Date: Thu, Mar 11, 2010
Venue: Leonard Nimoy Thalia (Symphony Space)
Symphony Space website
photo by Cheung Ching Ming
Text by Augusta Palmer
Symphony Space’s Seeing Jazz with George Wein series combines intimate oral history with fantastic contemporary performances. The March 11, 2010 installment of this series featured George Wein, who is known as the founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, Newport Folk Festival, and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, in conversation with pianist Randy Weston, who released his first record as a band leader in 1954, and whose tour-de-force album Uhuru Afrika, featuring lyrics by Langston Hughes and arrangements by Melba Liston, was recorded 50 years ago. Though Wein complained that Weston, at 6’8″, has been getting taller every year while Wein continues to shrink, both men continue to be giants in the world of jazz.
The evening began with Wein and interlocutor Laura Kaminsky, Associate Artistic Director of Symphony Space, discussing Wein’s rare photos of Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Pete Seeger, and James Baldwin. George Wein is also a pianist who performs “when I have a lot of chutzpah and courage.” It’s hard to imagine the sprightly Wein being without these two qualities, but when asked if he feels the urge to sit in at concerts he organizes with jazz luminaries, he quipped “I pay them too much to do that!”
Wein introduced his friend Randy Weston to the expectant house in the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater, and asked the Brooklyn native to talk about his formative experiences at The Music Inn in the Berkshires in the 1950s, where Weston met historian Marshall Stearns, Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry, Calypso master Macbeth the Great, Babatunde Olatunji, John Lee Hooker, and Mahalia Jackson. Weston also reminisced about his long relationship with Africa, the continent he first visited in 1961 and a place that continues to inspire him today.
“Mother Nature is the original orchestra,” said Weston, “And blues is the first music on the planet because it’s about I-love-you-baby-and-you-don’t-love-me.” From those same African roots grew jazz, which Wein – who has produced jazz concerts and festivals all over the world – helped to popularize. Said Weston of Wein, “You carried the torch; you put the music out there!”
Music flowed effortlessly from the conversation, and Weston performed beautiful renditions of “Berkshire Blues,” whose bluesy swing was inspired by his experiences at The Music Inn; “Blue Moses,”
his song about the healing power of Morocco’s Gnawa musicians; the playful “Pam’s Waltz” and “Little Niles,” both inspired by his children; and a breathtaking improvisation referencing works by Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Fats Waller.
Weston’s piano playing, George Wein reminded the audience, was admired by some of these artists, particularly Ellington and Monk. So it was a rare privilege to hear Weston play solo in this intimate room. But even on his own, he’s a triple threat. His tapping foot was the percussionist, and his intermittent scat singing provided counterpoint like a stand-up bass.
As an encore, Weston performed one of his best-known works, “Hi-Fly.” Introducing the song, he told a story of eating at a garden in France, where he heard a bird singing his composition. “I said to the bird, ‘That’s MY song,’ but the bird said, ‘I’m older than you!’ Case closed,” said Randy Weston, as he took off playing in the rhythm of flight, taking the audience with him into the skies.
