classic blues tunes such as “Hound Dog,” made famous by Elvis Presley, but originally recorded by blues legend ‘Big Mama’ Thornton in 1952.
“It was a kind of delicate balance because I was trying to keep the original in mind, at the same time doing a more updated version,” Bridgewater said. “The goal at the same time was to pay tribute to the artist that did the original recording.”
Some of her favorite songs to perform live are “I Can’t Get Next to You” by The Temptations and “The Thrill is Gone,” which became a major blues hit when B.B. King recorded his version of the song in 1970; it was originally recorded by West Coast blues musicians Roy Hawkins and Rick Darnell in the 1950s.
At the FAC, Bridgewater will perform tunes from her latest album as well as songs that pay tribute to legendary soul singer Aretha Franklin, who died Aug. 16.
“I think it’s fitting because she was born in Memphis, like I, and grew up in Michigan, like I, and her music was part of the soundtrack to my life,” Bridgewater said. “I didn’t know her well personally, but I did know her and did some events with her. I was part of the artists who were asked to do a musical tribute to honor her that was held on August 31 at Chene Park” in Detroit, Michigan.
She said she also attended Franklin’s funeral — an emotional experience that allowed her to pay tribute to one of her musical idols.
“I was very honored to be asked to be part of the celebration,” she said. “I really didn’t know that I was on her radar. According to the family member who contacted me, I was one of her favorite singers. I didn’t know that. So, that’s beautiful.”
Bridgewater said she thinks jazz music continues to move forward and progress as an art form.
“It’s opening up the music so it can be appreciated by a larger audience,” she said. “This music I’m doing is not jazz at all, but it is bringing jazz listeners to the music and for a lot of my listeners, they’re in my age group, so it’s kind of a throwback for them. And then for a lot of younger people that come to my shows, it’s a kind of ear-opener for them … It’s kind of been a blessing in that way.”
Chris Goudreau can be reached at cgoudreau@gazettenet.com.
For more information about the Jazz Flight series and other events at UMass Amherst’s Fine Arts Center, visit https://fac.umass.edu/Online/default.asp.