Summer Music, by George Grella

The good news is, it looks like summertime, which is not just a box on the calendar but a whole experience here in New York. It can seem like a struggle, the heat and humidity and waiting for the subway in a stuffy station. But after last summer’s unease, dread, anger, frustration, outraged energy—because Black Lives Matter and if you love jazz they have always mattered—all bottled up in the inevitable waiting for something to break—the election, the vaccine trials—that wait is just another sign of normality. And normality is something we’ve been hoping to embrace, not just endure.

Summertime is a great jazz time. “Summertime” is the anthem, but I always hear “Easy Living” as a song of summer, every summer, not just the payola prepared bubble gum chewed up and spat out by all the former fraternity and sorority pledges crowded into Murray Hill: “Living for you / It’s easy to live when you’re in love / And I’m so in love / There’s nothing in life but you” (Leo Robin & Ralph Rainger). I’ve maybe listened to guitarist Grant Green’s “Idle Moments,” from his Blue Note album of the same title, with tenor player Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Duke Pearson playing piano, Bob Cranshaw, bass, and drummer Al Harewood, more than any single track (at least right up there with everything off of Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!I), and when the weather gets hot, I put it on all the time. The elegant, languid tempo, the mood that’s relaxed but substantial, always feel to me like the sound of a siesta in the middle of the afternoon, of a gimlet before dinner. It’s cool and hot at the same time, and that’s jazz.

Summertime means outdoor music, and that always means jazz musicians in the parks, on the Jazzmobile, on festival stages. There are the formal set ups in the bandshells, and part of normality is that there looks to be plenty of music in public places again this summer. But hit Central Park and especially Washington Square Park, and you’re going to run into dozens of the fine musicians who live in this city. It’s worth repeating that the talent pool here is deeper than anywhere in the world in terms of jazz, and the kind of dedication and need to play that motivates someone to be a jazz musician means that on pretty much any afternoon you’re going to have the type of random experiences I’ve had recently in Washington Square: the funky quartet Flow Mingos, Eyal Vilner’s big band swinging dancers on the west side of the park, and a regular assortment of trios and quartets playing high level hard bop and modern jazz.

That’s the fabric of public life in New York City, and jazz has been a prominent part of that fabric for 100 years. I’ve never done a formal survey, but when I run into groups playing music in public, 80% of the time it’s a jazz combo. That’s the sound of the city, that’s the sound of summer. People will be out, and so will the musicians.

In a more formal sense, the news is great. As of late May, we know Celebrate Brooklyn will be producing live music at the Prospect Park Bandshell, and Summerstages will be back in Central Park and other locations around the city. There’s no schedule details yet for Celebrate Brooklyn, and a lot of open dates for Summerstage, but for the latter you can already buy tickets to George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic (June 27) and Galactic (July 11), and the late summer Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is already being prepared, with August 28 and 29 staked out in Marcus Garvey Park. As will likely be the norm everywhere in New York, at least into the fall, ticket-holders will have to show a recent negative COVID-19 PCR test, or else proof of full vaccination. Get yer shots and yer Excelsior Passes, people.

The Vision Festival (artsforart.org) is also going to be back for it’s 25th season, and this year it’s going to combine indoor, in-person shows at Pioneer Works, outdoor, in-person performances at The Clemente, and remote/virtual events. The festival will run from July 22 through July 31, and there has clearly been a lot of planning put into this, as the details are plentiful and exciting. There will be performances from the veteran core at the center of the Vision Fest/Arts for Art community, including the great and venerable William Parker, Dave Sewelson, Matthew Shipp, and Cooper-Moore, and exciting younger musicians like Ava Mendoza and Luke Stewart )(masks will be required at Pioneer Works and seating will be socially distanced).

The festival always honors a singular figure from the scene, and this year that’s Amina Claudine Myers. Myers more than deserves this recognition for her decades of keyboard work—she’s a wonderful organist and will play the Hammond B3 along with bassist Jerome Harris and drummer Reggie Nicholson—and audiences will get a real treat from the scheduled performance of her Generation IV vocal quartet. With this group, Myers weaves jazz together with old, old gospel roots. This is something, the pre-jazz musics that went into the development of jazz, that’s easy to read about but almost impossible to hear, mainly because most of the music dates from before the era of sound recordings. Myers learned concept is a beautiful revivifying of historical memory, the music is soulful and deeply creative, and wears that last lightly, delivering meaning under the guise of pleasure. This should be one of those performances that will stick in the memory for years to come.

Outdoors at The Clemente, the talent on tap is so exceptional that there’s not going to be any reason to find your way to Newport or Monterey later in the summer, even if you do have the time and the cash: there’s a trio called ElectroFLUTTER with improvising vocalist Fay Victor, the great flutist Nicole Mitchell, and the incredible bass player Jamaaladeem Tacuma; drummer Pheeroan akLaff leads his Liberation Unit with pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson; James Blood Ulmer’s ODYSSEY trio is playing; so is the James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Oliver Lake’s Trio 3 plus a promised “special guest,” jaimie branch’s fly or die; John Zorn is playing a solo set, the David Murray Octet Revival is appearing, Fred Moten is reading his poetry accompanied by bassist Brandon Lopez and drummer Gerald Cleaver…that’s not even half the total lineup for the festival. On paper, it doesn’t just look like jazz is just going to be making a return this summer, but that it’s going to explode. I had a suspicion things were going to be like this, but the Vision Festival looks to be exceeding expectations by orders of magnitude.

If you’re like me and you really just can’t wait any longer, try and get tickets to two June 17 outdoor, socially distanced sets from guitarist Wayne Krantz, hosted by Hometown BBQ at their Industry City location (https://sites.google.com/view/waynekrantztriojune17). Krantz will be playing in a trio with bassist Evan Marien and drummer Josh Dion. Krantz is a true guitar hero in the modest manner of being a complex, funky player, not just a wailer. He used to hold down the fort frequently at 55 Bar, one of the places we lost to the effects of the pandemic and our decadent economic system (on the bar’s Facebook page, Krantz’ July 19, 2019 gig is the most recent one listed). Cities need dive bars where you can go hear great jazz, rock, and blues guitarists play, not just on the jukebox, and as much as musical life seems headed back this summer, this loss can’t be replaced. Pick one up for Krantz and pour one out for 55.