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Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
(Photo: Gilberto Tadday)If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the equator, this would be a newsworthy event, as was this season’s hiring of 25-year-old saxophonist Abdias Armenteros, who’d frequently filled in for Walter Blanding in recent years. But the announcement stood out for a much more consequential reason: Tarantino, 32, is the first woman to become a permanent orchestra member since it became an official department of Lincoln Center in 1991.
Speaking alongside Nash during a Zoom call in mid-December from JALC’s midtown offices, Tarantino recalled looking to Nash as a “guiding light” since her years at Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Eastman School of Music and playing lead alto in the big band DIVA, Tarantino finally met Nash in 2017 when she enrolled at Juilliard, where he taught several of her classes. He was impressed with her take-charge attitude, “confident without being arrogant, very secure, but also open to learn and listen,” he said. “Once she started to sub in JLCO, I could tell she’d be an important voice. I could also tell she had things to work on.”
Nash, who has contributed some 200 charts to the band’s capacious book since 1998, continued: “Women in the schools think, ‘Here’s one of the greatest bands in the world, and it’s all men. Why should I continue doing this when it just seems like a dead end?’ Alexa’s presence in the band will inspire a lot of folks, particularly women. Her energy, youth and spirit make everyone feel good, and don’t detract from her unwavering seriousness about the music.”
Tarantino made a point of acknowledging top-shelf sister practitioners like saxophonists Camille Thurman, Nicole Glover and Erika von Kleist, trumpeter Tanya Darby and pianist Helen Sung, all consequential JLCO presences during the same time period.
“I appreciate the recognition as the first permanent woman, but you don’t need eyes to recognize if you like someone’s music or if they’re serious,” Tarantino said. “When I was younger, my parents instilled in me the mentality to get on the bandstand, take care of business and leave it all there — bring an energy that leaves the room better than when I first walked in.”
Tarantino brought those attributes to her initial JLCO sojourns, which coincided with a heavy touring schedule with Cécile McLorin Salvant and Artemis. “I had to balance a lot of musical things, focusing not only on doing my job correctly, but also my sound, my improvising, my language and my style,” she said. “I was lucky to be with people who wouldn’t tiptoe around me. I don’t want Ted and Sherman [Irby] and Wynton [Marsalis] to speak to me differently than anyone else. I need them to tell me when it’s not sounding right, because I want to fix it.
“I still have in-depth conversations with Wynton about demanding more of yourself every second you’re on stage, to play with commitment and fearlessness, even in making a mistake, as if each time might be your last. For a long time he’s told me, ‘When you walk in a room I don’t want people thinking, “Oh, Alexa is so nice; she’s the woman who plays the saxophone.” I want people to almost gasp, “I’ve heard about Alexa; her playing is so intense.”’”
She recalled struggling with Marsalis’ brisk flute piece “Ballot Box Bounce” from JLCO’s album The Democracy! Suite (Blue Engine) while touring with the band in Europe last summer. “Wynton called it spontaneously as an encore. We can do the melody because we got the technique together, but it’s super tricky to improvise on a fast, angular, ‘Rhythm’ changes-esque, Wynton-like chord progression. One time I felt horrible about my solo. I went to Wynton later and said, ‘I’m so sorry; that was rough.’ He said, ‘You don’t need to apologize. You had it, but I could tell you got in your head at one point.’ Then he said, ‘Did you see how when you came up with this idea, you changed the rhythm section’s whole concept?’ — and he mentioned three other things.”
Nash connected with Marsalis after nailing the Rhapsody In Blue clarinet cadenza on Marcus Roberts’ 1996 Portraits In Blue album (Sony Masterworks), witnessed in the studio by Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. “Wynton asked Stanley, ‘Who’s he?’ Stanley said, ‘It’s Ted Nash. He played with Mel Lewis for 10 years.’ I’d been in awe of Wynton since the ’80s, and thought it would be amazing to play with him. I met him a few times backstage at festivals, and he’d been cool and aloof. But after the session, he told me, ‘I like your playing. Why don’t you come out and do some gigs with my band?’ We went to Europe, did the Hollywood Bowl, made the record Jump Start And Jazz [Sony Masterworks]. Then in 1998, Sherman told me he was leaving to join Roy Hargrove. A few months later, they asked me to join.”
A Los Angeles native, Nash, 64, had toured with Don Ellis, Lionel Hampton and Quincy Jones before he turned 18; after moving to New York in 1980, his resume included the run with Lewis and tenures with Benny Goodman and Gerry Mulligan. “I was used to playing older music, but I hadn’t dealt with Duke’s music, and I was a bit naive about it,” Nash said of the Ellington-saturated programs that constituted his first full year in the band. “I thought, ‘What did I get myself into? Now I’m going to play “Satin Doll” every night for 365 days.’ I wasn’t thinking about The Tattooed Bride, A Tone Parallel To Harlem, Sunset And The Mockingbird and all those suites. Wynton, Joe Temperley, Wes Anderson and Marcus Printup taught me how to interpret that music.
“I was genuinely nervous around Wynton that first year, like I had to prove myself. I remember a concert where I traded solos with Victor Goines on a slow blues. I played a bunch of cliché licks and got some house. Blues wasn’t really my thing. On break, Wynton goes, ‘Can I rap to you for a moment?’ ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Man, you’ve got play you. You can’t be playing all that cliché stuff.’ Wes Anderson walked by and saw the look on my face. Wes said, ‘I’ve been there’ — and he kept walking. Wynton isn’t afraid to tell you the truth, but he’s not afraid to hear the truth, either. I learned that you could tell him, ‘I think you’re rushing that phrase.’ He’ll say, ‘Yeah, let’s try it again.’ It was important to learn that this guy, one of the greatest musicians of all time, comes every day to learn and make the music the best it can be.”
A decade later, Tarantino, initially an alto player who delved into doubling during high school, took inspiration from the tonal personalities of Nash and Irby via JALC’s Essentially Ellington program. She took note of Marsalis and the band performing Ellington’s music Tarantino recalled looking to Nash as a “guiding light” since her years at Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut.. “It was a childhood dream to play in that band,” she said. “What touched me most from the entire experience was understanding the values within the ensemble and the culture of JLCO on and off the bandstand — the camaraderie, teamwork and attention to detail, the no-ego, looking out for each other, the respect and friendship, knowing when to give people space and when to bond. It struck me so deeply that I wanted to spend my life doing it. I had no other choice at that point. It wasn’t about being the best soloist or the best improviser. It’s that family aspect, the beautiful blend of souls in the orchestra as new people come in.”
After concluding her final audition round for Juilliard, which Marsalis attended, Tarantino got a call asking if she’d be willing to sub for Nash for a couple of weeks. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t even care what happens with Juilliard. This is it.’ Until then, I hadn’t realized the level of intensity that Wynton and the band members demand from each other. I thought I was working hard, practicing and being as diligent as possible. But it cracks open a whole other level of what you demand of yourself musically and creatively. It’s always best to be surrounded by people who are better than you. You have no choice but to rise.”
Enhancing that process of continuous personal development, Tarantino added, is JLCO’s rigorous rehearsal schedule: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., two to four times a week. “The freelance world doesn’t always provide that consistent level of attention to detail and support in terms of making the music great,” she said. “This band is full of characters, and the collection of personalities is exactly what makes it unique. JLCO emerged directly from the lineage of the surviving members of Duke’s band, but it’s taken a life of its own, based on the lives of the members.
“I sometimes tell students we’re like a sports team. If one person’s having an off-day, the rest pick up the slack. With other bands, it can be easy to check in, do the gig and check out, because you’re rightfully focused on getting to the next gig. Or, if you’re able to be fully in the moment, you might not get to play with that group of people on every gig, because bands have to shift according to what’s going on any given night in New York. We’re in a privileged position, one where challenging ourselves to express at the highest level comes first. Everybody brings this vulnerability, this seriousness. That’s the magic combination.”
Nash noted that this process also has its costs. “The schedule is intense,” he said. “At a certain point, you realize that your life is out on the road, dedicated to 35-plus weeks a year of one thing. Fortunately, all the music and writing and everything we do feeds into and helps develop other aspects of our musical personalities in other environments. But when we’re riding the bus six hours between cities, I have to write some music. I’ve got my computer, my keyboard, my headphones. I’m calling people, setting up stuff for next time I have two free weeks. Alexa will have to figure out how to manage this intense schedule and all this music, and then continue to be a creative person and do her own projects. I started to do that pretty well, but I reached a point where I’m not getting to some projects the way I want. So this felt like the right time to leave, to give me space to dedicate time and energy to things I’d put on the back burner.”
Apart from developing friendships and relationships with each person in the band as she begins her JLCO journey, Tarantino intends to focus on outreach and inclusivity. “There are assumptions in the community around the band’s style or Jazz at Lincoln Center as a whole,” she said. “The challenge is to help people see beyond a single snapshot of the band from 15 to 25 years ago, to realize what it’s grown into and what it’s doing to connect with audiences around the world. I’m proud to be part of this organization because of its work bringing this music to people who need it most, to help students who have that spark to see a path forward for themselves. It’s not that we’re looking down from our hall on the fifth floor. It feels we’re at the front door, saying, ‘Come on in, and see this view.’” DB
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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