Healdsburg Jazz Festival honors Billy Hart

Listening to the music of internationally known veteran jazz drummer Billy Hart is a little like the musical equivalent of windsurfing: his drum beat lifts you up, then gently lets you back down; it leads first one way, and then another.

During his half-century career Hart, now 75, has played with all the greats - Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Stan Getz, Miles Davis and many more.

And yet Hart seems flattered, and mildly embarrassed, by the Healdsburg Jazz Festival’s decision to open its 18th annual, 10-day celebration of jazz next week with a two-day tribute to him, reuniting the drummer with collaborators from his own bands from the past four decades.

“As much of an honor as that is, it’s gonna be hard work,” Hart said with a laugh, speaking by phone from his home in Montclair, N.J.

After all, he’ll be playing every set for two days.

“I have to,” he said. “They’re my bands. They’re my musical concepts from the recordings that I’ve made.”

Hart will perform with his current group, the Billy Hart Quartet, as well as early ‘80s collective Quest, and two groups named for the albums they recorded with Hart: Enchance and Oceans of Time.

While the festival will feature many other acts, including 12-year-old Grammy-winning piano prodigy Joey Alexander, the Hart tribute will set the tone, demonstrating the wide range that jazz can encompass, from abstract experimentation to reinterpreted standards, not to mention virtually every culture in the world.

Jessica Felix, the founder and artistic director the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, thinks it’s high time musicians and fans paid tribute to Hart, who has played at 11 of Healdsburg’s 17 jazz festivals so far.

“Billy is pretty humble,” Felix said. “Billy and I were trying to remember when we first met, but it was in the ‘80s sometime. It’s been a great evolution, learning to know him. That’s the incredible part about Billy. Until you spend time with him, you don’t know his history and what he’s done, because he’s been there for everybody.”

The secret to Hart’s phenomenal, lifelong growth as a musician is his willingness to learn from everyone he has played with, said New York area tenor saxphonist Craig Handy, who has worked with Hart since the ‘80s and will appear with him at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival.

“Billy has made himself indispensable to almost anybody who was in need of a drummer,” Handy said, “and the way he did that was he learned everybody’s music, so if somebody needed a sub, they’d call him. Pretty soon, he was the main drummer. He’s been doing that for basically his entire career, with everybody he’s played with.”

In addition to his work as a musician, Hart also continues to teach music at Oberlin College in Ohio, Stanford University and elsewhere, including a workshop earlier this year at Sonoma State University.

“Jazz is American classical music,” Hart declares to students and colleagues alike. “Every culture on the planet Earth has a folk music that evolves into a classical music, so America did the same thing, just like anybody else.”

Even though his Healdsburg Jazz Festival appearance requires relearning some music he has not played in a long time, Hart looks forward to working with musicians from every stage of his long career.?“It’s exciting to get together with these guys again,” he said. “It’s like a family reunion.”

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.