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“Do You Know Michael Jackson?

by Allan Appel | Oct 8, 2006 10:57 pm

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Posted to: Arts

Junior Arick Lyde, who plays five instruments, including xylophone and viola, and retired Hillhouse High School teacher and local jazz performer Robert Winters, were two of the lucky people on hand to catch a special performance by a cutting-edge visiting jazz ensemble.

The Friday afternoon concert for the students and teachers at Hillhouse was a warm-up for a performance Friday night at Yale’s Sprague Hall by the Jabane Ensemble. In addition to Jabane’s four stalwarts (in this poster from the Sprague marquee, because the producers allowed no pre-performance photos)—pianist Robert Glasper, guitarists Derrick Hodge and Lionel Loueke and drummer Chris “Daddy” Dave —  guest artists included saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, son of the jazz legend, and harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret.

Since 1972 jazz greats, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and Odetta, have been giving concerts and master classes to aspiring musicians in New Haven’s public schools, through the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program . The Ellington Fellowship program was conceived and organized by Willie Ruff, professor at the Yale School of Music and himself a world-famous jazzman, for whom a chair in jazz was recently endowed.

Ruff (to the right in the photo, along with Hillhouse’s principal Dr. Lonnie Garrison, Jr., and junior Terry Watts) was also at Hillhouse to introduce Jabane to 600 sophomores and juniors. Most of the kids were far more attuned to Neo, Chris Brown, and hip hop; many were about to hear for the first time in their lives the challenging new rhythmic takes, brought to them by Jabane, on America’s greatest native musical form.

Why Jabane? Ruff was asked before the performance.

“Frankly, in all the 30 years since we’ve been bringing great performers to New Haven,” he said, “and, mind you, we’re tremendously proud that over 200,000 New Haven kids over that time period have had their musical imaginations stretched in these concerts and classes, there just hasn’t been a group like this. What I mean is that these kids, this generation’s music is not instrumentally focused. You’ll see, with Jabane, this is some of the highest mastery of instruments, and by people very close to the age of the kids in the audience. It’s fantastic. It’s a chance for them to be exposed to stuff that could be life-changing.”

Long before the concert, Ruff’s association with Hillhouse — his wife Emma was a principal at Hillhouse— has been life-changing for many kids, according to his friend Robert Winters and guidance counselor Carol Cook. In the 1990s, they said, Ruff was the go-to guy in bringing instruments and uniforms to Hillhouse for the band, and an ongoing resource for the development of arts programming at New Haven’s flagship public high school. “Music,” said Cook, “is really critical for the kids’ development. If they have talent, and many of our kids do, it’s a bit like athletics. If they get up and they perform, it’s tremendously important for their self-esteem.”

And what did the sophomores and juniors make of Jabane’s performance, which featured complex rhythms playing against each other, lots of African influences (guitarist Loueke is from Benin, in West Africa) and exceptional virtuosity? (At several points Glasper was sitting sidesaddle on his stool and playing piano with his left hand and keyboard with his right and sending out more distinct notes in the interval of a second than this reporter thought humanly possible.)

“Well,” said junior Terry Watts, “I really liked it. I’ve heard jazz before, but this was different. I don’t know. Somehow it was calmer.”

Between the riffs, pianist Glasper engaged the audience with questions. The kids’ inquiries — how much does the guitar cost?  Do any of you also dance? Can you please play us some hip hop? Do you know Michael Jackson? — reflected less the musical sophistication of the kids and more the fact that, as every teacher knows, Friday, after lunch, at a teeming city high school is not the most awake moment possible.

“Still, I think they really got it,” said Ruff, afterwards. “Maybe not all. But I’d say a third were really into it. Maybe a few will become musicians. Maybe for a few others they’ll be thinking about what they heard here when they turn on the radio next, and slowly, mysteriously, it will enter their minds that this is something interesting, great, different, wonderful. The key is that they were exposed,”

As the musicians packed up quickly to get the instruments to Yale and to practice and rest up for the night’s concert, Principal Garrison agreed. “Sometimes we don’t know what’s really good until we hear it.” Then he took the stage, thanked Jabane, Bob Winters, and Willie Ruff for their contributions, and, dismissing the kids in sections, he wished everyone a good weekend.

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