Greg Stepanich

Picking up the jazz flag

It occurred to me this week that we Post critics rarely talk about jazz, so I'm taking it on myself to pick up the jazz flag and do that in this blog from time to time.
I did a good bit of jazz playing in high school, less so in college, but I've got a decent acquaintance with this native American art form, and I'll keep my eyes open for some good local jazz and write about it when I can.
Longer-time residents of this area will be aware that in the early 1990s, this was a better place to live when it came to cultural institutions. Back then, The Miami Herald still had Tropic magazine (which Sharon and I battled over each weekend), Mizner Park still had Liberties bookstore (very important before Borders and Barnes & Noble arrived), the Florida Philharmonic was doing first-rate Mahler (the orchestra's recording of the First Symphony, with the Blumine movement, is still my favorite), and Miami's WTMI was still an excellent classical and jazz station.
Without getting into all the things I miss about WTMI, for present purposes I'll note that I'd drive home many a night from my newspaper job and catch China Valles' Jazz Thing in the wee hours. The Maj talked a lot about all the jazz that was going on around here, and over the years I caught some local shows, including a great set or two from Dr. Lonnie Johnson down on Las Olas. I even called the Purveyor of Swirls once around 2 in the morning to thank him for playing a new CD by the tenor saxophonist Don Braden; I'd played with Don when he was an 18-year-old Harvard kid and in the band for an original musical I was helping out with at the Harvard Law School.
All of us were really impressed with Don's talent, and I was delighted to hear he'd gone on to get a band together and start doing some records. It was a joy to talk to China about the record and to thank him for keeping the jazz flame alive.
But that was then, and things are not so good now. I still continue to hope that someone will go ahead and fund, at a loss, a great arts station here that features classical and jazz. Probably we'll all have to got to satellite radio to get it, though.
In my quest for jazz, I started this past weekend close to home, dropping in at Florida Atlantic University on Saturday for about half of a concert by the FAU Jazz Band (I got the starting time wrong). Still, what I heard was some fine playing, particularly from tenor saxophonist Jeff Samuels, who had a big, confident sound for Matt Harris' Chop Suey; the young Peter Fernandez's alto solo in Dizzy Gillespie's Manteca, which started a little rough, but in which the latter half was dominated by a repeated, climbing figure that had a compelling logic and set up the next soloist admirably. Good things, too, from pianist Mauricio Garcia.
Wish I'd heard more of the concert, but I heard enough to make me want to return for another evening with Neal Bonsanti's band.
This also is the time of year in which there are any number of musical performances in venues from schools to churches by other amateur and professional groups as the holiday season gets under a full head of steam. It's not fair to hold a lot of these concerts to the same standard as the professionals, but still there are noteworthy programs that say interesting things about what their organizers think will engage local audiences.
Choosing at random this past Sunday — and because I live in Delray Beach — I stopped in at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in my town for a concert by the church choir and soloists consisting of a Handel organ concerto, a Schubert psalm setting, a Magnificat attributed to Pergolesi (but actually probably by Francesco Durante), and a true rarity, the original nonet version of Brahms' First Serenade.
FAU's Diana Akers gave a good account of the Op. 7, No. 3, Handel concerto as its organ soloist, and Edward Pierson sang with real authority in the Pergolesi/Durante. The Brahms was the centerpiece of the afternoon (four of the six movements were programmed), and while echoes of the familiar orchestral version perhaps showed why the composer felt it needed a broader canvas, the performance offered an unusual chance for listeners to hear how the 24-year-old Brahms was feeling his way toward his pastoral style and tackling the organizational challenges of a large instrumental work.
Hats off to Stuart Gardner for assembling this ambitious program, which proved to be a good way to pass a late fall Sunday afternoon.

Booknotes: Went to Levenger in Delray, also on Sunday afternoon, and caught some of the question-and-answer session with Anthony Bourdain, the celebrated chef-auteur whose Kitchen Confidential is a popular read around my house. Bourdain was there to inaugurate the arrival of Mitch Kaplan's Books & Books at Levenger. A quick browse through the small but deep selection of books now available there was heartening (though I'll still make pilgrimages down to Coral Gables to check out the original store).
And from the independents to the chains: Borders Books & Music has made its selection of nominees for its Original Voices Awards, and I was happy to see that one of them was David Bezmogis, a native of Soviet Latvia who moved to Toronto as a child. I reviewed his debut collection of short stories, Natasha, for The Post, and found it to be a beautifully crafted volume of tales built around a young man's search for identity. I'm looking forward to his next work with anticipation, and I recommend Natasha heartily.