Green Music Center swings into new season with all-jazz weekend

Weill Hall at the Green Music Center will open its 2016-17 season on Oct. 1 and 2 with an all-jazz weekend for the first time in its five-year history, a nod to the beloved music born in America and arguably its greatest gift to the world.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, will be swinging into town the evening of Oct. 1 for the gala, opening concert, serving up a vast repertoire of tasty tunes written by such jazz legends as Count Basie and Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus.

During a free concert earlier in the day for young people who are enrolled in a music program, Marsalis and his orchestra will tell the inspiring story of jazz giant Duke Ellington, a piano player from Washington, D.C., who led a big band for 50 years and became one of America’s most respected composers, in any musical style.

“Wynton will talk about Duke’s life, influence and career, using musical examples to bring those to life,” said Todd Stoll, vice president of Education at Jazz at Lincoln Center, who works closely with Marsalis. “These concerts are geared toward students ... but even the adults love it.”

The offbeat rhythms of jazz will continue Oct. 2 with the return of the Buena Vista Social Club’s star singer, Omara Portuondo, who sang at Weill Hall last summer during the Cuban band’s farewell tour. The Cuban singer, who is 85 but still going strong, will be surrounded by six top talents in jazz, including pianist Robert Fonseca, clarinetist Anat Cohen and violinist Regina Carter.

Here are Stoll’s thoughts on the evolution of the Young People’s Concerts, the legacy of Ellington and his hope that music education will go “deeper than notes:”

Q: How did these Young People’s Concerts get started?

They are based on Leonard Bernstein’s iconic Young People’s Concerts. When Wynton decided to do these back in the ’90s, the family of Bernstein opened up the whole archive and let him look at the scripts. Basically, we try to tell the story of an iconic jazz artist, style or concept. So we’ve done concerts about Count Basie, the Swing Era and improvisation.

Q: Why focus on Duke Ellington this time?

Our orchestra was founded on Duke Ellington, and the first few concerts utilized the living members of his orchestra. He is arguably one of America’s greatest composers. He wrote well over 2,000 works that are documented and another 1,000 that are not. It’s the meat of the 20th century, from the 1920s to the 1970s, from horse-drawn carriages to space travel.

His music is some of the most complex, melodically rich and harmonically sophisticated music there is, yet still retains that American ideal of equality and democracy. So it’s easy to understand. It represents America becoming itself. “The world’s greatest duet” was a girl and a boy going steady. So there’s a romantic quality, and all of his music is danceable.

Q: This is the first time Weill Hall will open with jazz rather than classical music. Is jazz coming of age?

Wynton is a renowned classical artist. I have a masters in classical music. Yet we both recognize that the American arts are on the same level as the arts anywhere. That’s what we believe.

Q: You recently wrote an editorial in Time magazine that suggested it was a good time to rethink music education in the U.S. Can you elaborate?

I travel around the country a lot, and there’s a hunger from this generation of students for experiences that have depth and profundity. There’s also a generation of teachers who are looking for, as we like to say, something “deeper than notes.”

As music educators, it’s good to take a pause and reboot what we do. It’s not just about the concert or winning an award. We have a chance to change people’s lives and increase our shared humanity.

Q: Does that mean learning more about the history of jazz?

Our history informs us. A lot of people who created this music - first and second generations of jazz artists - gave their lives to it. They never came off the road or retired to the suburbs. They played music until they died.

So it’s our mythology, and Louis Armstrong is our Prometheus. He taught America to sing by deconstructing rhythm and melody. He’s the grandfather of American popular music. And he grew up in a level of poverty that was unimaginable. He was working on a coal cart in New Orleans at age 6. We have these amazing, inspiring stories that are the birthright of everyone in America.

Q: What advice would you give parents of young jazz musicians?

Don’t just take the kids to concerts. Take them to a smaller venue, a jazz club, where it’s much more immediate, a place where they can experience the celebratory nature of the music, where people are dancing.

The one thing about jazz that has always been apparent is that there are emotional aspects and aspects of romance. The kids are not going to understand completely the nature of that relationship between a man and a woman, but jazz combined with swing dancing gives us a way to teach rituals of courtship and respect for each other.

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.