Terry Terry is the first to admit he’ll never get a prize for his musical skills. He plays flute and drums in a jam band that gathers sporadically at his house, called The Other Band.
“That’s as in, ‘What’s the other band playing?’” Terry explained (if you call that an explanation). He’s working on the harmonica, but nobody’s heard him play it yet.
“Find one note that fits and go to the next,” he said.
So, why is Terry dusting off a spot on his shelf for a lifetime jazz award?
The answer lies in the late summer shadows that darken the orange bricks of Turner Street, the first trumpet licks of JazzFest, the crescent moon rising over the rooftop gargoyles, the people who fill the streets and the music that fills the people.
If you scan JazzFest’s swirl of humanity closely, you might spot a serene-looking man with oval spectacles and a salty beard, looking like a 19th century tonsorial artist who just stepped out of his shop for a minute to survey the scene.
“The streets transform, crowds come out, you look around and see people smiling, and you say, ‘This is good,’” Terry said.
Each year, the Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan, or JAMM, honors someone who has made a “significant contribution to jazz in mid-Michigan.”
Terry, the 13th JAMM honoree, has spent much of the past three decades bringing jazz, blues, R&B, rock and many more colors of music to the streets of Old Town.
He’s the co-founder of JazzFest Michigan (formerly Lansing JazzFest) and heads the board of directors of the Michigan Institute for Contemporary Art, or MICA, the nonprofit parent organization for JazzFest, BluesFest and many other ventures in music and the visual arts.
In the past few years, Terry (who declined to give his age) also turned the UrbanBeat at 1213 Turner St. into a humming live music venue with a packed calendar of diverse musicians.
Last Sunday, Terry basked in a luminous, energetic set by Pickle Mafia, an exploratory jazz-rock-funk-ambient-synth trio from Rochester, Michigan.
“Sundays are usually pretty slow,” he said. “It was a small audience, but they played for two hours. I couldn’t leave.”
UrbanBeat is a listening room where the music is respected; JazzFest is a premier showcase for top local, statewide and national bands. But Terry is not a “shut up so I can hear the chord changes” kind of guy. He’s up-front about his underlying priorities.
“Others have made the music front and center of what they do,” he said. “In a way, the music is a backdrop to the mission here, and that’s different. It’s to create open spaces in the community where people can come together, in the context of the arts.”
Terry is a jazz lover — the first album he ever bought was Thelonious Monk’s spiky “Straight, No Chaser” — but he’s always been more of an eye man than an ear man. As soon as he could see over a table, he helped his father, a photographer, work in the dark room.
His love affair with the visual arts is still going strong. The MICA gallery, across the street from Terry’s UrbanBeat music venue, is currently home to an eye-popping exhibit of Terry’s own art, most of it generated by manipulating digital images.
Music got into the mix when Terry met art Professor Robert Weil, a community-minded, grassroots booster of art and music and a pioneering African American faculty member at Michigan State University.
Weil was all about breaking down barriers — economic, educational, racial. At the welcoming, warm jam sessions Weil and his wife, Judy, hosted in his East Lansing home, Terry felt comfortable enough to pick up the flute and learn to play by ear.
“I didn’t know how to play, and they were tolerant of me,” he said.
As Old Town embarked on its long, strange trip from gritty Bohemian enclave of the 1990s to boutique-y bustle of today, Terry never forgot the welcoming Weil vibe. He joined an amoeba-like collective that included himself, Weil, artist (and former Lansing Community College administrator) Jack Bergeron and the late, great Creole Gallery owner Robert Busby, the unofficial founders of a series of anarchic art and music “happenings” like Snake Rodeo and Art & Octoberfest.
Their successor events, JazzFest (first held in 1995) and BluesFest (first held in 1994), grew to encompass state and national talent while continuing to give local artists a unique outdoor showcase.
While living up to its name, JazzFest welcomes R&B, pop-rock, world music, fusion, Latin dance music and many other musical brushstrokes. A patchwork of grants, sponsors and donations helps the operation continue.
“We work hard to curate diversity, introduce new talents,” Terry said. “We’re not a big Newport Jazz Festival, so we have to work harder to find great talent in the price range we can manage with a free festival.”
Last year’s JazzFest headliner, powerhouse trombonist and composer Wycliffe Gordon, strolled into UrbanBeat and swung the room around his little finger.
Gordon, a former professor of jazz at MSU, has gone on to become the top player of his instrument and a jazz icon. His JazzFest gig was a benefit for a scholarship fund named after another MSU alumnus, drummer Lawrence Leathers, who died in 2019.
“Wycliffe is a great performer and storyteller,” Terry said. Terry introduced Gordon to phenomenal University of Michigan bass student and singer Reuben Stump, whose trio has performed at Urban Beat.
Terry wasn’t surprised when Gordon called Stump up on stage, subjecting him to a common trial of fire for younger artists, but he held his breath when Gordon told Stump to scat sing while playing bass.
“Reuben was brilliant. He kept up. The audience was into it too. It was one of those great moments,” Terry said. “I get chills just thinking about it. To be able to have those kinds of experiences, and be a part of it, is so cool.”
When the festivals are in full swing, streams of humanity pour down each sidewalk, with a thumping heart of music in the middle, and all is right with the world.
“It’s a little chaotic sometimes, but it’s nice and friendly, we’ve never had any issues,” Terry said. “People bumping into each other — that’s a good thing.”
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