![]() Ars Nova Workshop spearheaded the event as part of its ongoing concert series. And some of Philly's more "outside" players were already engaged elsewhere on Saturday: A big band led by saxophonist Bobby Zankel was performing in collaboration with AACM leading light Muhal Richard Abrams. It remains the home base of Marshall Allen and the Sun Ra Arkestra, who have done DIY music promotion for decades. The city boasts a rich avant-garde legacy as well. ![]() All these elements converge to give Philly jazz a kind of gritty, groove-oriented populism, readily apparent at the CCJF. Gamble & Huff, the famed soul and R&B producers, pioneered a "Philly Sound" that rivaled Motown in influence, and many jazz musicians came on board as session players. The impact of organ greats Jimmy Smith, Don Patterson, Shirley Scott and Trudy Pitts is still widely felt. John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson and countless others came from the city. "Music is kind of way down on that list."īut Philly music history is easily as rich as Nashville's, Boone noted, and its stylistic range is arguably broader. "When people think of us they think of Rocky, the sports teams, they think of cheese steaks and hoagies," he says. Otherwise, he said, "We just went to the people, and the people showed up, just like they showed up today."īassist Mike Boone, a mentor to many younger players in town, looks at Philly as an undervalued music capital. Stuart did line up advertising support from Yelp and Philadelphia Magazine a donation from the coffee maker L'Aube Torrefaction and free live sound and recording from Turtle Studios. But in spite of this, the CCJF had to fend for itself. Conference of Mayors) and spoke of his own personal stake in Philly's jazz culture. (In fairness, he added, "We had just launched the Kickstarter a week before, and we'd only raised about $1,500 at that point.") To his credit, Mayor Michael Nutter held a press conference on Jazz Day (April 13, as declared by the U.S. Stuart sought government help early on, but a meeting with officials "wasn't very fruitful," he said. To walk here is to see immediately how events like CCJF can brighten urban spaces. Today Sansom Street is hardly pretty - a narrow and often malodorous lane of dumpsters and parking garage exits - but also decently sprinkled with businesses. (One venue, Milkboy, is on neighboring Chestnut Street.) Val Brown, a patron at Fergie's and an area resident in the '70s and '80s, recalled how Sansom was once blighted, a shell of abandoned industry, "the street you hurried past to get to Market Street." The four CCJF venues are mostly dotted along Sansom Street downtown, near the stretch of Broad Street known as the Avenue of the Arts. But for one day - possibly the most significant day for Philly jazz in years - these establishments came together for a grassroots showcase of one of the city's greatest cultural assets.Įrnest Stuart, founder of the Center City Jazz Festival, performs during a mid-afternoon set with his quartet. Fergie's, an old-school Irish bar, and Milkboy, a coffee shop and rock venue, do not. Of these, Chris's Jazz Café and Time Restaurant book jazz regularly. ![]() On Saturday afternoon, he booked 16 bands at four venues within short walking distance. Buoyed by a Kickstarter campaign, which exceeded its goal of $16,000, Stuart took a cue from New York's Undead and Winter Jazzfests. The Center City Jazz Festival is the brainchild of trombonist Ernest Stuart, 28. There was a larger goal as well: to revive a year-round jazz presence in Philadelphia, where the jazz club scene has all but collapsed. last Saturday, and the dim carpeted room upstairs at Fergie's Pub was starting to fill up.įor the next six hours, Dean, a saxophonist, and his fellow bandleaders would strive not only to honor the legacy embodied by Heath and others, but also to bring forward their own art, a music of today. The Wade Dean Enspiration, a gutsy young quintet, led off the festival with "Gingerbread Boy" by Jimmy Heath, one of Philly's many homegrown jazz legends. From the first downbeat of the first Center City Jazz Festival in Philadelphia, you could hear history in the air - and maybe history being made.
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