[caption id="attachment_13139" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Junior Mance Quintet entertains the Tuesday night audience at the DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival"]
On a hot Saturday afternoon in downtown Wilmington, most businesses are closed, but at 905 N. Orange St. a neon sign on an otherwise bare storefront says “Open.” Inside, a four-piece band is burning through the jazz standard “Blue Bossa,” while a sizable audience is applauding the soloists as they take turns improvising. This is a regular Saturday jam at the Nomad Bar, and people who love the music are finding each other.
Jazz fans have a lot to be excited about in the First State. The Nomad Bar, the state’s only full-time jazz club recently opened. The number and quality of local jazz players is also improving. There is a growing trend in Delaware to use the music as a kind of sophisticated aural backdrop at upscale events. Another positive development in the local jazz world is the surprising number of young musicians avidly learning to play styles of music that had their heyday decades before. And this week, the annual DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival will turn Wilmington’s Rodney Square into a huge open-air jazz club with no admission fee.
The DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival is in its 23rd year and brings about 35,000 to 40,000 fans into Wilmington to see a week of free concerts at Rodney Square and other venues, says Tina Betz, the city’s director of cultural affairs and fund development. Betz says the festival has endured because of strong support from the city government and area corporations, without which, she says, “it just wouldn’t happen.”
A taste of jazz in delaware
DFM News joins Tony "The Big Cat" Smith for a lunchtime session during the DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival
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The festival helps the local jazz scene by showcasing area artists. “Part of my programming philosophy is to always include a pretty heavy dose of local performers,” Betz said, “because we have such a depth of talent here.” Other jazz festivals often include many R&B or “smooth jazz” acts, because those styles are more broadly popular and sell more tickets, but not Wilmington’s. “We do lean heavily on the straight-ahead or classic jazz,” Betz said.
After the festival concerts finish each evening, the Nomad will open its stage for an open jam session. And of course, the bar will keep operating after the festival is over, with local saxophonist Harry Spencer booking the talent. Nomad opened early this year and has been growing its audience and musician base ever since. “There’s a live and active jazz community,” said owner Dave Vandever. “There’s just not very many jazz clubs anymore.”
But Gerald Chavis, a well-known local trumpet player, says things are better than they have been. “There are more places to play now than there were just a few years ago,” Chavis said. In addition to Nomad, Chavis points out that Gallucio’s restaurant and Basil, the lounge at the Sheraton in Wilmington, both have jazz on Thursdays.
[caption id="attachment_13140" align="alignleft" width="199" caption="Dennis Fortune plays with Manifest III at the DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival"]
Chavis also sees a wider acceptance of the music among casual listeners. So does local pianist Dennis Fortune. “Jazz is hip,” Fortune said. “Jazz is now in museums, there are a lot of jazz and wine festivals.” People at an upscale party enjoy having a live jazz band there, he says—the audience may not be serious fans, but find the music a pleasantly sophisticated aural backdrop.
Local drummer John DiGiovanni books the jazz bands at Gallucio’s and points out that there’s also jazz at Extreme Pizza in Wilmington from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. “There are more and more places opening up for jazz,” he said. But he says the problem is that many different sorts of music fall under that heading. Hard-core fans often prefer what they call “straight-ahead” jazz, where small combos take turns soloing based on styles from the late 1940s to middle and late 1960s. But that kind of music does not fare well in today’s marketplace.
Dennis Santangini, president of the Rehoboth Beach Autumn Jazz Festival, held mid-October, says the festival focuses on “smooth jazz,” which includes elements of pop, R&B, and funk. The music is extremely popular—the festival’s headliner band Fourplay is a consistent chart-topper. Straight-ahead jazz hasn’t worked at the festival, and isn’t much available in area clubs either, according to Santangini. “In Sussex County, for straight-ahead, there’s not much,” he said. “It just doesn’t sell tickets.”
This reality makes longtime jazz fans wistful for the glory days, when there were numerous clubs featuring classic jazz, it had a significant slice of the listening public as devotees, and artists like Miles Davis could be seen on television.
“It’ll never be what it was,” said Harold Burke, president of the local chapter of the Council of Jazz Advocates. But Burke and his group do what they can “to keep traditional straight-ahead jazz alive” in the Wilmington area. They serve as a volunteer support crew for the jazz festival, and they host an annual concert that raises money for scholarships for talented young musicians.
Classic jazz may not be the force in the market it once was, but Burke is optimistic about the fan base. “I think actually it’s increasing,” he said. Baby boomers seem to suddenly be discovering jazz, according to Burke, “I’m really surprised,” he added, “at the number of young people getting involved.”
Fostina Dixon-Kilgoe, who founded the Wilmington Youth Jazz Band in 2004 with an alumni grant from the Berklee College of Music, sees this first-hand. Through her program, young people interested in playing jazz can work with the Berklee curriculum and, more importantly, work directly with local musicians who can help them interpret the music effectively.
Dixon-Kilgoe says the young people typically encounter the music through school bands or have parents who introduce them to it. She recruits new students through churches, schools, and jazz clubs. Her bands have played at the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival, the Grand Opera House, and the Kennedy Center.
But Dixon-Kilgoe isn’t satisfied. “We need to find a more effective way of reaching more kids,” she said. And she feels there aren’t enough opportunities for young musicians to be heard, or for adult musicians to be paid appropriately.
“We had places to go to play when I was coming up in Delaware,” she said. “What are we going to do about the venues where these kids can play? And where can adults play where they are valued?”
Chris Braddock teaches guitar at the Music School of Delaware, and he’s had a hand in turning young people into jazz fans. He played the samba “Black Orpheus” for a young woman who immediately fell in love with Brazilian music. He mentions another student, mainly interested in the blues, who became a fan of the Belgian jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt.
“Jazz studies seem to appeal to kids who are getting advanced and want to branch out into new styles,” Braddock said. They may not feel a connection to classical, and want more structure than rock. “It’s a culture of self-expression,” Braddock said, in which you can play with other musicians while making your own statement.
[caption id="attachment_13147" align="alignright" width="205" caption="Univ. of Delaware student Ross Johnston has been playing jazz since he was 14 years old. (photo courtesy: Music School of Delaware)"]
A former Music School of Delaware student Ross Johnston, now a student at the University of Delaware, remembers his first challenging encounter with the music. “My first concrete experience with jazz was when I attempted to play guitar for my school’s jazz band in eighth grade. This only went on for about a couple weeks, as I had no idea what I was doing.”
But it got better—he took up the saxophone, a private teacher gave him a proper introduction to the music, and Johnston “fell in love immediately,” joining his high school jazz band, all-state jazz band, and a small combo at the Music School of Delaware.
Johnston says the evolution of jazz is “delightfully unpredictable” and he has no idea where things are heading. But other jazz lovers in the area take heart in the fact that the music of the Fifties and Sixties, with its balance of structure, rhythmic drive, and broad musical vocabulary, is evidently compelling enough to draw fans and players decades later.
Chavis says he’s encouraged by the skill and seriousness of the young musicians he’s heard, because it means the music is living. Fortune agrees. He says he judged a competition of young musicians and “was floored by some of the things I heard from these kids, which
is heartening because you know that the music will continue to survive.”
“The bottom line is it’s very, very deep thing that can touch people,” Fortune said. “It was here before I got here, and it’s going to be here long after I’m gone.”