This Sunday, July 11, beginning at noon, Portsmouth’s Prescott Park will be the site of one of the area’s longest-running music events as the 15th annual Tommy Gallant Jazz Festival hits the park’s main stage. As in years past, the emphasis is straight-ahead, mainstream jazz featuring a mix of local and nationally known talent. 

 

Appearing at this year’s event will be guitarist Jon Wheatley’s quartet, the Press Room Trio with guests Jeff Stout on trumpet and Ted Casher on woodwinds, the Mark Shilansky Trio with guests Kim Nazarian on vocals and Jay Ashby on trombone, and, rounding out the day, local stalwarts the Seacoast Big Band. 

 

The festival is a joint venture between the Prescott Park Arts Festival and the Seacoast Jazz Society Festival Fund, along with the cooperation of the New Hampshire Library of Traditional Jazz at UNH, the Harry Jones concert at UNH, and the Seacoast Jazz Society. The festival is organized by Dave Seiler, coordinator of the Jazz Program at UNH, and Ben Anderson, director of the Prescott Park Arts Festival.

 

While all the Seacoast performers are well known to local jazz fans, some words on the visiting performers are warranted. Guitarist Jon Wheatley is an active performer in the Boston music scene, leading his own groups and performing with a host of other ensembles, notably with Craig Ball’s White Heat Swing Orchestra. Among the musicians in his group on Sunday will be bassist Marty Ballou, who has worked with a wide range of jazz and blues artists and will also be performing with the Press Room Trio; drummer Gary Johnson, a South Shore musician who powers the Artie Shaw Orchestra, as well as a number of jazz groups in the Boston and Providence area, including several bands led by his father, the late Dick Johnson. Rounding out the group will be Rhode Island-based saxophonist Bob Kolb, whose lyrical approach will make its local debut at the festival.

 

Jeff Stout and Ted Casher are two prominent Boston-based performers making a return to the festival this year. Stout is one of the most well-rounded trumpet players in jazz today, with the ability to play the genre’s entire spectrum with ease and imagination. Stout has played with a number of notable jazz artists, including a stint in the early 1970s band of drum legend Buddy Rich, and has taught at the Berklee School in Boston for several years. Casher is no stranger to local residents, having appeared in the area since the early days of the old Portsmouth Jazz Festival in the ’80s. Casher appears regularly at The Press Room and actively gigs around the Boston area. He’s a fluid performer on saxophone, clarinet and flute.

 

Making her debut at the festival this year is vocalist Kim Nazarian, a powerful and incisive performer who is deserving of far greater recognition. A founding member of the vocal ensemble New York Voices, she is a dynamic and highly creative performer who covers a broad spectrum in the jazz idiom, as well as an engaging personality whose performances are filled with joy and spontaneity. She often works in collaboration with her husband, trombonist Jay Ashby, who returns to the festival as a featured performer. Ashby has worked with a variety of artists in the jazz and Latin jazz arenas, including the Cuban-American woodwind virtuoso Paquito D’Rivera. Ashby’s sound on the trombone is warm and rounded, and he is an imaginative improviser who is capable of going in several different directions with his music.

 

It seems hard to believe that 15 years have passed since the first of these festivals took place in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Portsmouth Jazz Festival in the spring of 1996. Fortunately, Dave Seiler, the late Tom Gallant and the late Paul Verrette had the foresight to approach Prescott Park about continuing the tradition, and the Seacoast Jazz Festival was born. 

 

Gallant’s name was added to the event in 1999 after his death in late ’98. While I’ve been critical of this event in the past, mostly for its continued use of the same local acts every year, there is no doubt that bringing in performers like Kim Nazarian and Jay Ashby is a step in the right direction. I still have the same criticisms, but I’m also thankful that there is still a good summer jazz festival in one of the most beautiful settings in Portsmouth.

The Jazz Journalists Association, an international organization made up of journalists, media members and other promoters of jazz, recently held their annual JJA Awards Ceremony in New York City, where the organization is based. Space limitations prevent me from listing all the winners in the 41 categories, but a few worth mentioning include saxophonist James Moody, who won the JJA Lifetime Achievement Award; pianist/composer Vijay Iyer, who won the Musician of the Year Award; Maria Schneider, who won for Composer of the Year; Joe Lovano, who won both Record of the Year for his Blue Note recording “Folk Art,” and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year; and Darcy James Argue, who took the Up & Coming Artist of the Year award and whose big band the Secret Society won for Large Ensemble of the Year. 

 

Winners in other individual instrumental categories included bassist Dave Holland, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, flutist Nicole Mitchell, violinist Regina Carter, clarinetist Anat Cohen and pianist Kenny Barron. 

 

The JJA Awards are an important event that gives proper recognition to jazz by honoring those who create, promote and perpetuate the music. It would be interesting to see a visual media outlet such as PBS or maybe a cable network like HBO step up and broadcast this event in an effort to make jazz a more visible medium to the public. While jazz will always be relegated to the status of a niche music, attention from a high-profile media outlet would help elevate its profile in the United States, allowing a wider audience the opportunity to see and experience how truly American this music really is.