Jazz artist goes from Known amongst jazz aficionados as one of the genre's more lyrical alto saxophonists, Bobby Watson has left the hard-knock life of the touring musician for a teaching position in his hometown of Kansas City, Mo.
touring to teaching
Bobby Watson prefers
By Gary C. W. Chun
innovation to same old jazz
GChun@starbulletin.comAnd it won't be at some local, small-time school. Where once, earlier in his career, he had been the musical director of one of the greatest bands that regularly accepted young and promising musicians, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Watson will be teaching again, this time in a university setting. In March 2000, he received an endowment naming him a distinguished professor in jazz studies and director of its program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music.
"The conservatory chair is a lifetime position and a tenure track position," he said by phone from his Kansas City home. "The faculty and myself are still molding the program and beefing it up. It's definitely a work in progress."
In addition to recruiting students from in and around the region and metropolitan area, Watson said there are plans to do joint concerts with the dance, classical and opera departments, and possibly a cultural exchange with Cuba some time in December.
Watson seems to have always been arranging and composing, ever since he seriously picked up the alto sax as a teenager and did charts for his high school band. He later trained, at the suggestion of his friend, guitarist Pat Metheny, at the University of Miami, along with other future notables Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Danny Gottlieb. After graduating in 1975, Watson moved to New York, where he made a name for himself with Blakey's band, becoming its musical director from 1977 to 1981.
"I was sitting in with a band at the Storyville club in New York," he said, "and a friend of mine brought Blakey in one night to check me out. Afterward, Blakey wanted me to join the Messengers, but it took a good three months for that to happen.
With Henry Kapono Bobby Watson Quintet
Where: Kapono's, Aloha Tower Marketplace
When: 6 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $45 reserved; $35 general in advance; $40 at the door
Call: 637-3139
"In the four and a half years I was with him, I learned, when I became his musical director, to delegate authority amongst the other band members and to pace myself. Blakey himself taught more by example."
Near the end of Watson's own tenure with the band, a then-precocious trumpeter by the name of Wynton Marsalis became a Messenger.
"Wynton came on near the end of my stay with Blakey, just a 17-year-old," he said. "It was nice playing with him, full of energy, and one of the best instrumentalists I know."
Watson thought it was just a matter of time that Marsalis would make a name for himself, and sure enough, Marsalis is now the musical director of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
"I knew he was going do something big," Watson said. "He had a great amount of potential back then, so all this doesn't surprise me. He really loves music, although I wish he weren't as conservative as he is in presenting jazz to the public.
"There's too much retro stuff out there now -- not much original material, and a lot of recreations," he said. "There's a cookie-cutter approach to the music, and you just can't divide it up like that. The music should reflect the times the players are living in now. The '50s and '60s are gone!"
After leaving Blakey, Watson played in a wide range of groups, from drummer Panama Francis' tradition-minded Savoy Sultans to the hard bop of saxophonist George Coleman's band to Sam Rivers' avant assemblage, Winds of Manhattan.
"Sam was always open to ideas and a major influence on my music. Other like-minded musicians I've admired as well include Hamiet Bluiett, David Murray and Lester Bowie from the Art Ensemble of Chicago."
Watson's trip to Hawaii has been two years in planning, and he's obviously eager to play both here and Maui (where he and his band were last night). His quintet includes his longtime business and musical partner Curtis Lundy on bass, Orrin Evans on piano, Greg Skaff on guitar and relative newcomer Montez Coleman on drums "from New York, who's played with people like George Cables, Nicholas Payton and Wynton."
Watson said local audiences can expect the quintet to play "acoustic modern jazz in the tradition."
"I've been writing for so long -- I've been on 25 records, both my own and others' projects, to date -- so you can expect a cross-section of my stuff, compositions that may be familiar to regular jazz listeners, such as 'Time Will Tell,' 'In Case You Missed It' and 'Wheel Within A Wheel.'
"My compositions the group plays is a reflection of my life. It's jazz as I see it," he said.
It's swinging, upbeat, filled with the influential voicings of Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker. "Hodges is definitely in my playing, if not the main influence on my music. And with Bird, I do it my way, with his spirit in mind."
For local jazz fans, they should count themselves fortunate that Watson was even able to make the Hawaii gigs. "Last Tuesday morning at 11, my wife and I turned on the TV to check on the weather in Milano, Italy, where I was going to fly to later in the week for a concert. When we saw what happened, we called our kids, who go to school in New York and live in midtown Manhattan, to turn on the TV just before the other plane hit the second tower."
His children are OK and, needless to say, Watson didn't fly to Europe and get stranded there. But after playing here, he and the band plan to fly to Newark, N.J. to record a long-overdue album for a new independent label, Palmetto. His last project was the 1999 release, "Quiet as it's Kept," for the Italian import label Red.
But the university "gig" is one he's most appreciates. "The position at the university is a continuation of my ongoing role as a teaching musician. It's an opportunity that I love, whereby I both have an endowed professorship and the ability to maintain an outside career, as well. Now I don't have to take every kind of club and touring gig that comes through the door."
Watson is directing two big bands and five combos at the university, working not only on material of his own, but bringing in the charts of giants such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones and Jimmie Lunceford.
"It's a good education for me, as well. The Smithsonian Institution has also gotten to me additional charts by Billy Strayhorn and Dizzy Gillespie.
"It's good to get off the treadmill. It was wearing me down and traveling has become more difficult for me, especially over the last five years. I'm blessed right now, considering how a lot of my fellow musicians in New York City lost gigs over the past weekend, and how the terrorist attacks have affected everybody in the whole music industry."
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