JazzFest returns to the streets of Old Town

Michigan JazzFest is back, live, in the streets of Old Town in 2021, with a variety of musical styles, some familiar faces and significant new wrinkles, including a new business model — paid admission instead of voluntary donations.

Musically, this year brings the festival back to its former glory after 2020’s mostly virtual event, with one of its biggest headliners ever (trombonist Wycliffe Gordon) kicking off the festivities Thursday night. Two outdoor stages and one indoor venue, Urban Beat, will pulsate Friday and Saturday with traditional jazz licks, Latin flavors, Middle Eastern sounds and R&B and hip-hop hybrids. Visiting artists from Flint, Detroit and beyond will join a full slate of local jazz luminaries like organist Jim Alfredson and drummer Jeff Shoup.

The return to a live festival is reason to celebrate, but this year, for the first time, ticketed events will predominate after 24 years of free festivals.

Festival impresario Terry Terry said the loss of a beer tent, the prime source of revenue for JazzFest, made the change necessary.

Terry said the establishment of a “social district” in Old Town, where patrons can buy drinks in specially marked containers from local eateries and pubs and walk around with them, posed a “double challenge” to JazzFest’s business model.

The usual beer tent, a prime source of revenue for JazzFest, is gone, compounding a pandemic-year financial crunch.

“Our costs go up, paying for musicians, stages, sound, fencing and so on, and every year it gets harder to find sponsors and grants,” Terry said. “If ever there was a time to try something different, it’s now, after COVID.”

To keep the festival going, Terry and the board of directors opted for multi-tiered ticketing. Wycliffe Gordon’s headliner gig Thursday, with proceeds going to the Lawrence ‘Lo’ Leathers Scholarship Fund, will cost $50.

For the rest of the festival, Members Only seats, in designated areas closest to the two stages, will cost $30 a night and include afterglow events — “eight or nine bands” total each night, Terry said. “Premiere” tickets, at $10 each, will include shows at both stages, but farther away, and without access to afterglow events.

Terry and his staff don’t know how the new model will play out. He hasn’t ruled out the possibility of offering $5 rush tickets if the streets, indoor spaces and lots don’t fill to capacity. 

“We’re figuring it out,” he said.

Wycliffe Gordon’s headline gig will benefit the Lawrence Leathers scholarship fund, named after the beloved New York drummer who studied and played at MSU jazz studies in the early 2000s and was murdered in 2019.

“Wycliffe was a big mentor to Lawrence, and they were really close,” MSU trombone Professor Michael Dease said. “Everybody that got to know Lawrence loved him, including me.” The scholarship fund supports emerging artists in the performing arts. 

Snagging Gordon is a coup under any circumstances. Passionate mastery of multiple styles of jazz, from Dixieland to swing to bebop, hard bop and beyond, is only a part of his portfolio. Gordon plays over 20 instruments, including trumpet, tuba and didgeridoo, and excels as a composer for the concert hall, TV and film. In 2021, Gordon piled up another Trombonist of the Year nod from the Jazz Journalists’ Association — his 14th — and is well on his way to jazz immortality.

Dease said Gordon is a rare talent who “lights up the music” and changed his life at a personal level.

“Everything he does is so inviting,” Dease said. “If I hadn’t encountered him, I’m not sure I would have had the inspiration to fight for a career in music.”
Dease first heard Gordon at age 13, at a high school jazz workshop in Augusta, Georgia, where both men grew up. Gordon was playing with the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the time.

“I knew it was special beyond words,” Dease said. “He epitomizes what being a jazz artist is all about, having his roots in the tradition, with all the things that make jazz so special, and then he brings his own voice to it, as a Southern, church-reared musician, as a singer and as a person influenced by classical music.”

Terry hasn’t ruled out moving Gordon’s gig to the outdoor River Stage, in the spacious parking lot between the River Trail and the building that houses Urban Beat, if sales warrant and weather permits. Several outdoor concerts have been held in the lot in the past year.

The remainder of the festival line-up is largely an extension of the ambitious concert series Terry has established at his bustling Old Town venue, Urban Beat. Many of the scheduled performers, including trumpeter Walter White Jr., Dave Sharp’s exotic Worlds Quartet and blues-and-beyond belters FatBoy and Jive Turkey, have already performed at Urban Beat.

The festival will also exude an international vibe, even when local artists take the stage. Ann Arbor-based Sharp’s group deploys the oud, a Middle Eastern lute, along with violin and lush percussion to conjure Balkan, Middle Eastern and north African rhythms and melodies. Occidental Gypsy, a touring band based in New England, stretches “gypsy jazz” in the manner of Django Reinhardt into fresh territory. Ritmo Patria, with Lansing keyboard master Mike Eyia, brings Cuban inspired jazz.

Other bands, such as Reverend Ant (short for Anthony) Taylor and Soulfusion, mix jazz, R&B, hip-hop and soul into a churning vat of custom brews. The uplifting hip-hop-inflected Corzo Effect, based in Lansing and Flint, will appear twice, with two different special guests. Flint-based Caleb Robinson showers drum fireworks over a banquet of intermingling styles. 

Local jazz stalwarts, like the above-mentioned Mike Eyia, are an integral part of the festival mix. Eyia will dive into a new set of compositions from his recent collaboration with local jazz patron and composer Gregg Hill. Organist Jim Alfredson, the 2021 Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan honoree, will get out of his “basement,” where he’s been streaming pandemic concerts for months, to play a set with guitarist Will Bernard. Drummer Jeff Shoup, impresario of the long-running Jazz Tuesdays at Moriarty’s, will back Ann Arbor vocalist and clarinetist Sarah D’Angelo.

Local jazz students will take a turn in the spotlight, including the JAMM Scholarship Band, an all-star combo of MSU alumni, and the Reuben Stump Trio, composed of top U of M students led by Stump.

True to 2021’s mix of new and old, this year’s JazzFest is reviving an old tradition that lapsed in recent years. Each band was asked to bring at least one tune or arrangement it has never performed in front of a live audience before.

“Come and hear all the bands, and you’re going to be the first to hear a whole bunch of original stuff,” Terry said.