Category : diary

Girona, Spain Jazz Fest

I gotta say it again… Here’s another astounding breathtaking setting for music and whatever else strikes your fancy. Girona is a seaside town with lots of homes on the sides of the hills that slope to the sea, the Mediterranean. This show day morning is gorgeous, and sunny, and happy outside, with a great big evergreen out my window, and beyond that was the Mediterranean that goes on and on forever.

I wouldn’t have expected the setting of the concert venue to be even more beautiful. It was sandwiched between a cliff and a harbor, where private fishing boats and cruisers sparkle in the setting sun, gently rocking up and down with the soft ebb of the tide. These places on the continent where we play, Roman ruins, and natural amphitheaters like this one at the sea, and castles, are just a knockout for us Americans visiting places like Spain where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella came up with some money and ships to sponsor Christopher Columbus’s venture to the edge of the world. To think that many people still believed that such a trip would result in falling off the edge of the world! He didn’t fall off, he landed in America. And here we are.

This is a permanent venue for this jazz festival made of wood and concrete and this is the 51^st anniversary of this festival here in Girona. The above says so much about the widespread international love for this really uniquely American art form with slavery at its roots that blossomed into a lotus and magnolia. The lotus flower only grows in the swamp. All Americans should walk tall with pride about this. There are still places in the world today where certain music is banned and cannot be played. Wonderfully, R&B and Rock & Roll came out of those wonderful humble jazz roots.

We huddle backstage and give thanks for this day, this visit, this work, this little family, and this audience, and we hit it… Me and Larry together.

Wow! POLITE! Cool and light. OK! Room to grow! Long show. The band is cooking good, and my smile grows as I see spontaneous smiles out there.  John and Chris play their butts off, and give ‘em plenty to think about. I talked about the list of great bass players throughout history and ended with Paul McCartney and Sting and Larry Graham. I started with Paul Chambers and Ray Brown, and ran the gamut all the way down through Stanley Clarke and Jaco. That was fun. Only three of those guys sing, but none of them like Chris Walker… Here he comes. Hold on to your fedoras.

I tell them John Calderon is my Segovia, my Julian Bream, my Laurindo Almeida, my Eric Clapton, my Ted Nugent. THAT got his attention… Ted Nugent. You should have seen him crack up, his eyebrows almost went up above his hairline.

I try out my new Elvin Jones vocal percussion as I walk toward Mark and his drum kit, and soon we’re skippin’ and poppin’ through Scootchabooty.

Chris and I have found a new front for an old favorite Take Five, and it’s a winner. And, fantastically, Mark is droppin’ their jaws with his little “Church Lady” vocal in the middle of his drum solo. Even though there was a “moat” between us and the first row, I could see bright smiles and nodding rocking heads and shoulders with some good solid hand-clapping, two and four throughout the night.

We’re into encores now, and I pick up the stomping of feet. And out we go again. I took a moment and thanked them for their longtime love of jazz and enthusiastic response. Right! “This is not Mozart. We laugh and dance, and have some fun… I’m gonna go over here with Larry and have some more fun.” We do that for a minute, and then the band reappears, and we pound out our closers and goodnights.

Thanks, Girona, can’t wait to see your shining sea again,

Al

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Marciac, France

I’ve been looking forward to this return since our first visit here in 2011, when Dianne Reeves was on the bill. That first trip into this French countryside has such a special place in my heart, so I did not want to risk muddling those memories and feelings. Last time I saw fields of sunflowers looking like an elevated golden carpet. Then a barn wall 40 feet tall and 60 feet wide that had a painting of Le Petit Prince, a very famous children’s book from many years ago written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. For adults, really. Jon Hendricks summarized, “And now I know the whole world is filled with roses. One rose alone is mine.”

Bernard Dulau, my long-time promoter and friend, is here and rides with us to soundcheck and we look at each other and laugh and smile and chuckle as we both remember the two of us in the late 1970s. He was a tall, skinny kid working for Francis Dreyfus, my very first French promoter. He presented me to this loyal French audience first in a dance club/restaurant Elysée Matignon, a Yannick Noah hangout with lots of young international fashion models. Oh, it was deep. And from there to Salle Pleyel with Manhattan Transfer. And then on and on and on in France, including Bercy and The Olympia.

Bernard grew into a wonderful young promoter in his own rite taking care of Marcus Miller, and David Sanborn, and a whole bunch of international jazz people. When we arrived, he introduced me to a French journalist and writer born in Benin named Farrah. I could feel her heart immediately.   She’s a serious jazzer and continuously points toward whatever contribution I’ve made there. She was good friends with the late great Claude Nougaro, and still visits with Claude’s wife. She says they spent hours listening to Al Jarreau. Claude was something quite special. He managed to bring serious French poetry to jazz and jazzers to French Poetry / philosophy. That’s huge. It would be like Robert Frost bringing poetry scholars to jazz and serious jazzers finding Robert Frost. He and I did some television together way back when. Farrah says something very special is planned in memory of Claude in a couple years, and I say, “I’ll be there!”

Time for soundcheck! We head for the stage with a chorus of “Bon Jour!” “Bon Jour!” all around. We’re here and happy and grateful, no attitude. The tent is about 50 yards wide, 150 yards long, pitched center and all white. It feels like an improvised church. We quickly reviewed the things we wanted to remember for tonight, then go and relax until our 11pm start. Curtis Stigers opens for us, along with his band playing an acoustic quartet approach. Curtis sings real good, controlled and unpretentious. He’s a beautiful listen for anyone, and he runs the gamut from the interesting and unknown to the well-known. I told him we should do this again.

Larry and I begin with a gentle approach. I really love the thank you to the audience that is suggested in “Your Song.” They’ve been hearing my version of that for 36 years. It began our friendship. They lean in closer as the evening goes along. After that, we’re sockin’ ‘em one moment then huggin’ ‘em the next. I can hear the unspoken, “Oh, they’re gonna do Spain!” as Calderon leads them along with acoustic flamenco. I can hear somebody in the back of my head saying, “That’s right, Al. Take ‘em on a journey.” At some point down toward the end there, I even said to them in a loud voice, “Everything. Of course. Everything.” Everything I’ve got, they got it.

So, Waltz For Debby and Summertime show up. The jazzers out there now are nodding their heads up and down in affirmative. We’re running the gamut and so we come back out and do After All. They applaud and yell vocal shouts at the start of After All. A Cappella Puddit, and Boogie Down, and the night is near saturation. It’s time to go home. Everybody comes down front, and we stand arms over each others’ shoulders, and face the audience in thanks and love, and we take a deep bow.

As we leave the stage, guests and staff are quietly grinning and smiling with controlled excitement. My big mouth says a loud, “Thank you, merci!” and then I notice a square-ish area on the ground that’s around 7 feet by 5 feet, and there’s a lady asking me to sign it, please (in French). Only then do I notice that it is an oil painting on canvas, and it’s modernistic with enough realism in it to recognize, “That’s me!” And, “There’s Joe with his goatee. And there’s John with his guitar! And there’s Chris! There’s Larry! There’s Mark!” You have to look for a moment to realize, we are all there. It’s a great piece of work, and it’s going to be sold at auction for charity. The artist says she manages to do one of these for every night of the festival. I am impressed.

Young Bernard Dulau is matching me step for step now, and grinning like a proud papa. This is his baby. The whole association is magical. Riding back to the hotel, he’s quietly smiling. The air crackles with electricity. We’re gonna do this again.

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Oristano, Sardinia, Italy

Sardinia, Italy is a small island north of Sicicily and a lot like it. By contrast, Rome is quick and crowded and busy. Here it’s like a slow, relaxed Southern town in Georgia. It’s an hour ride from the airport to the Oristano hotel, which was delightfully quiet. But we hoped real hard that there were people to play to. There are, and we do! The weather is gorgeous and sunny, and I do an AM walk in a nearby park with gray-haired seniors and squirmy toddlers.

We got a fabulous surprise at soundcheck. We’ll be playing at an active Cathedral Seminary courtyard. In the Seminary, there are 14 young men who are being trained and schooled for the priesthood. I spoke to a couple of nuns in the traditional habit, long dresses and head dress.

What a setting! Our dressing rooms are in a 300 year old wing and I wish I had asked about its use. It had cross-vaulted ceilings and lots of marble… Great for Gregorian Chants. Wow! At soundcheck, we see a mom, dad and their beautiful young daughter.  So shy but so curious and interested as she looks from one instrument to the next. We all know that this must be a day for her to remember.  We wave and smile and laugh to her.  Alessandra and mother Gabriella and dad Alberto.  You can tell, it’s happening for them, too. We are not just videos of people singing onstage, unhearing unthinking unfeeling.

Patrick and I do our regular old normal preps for show in this unbelievable rectory makeshift dressing room… Serious love went into the decorating, thick old tables and hand-painted ceiling art. OK, time to play! We’re outside where it’s always fun and loose, but the entire audience is seated like a concert hall, with about 3 meters from the stage to the front row.  But we bridged the gap. We made a serious special reach for them, and they felt it.

What a night! The concert’s over and we’re back in the dressing room, and I’m packing up finding it hard to leave. I keep finding one reason after another to linger a little longer. We’re not perfect as human beings and we make a lot of mistakes, and do a lot of bad things. But this is something like Man doing the best stuff he can.

Thank you, Oristano, thank you, Sardinia!

See you in France!

-Al

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St. Moritz, Switzerland

GRATITUDE! THANKFULNESS AND GRATITUDE!

This attitude and state of mind deserves several hard-bound volumes. They exist if you search. There are some successful and fabulously wealthy and smart people who point to gratitude as the cause… The doorway and pathway to their great fortune. It’s about counting your blessings and being grateful, and in enumerating the things your grateful for. That allows freedom from negativity, and is a fertile field for more blessings.

The band and I talk about being chosen and blessed with this magic carpet called music… Pause… I’m 73 and still getting to do it. Thank you, dear Father, thank you dear God. I helped only by seeing it and feeling it and dreaming it and going for it.

The Swiss really love jazz. Today! They listen to it, play it, and festival it. The Montreux Jazz Festival is Swiss. Thank you to the late Claude Nobs. The St. Moritz Festival da Jazz is much smaller, and really kind of private and intimate, taking place at a 200-seat club that goes by the crazy name “Dracula.” I asked Rolf, the club’s owner and one of the original founders: How did that name come to be? Well. I mentioned it early on in the show, and announced that I’d ask him come to the mic and tell everyone. “You take your time, and come up with a real good lie.” Everyone laughed, and looked forward to that moment, which I followed through on. The real story is: His friends were a group of crazy bobsled Olympic dudes who would sled all night long, even infamously in a casket. The insanity of all this is part of the charm and allure.

No stage. Same level as the audience. The front row was full of grown men, very successful in their business lives, sitting cross-legged like kids at summer camp, smiling and grinning along with their wives and children, all sharing the same childlike excitement. Beyond that front row were red square stools in more rows extending to the back of the room, only 20 feet away. They bumped and banged into Joe Turano’s elbows as he played keyboards and sax. Mark, our drummer, sat in the fireplace. He couldn’t lean back. His shoulders touched the mantle. I say it again… He was sitting in the fireplace. They bumped into Larry’s back on my right. This was a throwback place.

A throwback to the origins and environments where this music was born. This is The Blue Note, The Village Vanguard, and Jazz Workshop. (Smoky, in those days.) How fun. And no air conditioning.

I’ll tell you, we could’ve played Mary Had A Little Lamb, or the Too Fat Polka. These people were in such wonderful anticipation and excitement about this little happening. They’ve been listening to my music since 1975!  They and the whole European community have given Jazz a wonderful second home. They love it, they play it, they festival it. In this same tiny building on the side of a mountain sandwiched between a golf course and the world’s first bobsled run, many of my friends and colleagues are also on the bill: David Sanborn, Joe Sample and Randy Crawford, the fabulous Ute Lemper, The Brecker Brothers Experience—And more European jazzers than you can shake a rolled up Downbeat Magazine at.

The whole night was full of unwritten ad libbed improvisations, and funny pitter-patter moments with the audience. After we said goodnight, we got called back for an encore. When the entire band came down front to sing Puddit, we all sang to a young family, sitting on the floor in the front, multiplying the intimacy. How could that be? It did.

We left the stage again, and got called back for another encore—The set was already long, and we were pressed for time, and our tour manager was trying to get us on the bus for an overnight drive.  And, and, and… BUT. I forget all about that when I’m on stage. Larry and I were into a low and slow easy does it version of Summertime, when I felt the sudden urge to pull up a classic tune: A mashup of Agua De Beber and Mas Que Nada= Agua Mas! Little did I know that the band was already in the dressing room. It started off just Larry and me, with Turano ready on the spot. Then John came back in with his guitar. Then Chris with his bass—John was playing the shekere to give some percussion feel in between his guitar parts—Where was Mark? Chris was playing bass with his right hand, a shaker egg with his left, and Mark’s hi-hat with his foot. 3 minutes into the song, Mark shows up to rocket propel the song over the top. I didn’t learn til later that he was already changing getting ready for the bus. Caught with his trousers down! It was almost like we planned it that way, and the audience loved it.

The band had a wonderful night and wonderful time, and we all hated to go. But we’re due in Italy in 15 hours. We better get going!

Thanks, St. Moritz. Thanks Christian and Rolf. And Rebecca! And the fabulous Kulm Hotel.

Love, Al

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George Is Playin’… Just Around the Corner

I’m late with this, and so you probably know by now that George has moved on and is becoming.  And this is a description that is more than just poetic.

Briefly, our word “death” implies the end of a line that is a segment, with a beginning on the left and stretching to the right, and ending. Our religious notions teach that it’s more than this. But I think there’s too much finality implied. George came here from the angel realm and sphere and played and walked and loved with all his angel’s heart while he was with us, and now he’s returned to the angels’ realm and sphere where if he never plays another audible note out there, we must still conclude that what he played and did not only echoes in eternity because no sound is lost, but because he directly touched other hearts and spiritual beings in a way that their eternal echoes have been made more beautiful.

I fell in love with San Francisco for many reasons but one of the most important was that there was a music coming out of the San Francisco Bay Area, less than 65 square miles, that was magical and mystical and spiritual and changing the world in which we all lived… Music! So, I put the degree in rehabilitation under my arm, grabbed my first wife’s hand, and made the journey to the Bay Area with Les Czimber, Hungarian gypsy piano player, colleague of Django Reinhardt. With him, I learned how to be a pretty solid ‘stand-there-with-a-trio’ Jazz singer. In fact, there’s a record from almost 2 years before that called “The Masquerade Is Over” — Satin Doll, Sophisticated Lady, Sleepin’ Bee, Masquerade — made while I was at University of Iowa, not with Les, but as his protégé.

So one sunny San Francisco Sunday afternoon, I walked into The Half Note Club on Divisadero Blvd. and the joint was on fire and jumpin’ at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. “The George Duke Trio” was in the middle of their regular afternoon jam session, Bring Yo Stuff and Sit In. Warren and Norma, the club owners, asked me to work the next weekend, Friday and Saturday nights. You can hear a fun chat about that club and that time, as well as some music, on a CD of live music called “Al Jarreau and The George Duke Trio Live at The Half Note 1965.”

I mention this because this is probably the earliest jazz trio playing that George did, and I was there with him, with John Heard on bass, Al Cecchi on drums, and Pete Magadini also on drums. Susan says, “Wow, Alwin—You’ve know George longer than you’ve known me.”

There’s a really beautiful bio that you can find here to read more about George. It’s quite correct to say that I’m a graduate of “Duke University,” where I especially picked up some things about swing. He also taught kindness and friendship and love, courage, tenacity, and gratitude.

That house on the hill on Outpost, reigned over by George and Corrine together, with their loyal knight Erik, was host to a countless number of musicians and singers who crafted their messages for posterity inside those walls. Me, too.

The band and I promised ourselves and God’s tomorrow that we would keep doin’ it the way George would want us to do it.

I will miss my friend until the next count-off of time and downbeat.

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Krakow, Poland

Polish people pronounce it: “KRAH-koov.” I never would have guessed that. On the other hand, they don’t say Poland. They say “Polska.” In the middle of the concert, I exclaimed, “You know, I know your cousins and aunts and uncles who live in Milwaukee. I do. I really do. They call me Jarreau-ski!” They laughed.

We had some rest time here, and everybody on the tour bus is quite refreshed. On the day before our concert at the opera house, we met with the festival organizer Witold, and my friend Vladi, and some friends from Germany who are part of the NDR organization, the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Big Band. Vladistav Sendecki is highly ranked among the great pianists of the last 100 years, with Herbie and Chick and Duke and Jarrett.  At the afternoon gathering in the hotel, Vladi and I decide that he should make a really special guest appearance at the opera house during the
concert.

What a surprise, their all being here at the same time. We met in the lobby lounge, and had a wonderful afternoon party. What a surprise. Witold, a native to Krakow, is really someone special. He can tell you about the history of the country and its famous people. Chopin. Copernicus (Earth rotates around the sun). Roman Pulanski. Lech Wałęsa (Organizer of the Polish Worker’s Union, first behind the iron curtain, who later became Poland’s president from 1990-1995). And of course, all of the important historical sites in the city. I won’t try to describe the “Cellar Under The Rams” jazz club. It’s as significant as Birdland and The Vanguard.

A once-in-my-lifetime… Never before and probably not again: The lights dim in the opera house, and the festival producer Witold is speaking in Polish.  I hear my name and out I go. We hug in the middle of the stage, and I surprise him and myself, too, by forcing him to sing a little call-and-response.  I hold him close, and put the mic in front of his mouth, and don’t let him run away off stage. And he does a good job. He taught cello at the conservatory. As far as putting on a good show, you can’t go wrong with that kind of start. “We’re gonna have some fun tonight, you guys!” is what it says. And we did. The band played brilliantly. And I could go on and on about that. But the important thing in all of this is this, and I’ll try to be brief: Krakow, Poland; Warsaw, Poland; Wrocław, Poland; Leipzig, Germany; Moscow, itself… And Kiev! And Lithuania! And Latvia! And Estonia! were places where my music and other Western European music was banned! People searched it out through underground and bootleg resources. Jazz is huge in Poland, but it all happened quietly underground. So, this is a really big deal, my being able to come here and be part of a festival with a hundred other artists. It’s an amazing thing. We all bowed our heads and thanked God for all of this backstage, just moments before we went on.

At the end, they stood up and cheered, and Vladi and I closed the night with an extended version of Summertime. Vladi was brilliant. We hugged, and promised the audience there would be more of this.

And there will be.

Was I brief?

Off we go to St. Moritz!

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