The godfather of music festivals sought out the music the place it lives
A pioneer of the fashionable music pageant, George Wein co-founded the Newport Jazz and Newport People festivals and helped launch the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Pageant. He died Sept. 13 at 95.
Jonathan Chimene/WBGO
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Jonathan Chimene/WBGO
A pioneer of the fashionable music pageant, George Wein co-founded the Newport Jazz and Newport People festivals and helped launch the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Pageant. He died Sept. 13 at 95.
Jonathan Chimene/WBGO
There are innumerable pictures of George Wein on the Newport Jazz Pageant, the groundbreaking occasion he co-founded in 1954 and stored producing, in hands-on or emeritus trend, till his loss of life final month at 95. One in all my favorites, by David Redfern, exhibits solely a sliver of his face. Taken on July 5, 1969, it finds Wein standing within the wings behind Miles Davis, who’s sporting bug-eye sun shades and a denim leisure go well with with bell bottoms. Each males are watching the stage, the place Sly & the Household Stone are throwing down outdoors the body. A trumpet dangles from Davis’ left hand; along with his proper, he is leaning towards a stage divider. Wein, although principally obscured by that outstretched arm, communicates loads within the picture. Hand on his hip, gaze fastened, he is taking within the set with a palpable, fretful alertness.
I do know that look. I’ve seen it in lots of variations, from a number of angles, since I first met Wein greater than 22 years in the past. As co-author of his autobiography, Myself Amongst Others: A Life in Music, I additionally know the tempest of considerations on his thoughts at this second, as Sly is beginning to urge the group right into a hazardous frenzy. A producer’s compulsion for conserving the present working easily, safely and on time. An impresario’s twin obligation to his viewers and his establishment, which are not all the time conveniently aligned. A lifelong jazz lover’s funding within the artwork type and the place it could be headed — although underneath the circumstances, that might have ranked a distant third.
Miles Davis and a simply barely seen George Wein stageside on the Newport Jazz Pageant in July 1969.
David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Pictures
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David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Pictures
All through his storied seven-decade profession, Wein was typically hailed as the person who set the large stage, whether or not that be Newport Jazz, Newport People, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Pageant, or an assortment of different fêtes and touring packages all over the world. He was additionally celebrated for his shut proximity to so many iconic figures, an thought conveyed by the title of his guide, which our writer insisted on towards his protestations.
However once I take into consideration his relationship to the music, I am going to all the time bear in mind George (and let’s use his first identify from this level ahead) pursuing epiphanies and constructing connections on a distinctly human scale. He actually did care about the place jazz was headed, and he understood that the reply may typically be discovered at floor stage — or additional down, the place a tangled root system was onerous at work drawing vitamins from all method of sources.
I used to be 22, broke however hopeful, once I first met George a number of months after I moved to New York Metropolis in 1999. He’d been struggling on his guide undertaking with a small succession of famous writers who could not commit totally to the duty. I used to be not a famous author, however I would despatched some photocopied clips to his firm, Pageant Productions, and between that and an opportunity endorsement from a mutual acquaintance, George determined it was value a shot. For the following three years, I used to be a fixture by his facet: in his high-rise condo on the Higher East Facet; at his brownstone workplace on the Higher West; on the houses he and his sensible spouse, Joyce, had made in Connecticut and the South of France. Over piles of interview transcripts and plenty of bottles of Bordeaux, we wrestled the sprawl of his life and profession into manuscript type, having our share of aesthetic arguments alongside the best way. Regularly, I discovered methods to write in his voice.
Nate Chinen with Wein at a 2003 signing for the memoir Myself Amongst Others: A Life in Music.
Alan Nahigian
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Alan Nahigian
Nate Chinen with Wein at a 2003 signing for the memoir Myself Amongst Others: A Life in Music.
Alan Nahigian
On the time, George was preoccupied with a public narrative about his festivals, and specifically the marquee occasions held in Newport and New York — a notion that they have been bloated, company affairs more and more out of contact with the lifeblood of the music. He was nonetheless smarting from a 1996 New York Occasions piece whose headline, “A New Champion in City,” referred to Michael Dorf, founding father of the Knitting Manufacturing facility and its What Is Jazz? Pageant. The informal cruelty of the article, which pegged George as a “wizened head” and his firm as an empire deserving of decline, partially obscured a official level: {that a} main pageant bears some accountability in nurturing the broader musical ecology. And George noticed via the crude oppositional framing, as Dorf remembered simply after his passing, in a submit on LinkedIn: “Fairly than run me out of city, he mentored me as a competitor, as he did his many younger aspiring producers who labored with him who’ve gone off to create music across the globe.”
Not lengthy after we met, George took me up on an invite to see Masada, the avant-klezmer quartet led by alto saxophonist and composer John Zorn. This was emphatically a Knitting Manufacturing facility band — and Tonic, the Decrease East Facet membership the place they have been enjoying, had the identical repute as an outpost for rugged iconoclasm. George had by no means ventured down there. I used to be an everyday, however I would by no means rolled as much as the spot in a black Mercedes, as I did with him that evening. The viewers was sitting on the concrete ground; he was granted the privilege of a steel folding chair. And since George had a repute for musical conservatism, I used to be thrilled by his glowing response to the present.
He promptly booked Masada on the following Newport Jazz Pageant — although their set there, wedged between incongruous acts on the primary stage, did not spark in the identical means. “It made no sense in any way,” Zorn advised me not too long ago. “And as we acquired offstage, George was like, ‘Hey, did you join with the viewers?’ And I stated no. You understand, it is like they simply did not get it.” On this, George noticed a puzzle to be solved. 4 years later, after the pageant had added a stage inside Fort Adams, Zorn was given the keys to a whole bloc of programming, presenting 9 teams underneath the Masada banner to a packed, elated crowd. The experiment labored, George proudly mirrored, as a result of Zorn had been given the liberty to create his personal house and environment inside the pageant body. For Zorn, who maintained a fond friendship with him over time, this was in line with his character. “George had an open thoughts,” he says, “and that is not all the time true of people that placed on jazz festivals.”
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George’s first foray as a presenter was Storyville, a Boston jazz membership he ran all through the Fifties. And he by no means misplaced the urge for food for experiencing stay music in a small room. By the point we met, he was already strolling with a cane, and it might be a problem to barter the steep passages main up or down right into a membership. On the Village Vanguard, he’d complain a couple of handrail that ran flush towards the stairwell, making it onerous to get a correct grip as he gingerly made his means down the steps. However even in his 90s, he was undeterred, making it a degree to exit a number of instances per week, in the hunt for a sound that spoke to him. And at his invitation, a gentle stream of musicians used to cease by the condo, the place they’d play in his salon-like front room and get to know one another on private phrases.
His philanthropic work to help the scene consists of not solely the Newport Festivals Basis’s personal packages but additionally a number of years’ value of commissions granted via the Joyce and George T. Wein Form of Jazz Sequence at Carnegie Corridor. And whereas he by no means sought credit score for it, George stepped in a number of instances to save lots of The Jazz Gallery, an important nonprofit efficiency house in New York, from the brink of economic spoil. “He actually put his cash the place his mouth was,” Hank O’Neal, chairman of the board at The Jazz Gallery, remembers. “And he wished to make sure it made a distinction for a performing musician.” As a longtime board member at Jazz at Lincoln Heart and Carnegie Corridor, George understood {that a} present of the identical quantity to these establishments could be welcome however not pivotal. If he may preserve the Gallery alive, that was an actual influence with lasting implications for the artwork type and its practitioners.
His spirit will stay on in these locations, in direct or unseen methods. The jazz and folks festivals at Newport, overseen by govt director Jay Candy, are solely the obvious manifestation. Rio Sakairi, creative director of The Jazz Gallery, is among the many figures George admired and championed, and she or he carries on his legacy. And Deborah Gordon, proprietor of The Village Vanguard, not too long ago handed alongside a tip for my subsequent go to to the membership. “Cease for a second in your means down the steps,” she wrote in an e mail. “In your left facet, perhaps about six steps down, really feel for a bit wedge between the wall and the railing. We put it there for George when his fingers have been getting caught on his means downstairs. So, I typically consider him.”
The day after he died, I known as Bruce Gordon — no relation to Deborah, however one in every of George’s closest associates, and his successor as board chair of the Newport Festivals Basis. “George had this insatiable curiosity for uncovering rising artists,” he stated. “At Newport and his different festivals, he definitely wished to draw the headliners — the large names that, frankly, would get folks to return. However he was equally dedicated to mixing these massive names with rising artists and presenting them to giant audiences. So he took nice pleasure in going out and listening to somebody that almost all people did not know. As soon as he heard somebody and thought that they had a future, I am undecided if there was something that excited him extra.”
Jon Batiste was among the many performers at a memorial occasion held at New York’s Metropolis Vineyard on Oct. 3, Wein’s birthday.
Nina Westervelt/Newport Festivals Basis
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Nina Westervelt/Newport Festivals Basis
Bruce Gordon served as grasp of ceremonies at a memorial for George this previous Sunday, which might have been his 96th birthday. Held on the New York flagship of Metropolis Vineyard, a constellation of venues owned by Dorf, the night unfolded with all the heat and buoyancy George would have insisted upon. There have been touching toasts from Radhika and Nalini Jones, who actually grew up within the Pageant Productions household; Dr. Glory Van Scott, his loving companion of greater than a decade; Wynton Marsalis, creative director of Jazz at Lincoln Heart, and a longtime good friend; and Quint Davis, who developed Jazz Fest right into a juggernaut with George’s counsel. One other former protégé, Darlene Chan, produced the night, which featured profitable performances by a few of the artists George inspired over time — together with singer Cécile McLorin Salvant; pianists Michel Camilo, Hiromi, Jon Batiste and Christian Sands; saxophonists Lew Tabackin and Branford Marsalis; and trumpeters Jon Faddis and Randy Brecker. Serving as musical director was Christian McBride, the virtuoso bassist (and Jazz Night time in America host) handpicked by George to take the helm as creative director of the Newport Jazz Pageant.
McBride had additionally performed with clarinetist Anat Cohen, one other longtime favourite, graveside at Woodlawn Cemetery within the Bronx final month, when George was laid to relaxation beside Joyce, who died in 2005. Their plot is adjoining to the one for the legendary drummer Max Roach, and never removed from the gravesites for Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. In his guide, George devoted standalone chapters to Miles and Duke, together with Thelonious Monk. He did so not solely due to their genius, however as a result of he knew them as folks, and his story was indirectly fatefully entwined with theirs. One of many causes I like that David Redfern {photograph} is that I do know the invisible historical past behind the picture: the truth that 14 years earlier, Miles had revitalized his profession and landed his report deal on the power of a efficiency on the Newport stage. The truth that he had as soon as been an rising expertise, too.
A number of days after George died, I acquired into my automotive, turned the important thing within the ignition and heard his voice. It was a rebroadcast of an interview with Terry Gross on Recent Air in 2003, when the guide was simply out. They have been wrapping up the dialog, and Gross requested whether or not it ever felt lonely to have outlived so lots of the musicians he had identified — the “others” in Myself Amongst Others, because it have been.
George countered that it wasn’t lonely, although he did get emotional. “I’ve had the nice fortune to have performed with and labored with so many great gamers,” he stated. “They usually discuss to me, and I get a wonderful feeling about it, not a tragic feeling. It is a wonderful feeling that I knew these folks and was near them. They usually have been a part of my life. And perhaps I used to be a part of their lives.”
