'They Know So Much Music': The Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival

Talk to most jazz folk in or from the Washington, D.C. region, and they'll sing the praises of Paul Carr, tenor saxophonist and jazz educator. He's released several albums as a leader, and many more as a sideman; after decades of private teaching, he also founded The Jazz Academy Of Music, which provides summer camps, year-round instruction and regular ensembles for students in the D.C. metropolitan area.

He's also now a festival impresario. Tonight and tomorrow, he and the Jazz Academy present the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival in Rockville, Md. It's the successor to the former East Coast Jazz Festival, put together by the late vocalist Ronnie Wells — herself an influential performer and educator. The bill this year includes plenty of straight-ahead jazz: hometown heroes and rising stars will mix it up with Marc Cary, Mulgrew Miller, Terrell Stafford, Bobby Watson and Lewis Nash.

It's also put together and run largely by African American musicians: a rarity throughout the history of presenting jazz, through the present day. And owing to its roots in jazz education, plenty of student ensembles will perform as well. On the eve of the action, I spoke with Paul Carr on the phone about the things that set the Mid-Atlantic Festival apart.

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So who was Ronnie Wells, and why was she important?

Ronnie Wells was a vocalist and an educator. Basically, she educated a lot of the vocalists [in the area], and taught at the University of Maryland. ... And she was a great performer. She started the East Coast Jazz Festival 15 years ago. The festival just grew and grew with every year, and she made it bigger and better.

And I think the unique thing about it was that the festival was right in the middle of the winter. Right in, like, President's Day weekend, so you got all those mid-winter doldrums, blues. So, under this one roof, when it's cold outside, you had all of this jazz going on.

What surrounded this was jazz education. Because that's what she did.

You're an educator, and she was an educator. Why run this jazz festival with respect to education? What does a festival do for it?

 

Well, I'll tell you. Our audience for jazz is getting older and older by day. And that's how we keep this music alive, is by targeting and gearing everything to young people.

I gave my first saxophone lesson when I was in college, and it never seemed like it was hard for me. It really never seemed like work — it seemed like I was just reinforcing the stuff that I was trying to learn. 'Cause jazz is a lifelong pursuit — you will never master it. By me teaching all the time, it's like I'm still learning.

So the education part of it — I think it's most important. Jazz is learned through listening. I know this is going to [sound] bad for the other jazz educators out here, but: we can suggest things to the people that want to learn jazz, and have them learn certain rudiments and things, but basically, we're kind of teaching them how to listen. And so that's why the festival is so great. We bring in all of these pros, and young people can listen to all these pros.

When you say young people, there are young people at different levels. There are the people who you help teach through the Jazz Academy — there are also young artists, too.

Right, and that's the thing about the festival: some of the young artists that are on the festival, I taught through the Jazz Academy. And now they've gone on, and are leading their own bands in New York City and whatnot, and around the world. So it's really gratifying for me to invite them out to play at this festival. Because it's just like a cycle. Now the younger people that I teach at the Jazz Academy now, they can see that there's someone five years older than them that's now on the festival, that's a featured artist, that's actually playing and touring and has CDs out. It's letting them know, 'Hey, I can do this,' you know?

There are two things that strike me about this festival as unique — in addition to this education component, and the fact that it's in mid-winter — one, that it's an artist-run festival. It's organized and put together by musicians themselves, which is now more common than it once was, but it's still not the way that it's done everywhere. Do you think this affects the way that it's run at all?

Well, I'm certainly an artist, and I'm putting it together! There are some guys, there are people who have put festivals together who are not artists, and really do a great job at it. But I think that there are less and less people who really know the music like that. That's why it's good to have an artist — the artist is usually the artistic director, so that helps too, so even if someone who's not an artist is running the festival, they're working really closely in tandem with an artist.

Because you need an artist's perspective, I feel, to set up some of the acts and programming. Now, there are some people who set up programming for jazz festivals, and they just go down the list. 'I've seen this name before, and I've seen that name before, so let me get them.' You know? Sometimes that works, and often times it really doesn't. Because you have to know your demographic that's successful to you, and you have to know what the artists do. So that's why I think you're seeing more artist-run festivals, or at least the artist is giving their heavy consulting to people who run festivals.

It's also special because it's, to be frank, African American artists who are running this festival. It's not something that's seen a terrible lot these days.

Right. I think the East Coast [Jazz Festival] audience was predominantly African American. I played with Ronnie Wells, the previous organizer of the festival — you know, I was her saxophone player. And so I know the audience: the audience was predominantly African American.

And I feel, in a lot of ways, that audience is kind of underserved, when you look at jazz festivals around the country, and possibly even around the world. I had that in mind, setting up the festival. So that was something that you take into account, because they have favorites — there are some artists that, [although] they might be very, very popular in the media, they might not work as well for our audience.

And I'll tell you something: my aim is to grow the audience. I would like to have the audience be more diverse in years to come. That's my hope; that's my aim.

There's also a lot of "local artists," or folks who are based in the area, who are getting the attention of what is hopefully a "national" festival. Do you feel that you're trying to put local artists on the map?

Oh, no no no — well, the thing — we like to say "regional," or as you say, artists who are based in the area. Of course, I live in the area, so I think there are some of the greatest musicians that live in this Washington [D.C.] metropolitan area. And they need to be showcased; it's just simple as that. If I feel like someone needs to be showcased, then I would make that opportunity available to them. I mean, if the person lives right across the street from me, or across the Beltway, it really doesn't matter to me.

Because when you really think about it, more and more musicians are moving away from New York — if you want to call New York the hub, or the Mecca, or whatever. Now, with the way the Internet is, and travel and things, there are artists living all over the country. So location really doesn't matter: it's more about what artists — if they're deserving the opportunity.

Just looking at the lineup, there are all these great older folks who don't make as many headlines as they once did, but who are still making really great music. I think of Bobby Watson or Mulgrew Miller in particular. Is there a conscious decision to bring folks like that into the fold?

Well, these are all musicians that I love — I just happen to love these musicians. They also — they know so much music. They have so much music, meaning jazz music, available to them. They are such a source that I think people need to hear these musicians. I mean Mulgrew Miller — I can't even describe how great he is! And how important he is to jazz music! I would like my kids that I teach to have access to him. I would like for them to come in, and sit down, and he talks — and whatever he says, they listen to him. Because he has so much music available to him. So when we're setting up a festival, those kinds of things are taken into account, more so than someone who is on the cover of a magazine or something like that.