Nothing can stop the music and musicians, not even a pandemic!
[Ed.’s note: Pianist-composer-arranger-conductor John Beasley‘s 40 years of musical creativity has resulted in an impressive discography, many film and television credits, nine years as music director of the International Jazz Day All-Star global concert, establishment of his big band MONK’estra, five Grammy nominations, an Emmy nomination for “Jazz at the White House”, extensive tours, and an eight-year tenure in trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s band.]
May 15, 2020 — Since I returned from my last concert March 9 in Vancouver with Dianne Reeves’ “Beleza Brazil” tour, I have had this repeating visual in my head. It’s the opening title scene of the 1960s TV series’ Get Smart, co-created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.
The scene goes like this: Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) approaches four doors. Cue the music:
- open then SLAM
- open then SLAM
- open then SLAM
- open then SLAM
I started getting phone calls about my scheduled concerts:
Lockdown Door 1: “Echoes of Ellington” with Frankfurt’s HR Big Band conducted by Jim McNeely, arranged by John Beasley –cancelled_SLAM!
Lockdown Door 2: International Jazz Day All-Star concert in Cape Town that I was to direct for the 9th year –cancelled_SLAM
Lockdown Door 3: The National Youth Orchestra’s (NYO) annual concert at Carnegie Hall and their South African tour in July –cancelled_SLAM. I was commissioned to write a song for this year’s repertoire and rehearse the orchestra.
Lockdown Door 4: Charlie Parker’s Centennial concert “Bird Lives @ 100” that I have been conceptualizing and writing with my co-conductor/arranger Swedish sax player Magnus Lindgren and was to have its world debut at the Hollywood Bowl August 28 –cancelled_SLAM
But, the last scene is that Maxwell Smart goes into a phone booth then disappears underground to solve problems. My phone booth is my studio, the BeasHive, at the back of my house. My mantra during the KAOS lockdown is Nothing can stop the music and musicians, not even a pandemic!
JJA Jazz Awards@ Blue Note Jazz Club, NYC
2016, © Grayson Dantzic
With my manager-wife, Lorna Chiu — my “99,” better even than the great Barbara Feldon, co-conspirator to Agent 86 Maxwell Smart, Lorna really deserves to share the byline for this piece, she took it down, I just dictated — and other close collaborators, we pivoted to @Home #TogetherApart ideas, and this became the adapted program:
Echoes of Ellington — My arrangement of “Wig Wise” was artfully presented featuring the musicians overdubbing their parts from their homes. Thank you, Olaf Stozler.
International Jazz Day @JazzDayAtHome — Instead of physically meeting with 30+ global jazz artists in South Africa, where we would have rehearsed then performed in front of a live audience with a live-stream to the world on www.JazzDay.com, the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz and UNESCO created a fun virtual global concert video blending scenes of musicians playing @Home with highlights from the previous global concerts held in Istanbul, Havana, Melbourne, the White House, Osaka, Paris, and St Petersburg. This virtual concert still showed the power music has on people: a healing and uplifting force and how it can bring people together, even virtually.
I submitted a trio performance with Brazilian drummer Kiko Freitas and Swedish saxophonist Magnus Lingren to the program. Deeply grateful to Tom Carter, Michelle Day and Herbie Hancock for your confidence in me.
SiriusXM Real Jazz — I was invited to be a guest host at SiriusXM Real Jazz for four days leading up to Jazz Day. I took this opportunity to interview Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Christian Sands, Dianne Reeves, Terrence Blanchard, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and Tom Carter (of the Hancock Institute) about insights on the power of jazz to bring people together. Hand over heart to Mark Ruffin.
I also did a virtual piano solo concert for Blue Note Tokyo’s Jazz Auditoria Festival to mark Jazz Day in Japan. To Sakae Kobayashi for being family.
Bird Lives @ 100 Concert Tour — The whole summer season at the Hollywood Bowl is now cancelled. LA Times reported that never has a season been cancelled in 98 years of its history, despite “WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam wars, the Depression, the Great Recession, through 9/11, all the floods, fires, riots and chaos in between.”
This Bowl concert was the kickoff; the others — in Sweden, Germany, and Irvine, California — are still in the books. We have postponed our spring ’20 audio recording and TV taping of the music with the Stuttgart SWR Big Band to a later date.
Can’t stop the Bird and the Beas! Hear a sample here! Thank you Laura Connelly and Darlene Chan for always believing in me!h
“Go as a River” — On my wall, I have this calligraphy by Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh. It’s the perfect message for a Lockdown. I’ve been going as the river flows. My record label Mack Avenue moved my new album MONK’estra plays John Beasley (EPK here) to an August 21 release date.
But as we know, this #TogetherApart is fraying around the edges. What helps sustain me is hearing that people are streaming more jazz and classical music during the lockdown than ever. That people are turning to music for an escape, relaxation, entertainment, to reach their inner selves during this time of the unknown.
For musicians, I share what Wayne Shorter says about playing jazz: “It’s like jumping into the unknown”. Keep playing, innovating, improvising in solitude, because who knows what unexpected art will emerge now that our that our minds aren’t as crowded and we’re not finding ourselves in airports or distant cities to which we’ve traveled for gigs.
Repeat my mantra: Nothing can stop the music and musicians, not even a pandemic!
Stay resilient.
[Ed.: Visit John Beasley onInstagram, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify.]
