Last week, Louise Baranger suggested I attend one of the weekly (free) shows put on by the faculty of the Litchfield Jazz Camp at the Forman School in Litchfield.
"Jazz?" I muttered nervously, looking frantically through my datebook and hoping I was busy every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of the month.
Baranger wasn’t having any of it. A professional trumpet player, she managed to make all that jazz sound so appealing, so inviting, that I am planning to get to at least one of the remaining shows (every Tuesday and Thursday to July 31 and Wednesday, Aug. 1).
As a child of the ’70s, jazz to me means free-form, complex and somewhat squawky sounds played late at night in darkened boites where people nod somberly and smoke heavily as they groove to rhythms I can’t hear.
Baranger is the antithesis of that jazz scenario. She’s a statuesque blonde with an open and engaging manner, and just enough laid-back cool to make you feel that she can hold her own on a stage full of guys wearing dark glasses and wielding saxophones like extensions of their arms. The jazz she’s been playing since her childhood in Hollywood, CA, is the jazz that my father loves, a kind of big band, boppy, joyful music that says, "We understand the musical conventions but we’re not real uptight about them."
Her music isn’t about angry rebellion, it’s music that "swings." It’s this kind of music, she convinced me, that I’m likely to hear if I come to a faculty jazz concert at the camp.
Not every night, of course. Many jazz musicians, and many jazz fans, actually do want to, shall we say, challenge pop fans (like me).
"A lot of jazz musicians are standoffish from the audience," Louise conceded diplomatically when I brought this up. "They feel that the music should speak for itself, and it does — for the people who perform it. They interact with each other. That’s part of what jazz is."
Her philosophy, though, is that it doesn’t help to play music the audience doesn’t understand, or that’s "really out there harmonically."
"If we’re going to survive," she says, "we have to include the audience."
Not every performer in this concert series, or in the upcoming Litchfield Jazz Festival, will agree, she warned. But since these shows are put on by teachers, and since a large part of the audience is made up of students, it’s likely that every concert will include a bit of a road map that explains where the music is going.
"When I play, I explain," Baranger said. "I talk about the tunes, who wrote them, when they were written, the context — whether they’re big band, bebop, show tunes."
Baranger has played a bit of all of the above. A resident of Falls Village now, she grew up in Hollywood and began at a young age to play with some of the legends of the jazz genre, in studios out west and in nightclubs and shows back east.
She’s played with contemporary pop musicians such as Bobby Womack, Joe Cocker and Holly Near and with jazz greats that my father loves such as John Pizzarelli (son of the really, really famous Bucky Pizzarelli) and with Skitch Henderson.
She is most excited, at least at this moment, about the time she spends teaching at the jazz camp with tenor saxophonist Don Braden, who runs the camp (which was the brainchild of Vita Muir, who is director of Litchfield Performing Arts).
You might not have heard of the other faculty members who are onstage weekly at the Forman School, but a quick search of the Litchfield Jazz Camp Web site shows that they’ve all got remarkable backgrounds. Of particular interest to Northwest Corner residents: Peter McEachern; you used to be able occasionally to catch him playing with a jazz band made up of his students at Hotchkiss School.
The jazz camp concerts can also be a wonderful portal to the jazz über-event of the summer: The Litchfield Jazz Festival, which begins Aug. 1. Dave Brubeck returns this year. Other performers include Paquito D’Rivera, John Pizzarelli and Bebe Neuwirth (famous from television, film and Broadway).
To find out specifics about
upcoming jazz camp concerts (and the jazz festival) visit litchfieldjazzfest.com or call
860-567-4162. The faculty
concerts begin
at 7 p.m.
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