The local jazz scene is filled with a diverse and talented group of musicians, and that community continues to grow. Starting February 1st, GBH Music, in collaboration with Jazz Boston will be expanding its programming to celebrate the greater Boston jazz community. It’s launching GBH Music presents JazzNOW, a television show, and it will feature local jazz performers and GBH Jazz Nights, where you can watch free live performances at the GBH studio in the Boston Public Library. Sam Brewer, the general manager of GBH Music, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about the expanding events and musical performances planned. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: Tell us more about the JazzNOW and Jazz Nights.
Sam Brewer: Yeah, absolutely. So GBH Music is committed to growing jazz audiences, and we’re doing this in partnership with Jazz Boston and with incredible support from the Goldstein Family Fund. And Arun, we’re increasingly thinking of the listeners experience almost as like a performing arts organization. We want to have a season long effort and multiple touch points for audiences, whether they’re on television or streaming or right here on 89.7 every weekend. Now, that journey starts with GBH Jazz Nights at the Boston Public Library. So we started this in September. We just expanded it through May. And this is basically a loose, fun opportunity to get together with friends at the Boston Public Library after work, they’re hour long sets. It’s free. We started with about 60 people and over 200 people came to the last one. Now, all this leads up to a limited four episode television series. GBH Music presents JazzNOW, and we’re timing this to Black History Month because of the genre’s deep roots as an African-American art form. So, after the last television episode airs, we’re going to start taping new ones in front of a live studio audience in February and March, April and May, right here in our Fraser Performing Arts studio.
Rath: This is awesome. Let’s get a taste of the music right now to kick off the JazzNOW TV series this Saturday night. You’ll have South African vocalist Naledi who is just amazing. Let’s just hear a sample.
Rath: That is just beautiful, obviously, and comes from a great tradition of South African jazz. Tell us more about Naledi and her music.
Brewer: Naledi kicks off this whole series, and my favorite part of this show is how much of her own stories she brings to the performance. So, she draws her music from her upbringing in South Africa, you know, she’s jamming with her friends in the backyard. She’s listening to artists like Miriam Makeba. She’s sneaking into jazz clubs with her dad, and she basically didn’t have any formal training in in music until she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory, which brought her here to Boston. And at the time, she was the only African student in the university from the continent of Africa. And she’s here. She’s homesick. She’s grappling with her identity as a musician in this environment. And she wrote the piece you just heard, which is called Bato Baka, which means My People. And it’s a tribute to her roots in her community. I’d say she’s throughout all of her music, really straddles this beautiful line of vulnerability and like declarative bravery. Her vocals are tremendous. She has this 'yelp’ in some of her songs that just sends shivers up your spine. You know, my colleague Alan MacLellan produced all these shows and we were actually just talking yesterday about how hearing the story of the artists and having them bring something to each show is really what really the magic of these shows.
Rath: Love it. You mentioned the live events, the first live event and the GBH Music Presents JazzNOW series is going to be on February 27th. It’s going to celebrate Hermeto Pascoal who is a Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist. Tell us about him.
Brewer: So, Hermeto Pascoal is wildly inventive. He emerged in the 60s, the 1960s with Bossa Nova, and you hear him as a flute player with this group called Quartet O Novo. And then Miles Davis featured his compositions on an album called “Live Evil”. And then his solo stuff starts hitting, and it’s this completely unique sound. He basically can play with any instrument you put in front of him. You go on a YouTube dive and you’ll see videos of him basically banging on plates like hashing out polyrhythms. You’ll see him submerged in water blowing on glass containers. But it all has these engrossing melodies and rhythms. And so Oscar Stagnaro, who’s this really stellar Latin bassist, came to us with the group Triad and his group and said, 'We want to celebrate his legacy Hermeto Pascoal’s while he’s still alive’. And so they’re going to celebrate sort of this these diverse strands that he brings together of music, along with the pianist Maxim Lubarsky, the sax player Edmar Colon and Mark Walker is the percussionist of the group. And Mark actually just shared an unreleased track with us to play. It’s called Hermetic and it’s inspired by Pascoal’s really, really special sound.
Rath: This is exciting and I’ve been a fan going back to the 70s. Miles Davis, those crazy records you mentioned “Live Evil” and just wild, but really deeply structured and complicated stuff.
Brewer: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a sense of real musicianship. I mean, he’s pushing the line, but you’re just carried along for this awesome ride.
Rath: Sam, you also said that the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll”, it’s a spectacular version of that standard. Let’s listen to that.
Rath: That was quite a bit more straight ahead than Pascoal. But tell us about this performance and when we can see it.
Brewer: Yeah. So, look, the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra has been been led by Mark Harvey for over 50 years. It’s one of the longest jazz orchestras in the world. It’s based right here in Boston. And we taped the show with them last year. That’s airing this February. Great set of standards by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, you know, killer horn songs you can hum along to. I should tell you, there’s also an iconic version of of “Satin Doll” that probably many people know recorded by Ella Fitzgerald. And we’re going to be celebrating Ella Fitzgerald in our last live show with a terrific vocalist named Gabrielle Goodman, who’s based here at Berklee. So that tune you just heard, you can hear on the second of our TV shows, you can hear Gabrielle Goodman at the end of our live series. We’ll also have performances from a contemporary vocalist this season called Farayi Malek in March. And we’re celebrating International Jazz Day on April 30th with Walid Zari & Talween. And this is a group that blends Middle Eastern string, the Middle Eastern string Instrument, the Oud, and an accordion for a really distinct Arabic sound. Talween actually means coloring in Arabic. So there’s really something for everyone this season, from Hermeto Pascoal to Ella Fitzgerald. And you can access all of this for free or buy tickets to be part of a live studio audience here at GBH.