face to face 40 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY september 26-october 2, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com If some mad—but extremely hip— scientist were asked to come up with a magic potion designed to find the ideal person to run the Monterey Jazz Festival, it would look and sound a lot like Darin Atwater. The 54-year-old wunderkind, named last year as the third artistic director— and the first African-American to hold the position—in the storied history of the longest continually running jazz festival in the world, checks all the boxes, and then some. The musician, composer and conductor is the founding director and conductor of the trailblazing Maryland ensemble Soulful Symphony. He’s also a former composer-in-residence for the Baltimore Symphony, whose performance of “Stranger in a Strange Land,” honoring the spiritual tradition, was widely acclaimed. And that’s just the short version of his daunting, but perpetually swinging, musical résumé. But he wears these formidable laurels lightly. In a Zoom conversation before his MJF programming debut Sept. 26-29, he spoke with enthusiasm about his commitment to honoring the festival’s past and the “bright moments,” in Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s phrase, he envisions for the future. Weekly: I see you’re mixing things up right from the start. Instead of the usual festival announcement just listing the lineup, you set the scene with an overall theme, “Crescendo in Blue,” which seems like a nod to Duke Ellington, on the 125th anniversary of his birth. Atwater: Absolutely. Jazz sometimes gets siloed into this very sophisticated, complicated art form, but we need a reminder of the lilt—jumping for joy, literally—of the big band era, with folks dancing and having a good time. Since then, we’ve sort of migrated to having it as a listening art. Embedding “Crescendo in Blue” is to remind everyone that as a philosophy of jazz and blues, we face adversity with joy and optimism. We overcome tragedy with hope. For this season, I was definitely targeting artists who were taking the same trajectory with their music. On Friday night, we have Jose James, who’s kind of jazz-adjacent—his latest project, 1978, is a very good approach. Then on Saturday we have Bobby Rush and the Blind Boys of Alabama, Joshua Redman and Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles. And on Sunday, we have Donald Lawrence—the first time we’ll have a gospel artist on the main stage. Getting back to Duke, his 1958 Newport gig marked a rejuvenation at a time when his career was struggling. Yes, at the time, he’d been on the road for 35 or 40 years, and big bands were kind of passé. I talked to Wynton Marsalis, and David Berger, who transcribed Duke’s works, and he told me that [tenor saxophonist] Paul Gonsalves was supposed to play maybe four or five choruses, and it turned into 27. It was like lightning in a bottle, man. In a similar spirit, it seems like you’re trying to draw on the festival’s tradition, while looking forward to new audiences and a sustainable future. In curating the festival, I wanted to be careful to make sure that the legacy was something we honored. We didn’t want to move too far left or right. But there are certain areas we’re tackling—to reach out to a millennial or to Gen Y, who are just getting acclimated to jazz, whether it’s hip-hop or pop-oriented soul. We also have a Record Store Day for the first time—they’ll have a store selling vinyl—and we have a panel (“Crescendo in Blue—Vinyl Past, Vinyl Future”). It speaks to the bridge we’re trying to build between the past and the present. For 67 years, Monterey has managed to anchor its True North with a straight-ahead jazz mission, and that’s something I’m very aware of. But you still want to be open to new approaches, different genres. That’s right—the spirit of jazz is one of innovation. Terence Blanchard was named the first Black artistic director of SFJAZZ last year, followed closely by word that you’re coming to Monterey. How conscious have you been of the historic dimensions of your position? I’ve done my homework in terms of [MJF co-founders] Jimmy Lyons and Ralph J. Gleason. The interesting thing about Jimmy’s era that a lot of people don’t know is that by the first or second year, he appointed [Modern Jazz Quartet leader] John Lewis as music director, and he curated the festival for about 15 years. Jimmy leaned into that very heavily. Without any affront to his role, he was very aware that he was more of a promoter and general manager, and he wanted an artistic lens. Through his San Francisco Chronicle column, Gleason also helped bring Bay Area rock bands to the festival and co-founded Monterey Pop. That sounds like something in the spirit of what you’re working toward. Absolutely. My thing is, how do we filter these different genres—whether it’s gospel, pop music, hip-hop or soul—through jazz. The Great American Songbook is a continuum that seems to have gotten amputated in the ’50s and ’60s. SFJAZZ did a great job of taking Stevie Wonder songs and giving them new arrangements. The more we can give popular music a platform at the festival, the more we engage the consumer. In addition to the Ellington tributes, it’s the centennial of Sarah Vaughan’s birth. It’s cool that Samara Joy, who won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition when she was only 20, is returning to the festival for the third time in another star turn. Just when we thought the lineage of Sarah and Ella Fitzgerald might be fading, in dropped Samara! And [vocalist] Sara Jones has the same sort of trajectory as Diana Krall—she’s the hardest-working musician in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I’ve been watching her for years, and wanted to raise her profile by getting her here. You shadowed retired artistic director Tim Jackson last year. Apart from that, have you spent much time in this area? I came to Monterey in 2010 to skydive for my 40th birthday. My dad was a paratrooper, and I grew up hearing how he jumped out of planes, and I promised him I would, too, one day. I chose almost the highest tandem in the world—18,000 feet, with 91 seconds of free fall. Beyond that, I was in Big Sur one year and it was getting dark. I didn’t want to get back on Highway 1, so I went to Cambria, and fell in love with it, returning to compose there. What changes do you see down the road, and what appeals to you most about the new gig? The three-day festival defines the Monterey Jazz brand. We’re trying to lean into a 365-day arts organization and what it might involve. We do Monterey Jazz on Tour; I love the idea of a resident jazz orchestra that builds a repertory and anchors itself inside our history. That interplay would be a lot of fun. Getting back to John Lewis, there’s a precedent for having a working artist inside of the festival’s history. I’ve conducted big bands and written and arranged for a lot of orchestras. So all the jazz artists sort of know me, as they say, as a cat. Spirit of Innovation Trailblazing Artistic Director Darin Atwater brings the 67th Monterey Jazz Festival to a new crescendo. By Paul Wilner Darin Atwater is the third artistic director in the 67-year history of the Monterey Jazz Festival. It’s another notch in his lengthy musical résumé. Daniel Dreifuss Monterey Jazz Festival
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