Don’t trust a jazz musician over 30

East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Festival puts the accent on youth this time around

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At 19, Grace Kelly has left the jazz prodigy bit behind her. But Kelly, who brings her quintet to the East Lansing Jazz Festival Friday, has aged in a selective way. Her alto sax sound has quickly matured into Black Label scotch, but her bubbly enthusiasm and stage moves are still Juicy Juice.

“Sometimes I watch videos of myself and I just laugh,” she said. “It looks like I’m doing a chicken dance.”

Kelly leaves it to others to take her seriously — and they do. She’s already spent serious time in the heavyweight ring with jazz legends who are also devoted fans, including fellow alto players and Phil Woods and Lee Konitz.

At Barack Obama’s inauguration, Kelly jammed with Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis and an all-star big band. Having conquered the scene in her native Boston, she has taken her own band to the Montreal Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and tours throughout Europe. 

She swings the young-hope-of-jazz burden like adolescent King Arthur casually hefted Excalibur. What’s the big deal?

“I don’t think of it as being under pressure, because I know that in the end I’m going to create the music that makes me happy,” she said.

Kelly’s torch-passing tours with Woods have been especially significant to both musicians.

“He’s a warm person,” Kelly said Woods, “but he’ll tell you when you’re messing up — onstage, in front of people.”

“She’s 14 years old — and I’m going to break her fingers,” 75-year-old Woods said when he introduced her on stage for the first time in 2005.

Check it out on YouTube: As Kelly soars into bebop heaven, Woods settles on his stool and his gruff mug relaxes into a deep-set grin — the face of a man who is satisfied his estate won’t have to go through probate.

Last year, Kelly and Woods got together to record a CD of originals, “The Man With the Hat,” with Kelly taking top billing.

“It’s been surreal,” Kelly said. “He’s been one of my biggest idols since I started.”

“I sleep a little better knowing there’s people like Grace Kelly playing the alto saxophone,” Woods said after the “Man With the Hat” session.

On a typical Kelly/Woods summit, a fleet and sweet solo will earn Kelly the jazz equivalent of Excalibur — Woods’ hat, delivered by the owner from his head to hers.

“She’s the first person to get that hat,” Woods said.

When Kelly was a larva in single digits, she listened to the bossa-flavored jazz of Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto and walked around the house, singing the solos. “I didn’t think about it. They subconsciously seeped in.”

As a youngster, she was enthralled by a street musician in New York who played “The Pink Panther.”

“I wanted to be able to do that on saxophone,” she said.

She was scalded by the joy of jazz at a Boston gig by trumpeter Clark Terry, a veteran of Duke Ellington’s band and many others. 

“He was older, and having a hard time playing trumpet, but you could see how happy he was to be there,” Kelly said. “His spirit really came through and I realized how powerful that is.”

Kelly’s alto style flows from the bebop mainline, straight from Charlie Parker, filtered through the cooling coils of latter-day Bird disciples like Woods and Konitz.

Kelly has been careful to acknowledge her inspirations and mentors, but she’s also moved on to write and sing pop, folk and gospel material.

“A lot of people play what fits the giants, but there will never be another Charlie Parker, another Coltrane,” she said. “In order for music to grow and things to keep changing, there’s got to be a meld of today’s genres.”

She already has a scrapbook of heady memories.

A recent gig in a public square in Warsaw, Poland, stunned her by drawing thousands.

“I could hear a pin drop,” Kelly said. It sounded like we were in a concert hall. They were so hungry for the music.”

On tour with Woods, Kelly learned that European audiences are still rabid for jazz.

“They’ll bring these out-of-print records Phil signs that Phil doesn’t even know about yet,” she said. “The listening is different. I’ve noticed the attention span. It really seems like they’re with us for the whole journey.”

She’s gotten generous praise from a lot of jazz greats and likes to return the love. Brubeck, she said, “still plays his butt off.” Wynton Marsalis is full of hard-earned, heartfelt advice. (He told her not to let critics change her music.) And then there was that blazing gig in Mexico with powerhouse drummer Jack DeJohnette.

“Playing with him is like a surge, a whirlwind,” Kelly said. “The power that comes from him. The notes just flew out of me — I wasn’t thinking about it, just channelling energy.”

Kelly is a calculating performer when she’s singing, but hand her the alto sax, lay down a deep groove and soon she’ll be in a crouch, eyes closed, lost to the world.

“I love it when it’s 100 percent raw,” she said. “I’d rather hear somebody go for something they didn’t necessarily know was going to work than something that’s perfect.”


Taylor Eigsti Quartet

New York-based pianist Taylor Eigsti is only 26, but he yearns for the days when the Earth’s continents were part of a single land mass. Great times. He’d like them back — musically, if not geologically.

“Maybe it’s too Utopian to hope for a world that has a Pangaea of music,” he said. “I don’t think there has to be so much separation and classification.”

Eigsti might adapt an alt-rock anthem by Coldplay, a sad song from Nick Drake or a romantic piano sonata from early 20th century Catalan composer Federico Mompou.

The formula informs much of today’s piano jazz: curious young person with wide-ranging iPod plus prodigious chops.

“You could say it reflects being born in 1984 and being a professional jazz musician,” Eigsti said.

Eigsti brings his quartet to the East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Festival Saturday, with the promise that no two of his performances are ever the same.

“You’ll hear jazz, because we don’t want to abandon what got us to that position, but you’re going to hear a lot of other things too,” he said.

As a kid, Eigsti was fired up by jazz virtuoso Art Tatum, but now his outlook is inspired by citizens of musical Pangaea like Dirty Projectors and Bjork. He’s a fan, and friend of jazz pianist Robert Glasper, who is blending jazz and hip hop.

Gone are the days when one form of jazz, whether avant-garde or old-school, was considered legit. When the Robert Glasper Experiment teamed with Mos Def at the Blue Note a few weeks ago, Kanye West sat in for a sizzling round of freestyle.

“We live in an era when we see Kanye West sitting in at the Blue Note,” Eigsti marveled.

“A lot of things that are in my roots — enjoying rock music, enjoying R&B, enjoying classical, all those things are coming back into the music. But now I have a perspective on how to assimilate then in a way that feels like myself.”

Last September, Eigsti closed a strange loop of his life by sitting in with the Doobie Brothers.

In 1987, the Doobies played at a hospital where Eigsti’s sister, Shannon, was being treated for cancer. Shannon, a jazz and rock pianist, ended up playing with the crooner-rockers on a few gigs before she died that year. The Doobies’ 1989 album, "Cycles," is dedicated to her.

Eigsti’s gig with the Doobies last September was a mix of melancholy and elation.

“That was a big moment, getting to jam with them,” Eigsti said. “I bought a new leather jacket for the occasion.”

Eigsti’s label, Concord, packages him as a young hunk with an edge (read: two days’ beard growth), but there’s a melancholy undertow in his music. It can hardly be otherwise if you’re playing music by the likes of Mompou and Nick Drake.

“A lot of bad things that have happened in my life that I’d have traded anything for them not to have happened,” Eigsti said. “But I feel lucky. I’m getting a lot of opportunities to play music I’ve always wanted to play. This is the best time of my life, musically.”


Summer Solstice Jazz Festival
FRIDAY, JUNE 17
4:30 p.m.  Metro Jazz Voices
6 p.m.  Etienne Charles & Folklore
7:30 p.m.  Grace Kelly Quintet
9:15 p.m.  Tumbao Bravo
Afterglow  Arlene McDaniel Quintet (at Mumbai)

SATURDAY, JUNE 18
4:30 p.m.  Randy Gelispie & Friends
6 p.m.  Billie Holiday Project featuring Mardra Thomas
7:30 p.m.  Taylor Eigsti Quartet
9:15 p.m.  Grupo-Aye
Afterglow  Rodney Whitaker Quartet (at Mumbai)

The performances are staged under a large tent in downtown East Lansing’s Parking Lot 1 (230 Albert Ave.), on the corner of Albert Avenue and Abbot Road. Afterglow performances will be held at Mumbai, 340 Albert Ave. All performances are free. Visit www.eljazzfest.com for updates.

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