Category: Upcoming Events

Fox Jazz Fest brings professionals and students alike to the stage for a touch of soul and spunk

By Kara Patterson • Post-Crescent staff writer • August 31, 2010

Homegrown heart and soul fuels this weekend’s Fox Jazz Fest, which features headliners with Wisconsin ties who have achieved widespread recognition in their fields.

Pianist Geoffrey Keezer, a California-based Eau Claire native whose 2009 album “Aurea” received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album, headlines Saturday, the first day of the two-day free and public event. Vocalist Janet Planet of Oshkosh performs Sunday and will feature selections from three professional projects.

The Jazz Corner Society, the event’s umbrella organization, offers the 17th annual festival to the community as a free gift of jazz celebration, education, enjoyment and appreciation, said John Harmon, a pianist and composer from Winneconne who is the festival’s artistic director and emcee.

“Geoffrey Keezer, he was an absolute prodigy,” Harmon said. “He has virtuoso talent and sometimes displays it, but often he can be very simple and quite elegant. I think that’s part of his maturity as an artist. I think probably Janet (Planet) is probably one of the top five jazz singers in the country, personally. … She is probably the most articulate singer, it’s so clear. Plus, she’s so evocative. She can make you cry, and she can make you laugh.”

The event, themed “Home Cookin’,” takes place from noon to 8 p.m. each day at Jefferson Park in Menasha.

Keezer brings to the fest music from his CD “Wildcrafted” and also from the newer “Aurea,” which he says is not typical Latin jazz.

“It’s Afro-Peruvian and Argentine folk music mixed with jazz,” he said. “I went to Peru in 2004 for a jazz festival there and met several Peruvian musicians. It was really inspiring so I decided to start a project and play some of that music. What happened in Peru is … they had a slave trade so there are a lot of African Peruvians living there. They developed a kind of music that’s really interesting. It’s kind of a hybrid of Caribbean music and West African rhythms and the Spanish flamenco mixed in with it and then the native Andean Indian music.”

Planet said her audiences can expect to hear material from “Of Thee I Sing,” a 2009 concept album that she calls “a musical love letter to our country”; “Janet Planet Sings the Bob Dylan Songbook,” an homage to Dylan’s songs of the 1960s; and “Love Letters from Cary Bluff,” a CD in production that is a tribute to the late musician Chris Swansen.

“There are songs that just groove and really pay tribute to the words, which is kind of my thing,” Planet said. “Then there are the sensitivities as well as the kind of fun, spunky, bluesy types.”

“Janet Planet Sings the Bob Dylan Songbook” is scheduled for nationwide release Sept. 15, Planet said, but she plans to sell pre-release copies at Fox Jazz Fest.

Harmon said the festival is reaching out to youth, for they are the next generation of jazz listeners and musicians.

The fest’s third annual Jazz Improvisation Competition, sponsored in part by Heid Music, selected two high school students from a seven-county application pool to solo Saturday with a professional ensemble.

First-place winner Mike Darling, a Hortonville High School sophomore who plays the drums, piano, vibes and guitar, will showcase his skills on three of the four instruments. Ana M. Nelson, a saxophonist and clarinetist from Berlin High School, also will take the stage.

“I really love just playing blues guitar and really soulful stuff so I picked ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.’ You can have the space you need for the guitar just to speak,” Mike Darling, 15, said. “And then for my vibes piece I picked ‘Mr. P.C.’ because it’s faster. For ‘Donna Lee,’ which is the other soloist’s choice, I’m taking the drum solo.”

For members of the Neenah High School Jazz Ensemble, one of several student ensembles that perform during the fest, there is excitement in seeing how far they’ve come and also what possibilities may lie ahead for them.

“It makes the students part of this genre, this language,” said conductor David Dunning, who encourages students to take in as much of the event as possible. “Two Neenah grads (John Schwerbel and Patrick Kelly) are out in California in school, and they just finished freshman year … they’re going to be playing a duo on Sunday afternoon. They’re slotted in just like some of the regular professionals. The students are excited that somebody they know from being in school with is now playing like that.”

The festival, which takes about $40,000 to run, relies on grants, donations and sponsorships to return each year, said Harmon, who said attendance last year amounted to about 3,500 listeners on Saturday and at least 2,000 on Sunday.

Planet said jazz is powerful, and she has noticed over the years how people have been affected by its honesty and heart.

“What it truly boils down to is hoping you bring love and compassion and hope to the listeners,” she said.

Source: Post Crescent News