Specifically, I’d like to talk a bit more about the lack of black artists booked for next year’s jazz series at the Sheldon. To be absolutely clear, I do not think that Paul Reuter, or anyone else at the Sheldon, sat down one day and consciously thought, “Let’s not book too many African-American musicians for our jazz series.” Instead, what’s happening is considerably more subtle than that.
I’ve only met Paul Reuter once, very briefly backstage after a concert at the Sheldon. From what I could tell, he seems like a nice guy, and he certainly deserves kudos for his work in recent years overseeing the expansion of the Sheldon’s facilities and programming, and for helping put the hall on a sounder financial footing. The only other person on the Sheldon staff I know personally is Dale Benz, who’s been in charge of operations there for what seems like forever. Dale is a good guy who’s also good at his job, and in many ways he’s really the unsung hero of the place. I have absolutely no reason to believe that either man, or anyone else who works at the Sheldon, is a bigot or a racist.
Moreover, it is only fair to note that the Sheldon has, of course, booked lots of African-American artists in the past, including this season’s concerts featuring Marcus Roberts, Victor Goines and Mardra Thomas, Terence Blanchard, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band/Dixie Hummingbirds double bill. Black jazz artists have also appeared regularly at the hall in conjunction with events presented by outside organizations, as in the case of recent appearances by Carmen Lundy and Charles McPherson.
That said, past bookings and whatever fine personal and professional qualities the Sheldon’s staff members may possess do not excuse the lack of imagination in putting together the hall’s jazz series for 2006-07. What seems to have happened – and this is speculation and conjecture here, folks - is that the understandable desire to sell tickets seems to be accompanied by a sort of cliquey “go with what you know” mentality, and the end result is a rather bland selection of concerts featuring mostly white musicians and singers.
Put another way, while it’s possible to defend the individual decisions to book specific artists, the cumulative effect of those separate decisions has left local jazz fans with a less-than-inspiring series as a whole.
For starters, even taking into account the notion that some musicians will inevitably “graduate” from clubs to concert halls as their audience grows, the fact that two of the five artists on the Sheldon’s 06-07 jazz series – Joey DeFrancesco and Freddie Cole – are recycled from this year’s schedule at Jazz at the Bistro suggests at the very least that those making the booking decisions for the Sheldon aren’t exactly considering the widest possible range of candidates.
Yes, I think DeFrancesco’s collaboration with Bobby Hutcherson is an attractive package, and it is something different from what he’s done the last several times he’s passed through town. But even so, he’s played St. Louis five or six times in the last four years, and Cole also has been through town several times in that same time span. I suppose the upside is that both men have established fan bases in St. Louis - but the downside is that re-booking them deprives local listeners of the chance to hear something new and different.
As for the others on the jazz series, I can agree that booking Tierney Sutton makes a certain amount of sense, as she’s been getting some buzz in the jazz press and on radio. From my limited exposure to her music, she seems to be an attractive and accomplished performer, but I don’t see or hear anyone making a case for her as any sort of artistic innovator, or even saying that she’s a particularly distinctive stylist. Still, since she’s never played St. Louis before, I can’t legitimately criticize the booking for being repetitive.
One can also make an affirmative case in favor of pianist Peter Martin – he’s a hometown boy, signed to local label MAXJAZZ, and his profile has been raised considerably on the national level by the success of his fine work with singer Dianne Reeves, and locally by his yeoman job of organizing last year’s hurricane relief concert at the Sheldon. But Martin is already booked to play the Whitaker Music Festival this summer, and Erin Bode, who will share the bill with him at the Sheldon, performs in St. Louis just about every week. So even assuming that the two cook up some sort of special collaboration for the occasion, it’s hard to argue that we’ll be hearing all that much that’s new.
The final booking on the jazz series is perhaps the most inexplicable. I quite liked the Brubeck brothers’ obscure 1970s funk band Sky King, but is there anyone out there who thinks their current jazz quartet would be attracting as much interest as it has if their last name was Smith or Jones? Me neither. Yes, the two younger Brubecks are perfectly capable professional musicians, but neither has much of a track record of either artistic innovation or commercial success. The best reason I can think of to book them is that their last name might draw some of their father’s fans, which, frankly, seems pretty lame to me.
Pianist Fred Hersch performing his “Leaves of Grass” song cycle is perhaps the most artistically adventurous booking of the year, but, like this season’s Bill Frisell show, it’s billed as a “Special Concert,” and one can’t help but wonder why. Does the Sheldon think that Hersch’s extended piece, heavily influenced by modern chamber music, would be too “difficult” for their jazz series subscribers? Or is there another more mundane reason, like travel logistics, or keeping the jazz series to a certain number of shows or total ticket cost?
Looking at the local jazz artists who have been booked for the Sheldon’s other series, there are multiple dates for Debby Lennon, Carolbeth True, and the Webster University Jazz Faculty, all of whom can be seen regularly on other local concert stages and in clubs. In addition, Jean Kittrell, Bob Ceccarini and Pat Joyce perform locally at events for the St. Louis Jazz Club, and were all involved in shows at the Sheldon this year, too. So while the specific programs may vary, they’re still being performed by a familiar and relatively small group of singers and musicians.
Of course, all those folks have something else in common besides being familiar to St. Louis audiences: With the exception of occasional Webster U. guest performers like Willie Akins and Steve Tatum, all of the local performers named above are white, as are DeFrancesco, Sutton, Martin, Bode, the Brubecks and Hirsch. So that means that the Sheldon’s jazz performances during the 2006-07 season will feature a grand total of two African-American artists: Freddie Cole and Bobby Hutcherson.
Even if one grants the Sheldon’s brain trust only good intentions, one has to wonder how this happened. The putative notion that there are insufficient numbers of black jazz artists with the skills and audience appeal to merit a booking at a hall like the Sheldon simply doesn’t pass the laugh test. So what we’re left with is, as mentioned earlier, a combination of commercial considerations and personal familiarity that results in an outcome that, while not racist in intent, could certainly come off that way to some observers.
It’s something of a canard in the jazz business that the mass black audience began turning away from jazz in the 1960s, and one can find laments about this phenomenon in the press on a fairly regular basis from jazz promoters, club owners, and musicians who would like to get some of dollars that are currently going to hip-hop and R&B artists. But how can promoters realistically expect African-American audiences to embrace jazz when they don’t book black artists? By presenting only a very limited subset of jazz styles and musicians, a series like the Sheldon’s 2006-07 offering not only denies the history and heritage of the music, it constrains the potential to grow a broader audience in the future.
If this were Des Moines, Omaha, or Phoenix – that is to say, a city without a major jazz club, a significant jazz heritage or a large African-American population – the Sheldon’s 2006-07 jazz series might be acceptable, even laudable. But this is St. Louis, and I think we deserve and need something better.
Finally, if anyone from the Sheldon would like to explain how the acts for the 2006-07 jazz series were chosen, or otherwise dispute any of the opinions expressed herein, I’d be more than happy to publish their remarks, unedited, right here in StLJN. While criticisms of artistic decisions and discussions of race certainly have the potential to make some people uncomfortable, I think we are all best served by an open debate of the issues, and I welcome any comments from readers as well.
(Edited immediately after posting to fix headline formatting.)
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