pt at large

Jimmy Heath Quartet

Jimmy Heath Quartet
Jimmy Heath, tenor saxophone; Albert “Tootie” Heath, drums; Paul West, bass; Jeb Patton, piano
Concert at Jewett Hall, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
October 30, 2005

Close your eyes and roll back the clock five decades. Imagine sitting in a dimly lit lounge on the lower west side in New York City. It’s after most working people’s bedtime, you’re sitting at one of two dozen small disk shaped cocktail tables, your elbow not far from the patrons at the next table. Silvery gray cigarette smoke swirls through the spot lights trained on the tiny raised stage a few feet away. Ice clinks against highball glasses as customers sip scotch and talk in hushed tones. A man with a small build toting a big tenor saxophone walks quietly to the stage and begins to blow the sweetest swinging-est bebop you’ve ever heard. Jimmy Heath has come to town.

The superlatives about this 79 year old living legend were used up a long time ago. The man has shared bandstands with jazz greats of the twentieth century. Need a list? How about John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and more recently, Wynton Marsalis. Jimmy Heath began playing the horn in 1946 and he’s kept his groove for nigh unto sixty years. We should be so lucky to keep our grooves for just a chunk of that span.

Witnessing a concert like this in 2005 it’s impossible to ignore the poignant fact that his playing days are numbered. His star in the jazz firmament will always shine brightly. His music will remain, his presence will not. And don’t think that wasn’t on the minds of every boomer and twenty-something who jammed the Jewett Auditorium at Wellesley College on a recent Saturday night. We warmly applauded the man for the music he played at that moment, and for his contribution to the genre since the 1940s.

“Jimmy is one of the thoroughbreds,” said Miles Davis. Heath has performed on more than 100 albums, written more than 125 compositions, and seven suites and two string quartets. His compositions have been recorded by other artists including Cannonball Adderley, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, J.J Johnson, and Dexter Gordon. From 1987 to 1999, his career arc included a professorship at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queen’s College.

Heath was born into what’s been called jazz royalty. His older brother Percy was founder and the bassist for the Modern Jazz Quartet, a group that popularized jazz for the 43 years they were in existence. The actuarial tables caught up with Percy, who died earlier this year at the age of 81. Jimmy’s younger brother, Albert “Tootie” Heath, is a renowned drummer who’s played with the who’s who of American jazz and was part of tonight’s quartet.

These guys are not on a sunset reunion tour. The foursome was filled out with Paul West on bass and Jeb Patton on piano. West has performed with Ray Charles, Billy Holliday, Betty Carter, and Peggy Lee. Patton, the fourth member of the Heath Brothers group since 1998, is a former student of Jimmy Heath’s and a gifted pianist. Attired in dark suits and ties, they looked so very cool.

Their sets spanned a career and was like listening to the History Channel with a beat. The tempos of the songs varied but the jazz foundations didn’t. The songs were pitched by either Jimmy or the whole group, After that, each in turn got a piece of it stand on its head and give it back to the others. The underlying melody was never too far away, underscoring the group’s essentially swing heritage.

Arrangements like "Wintersleeves", with Jimmy’s tenor sax swooping up and down the keys; "On the Trail", a little riff on Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite; Thelonius Monk’s "Round Midnight"; "Gingerbread Boy" (written for Heath’s son); and "Day Dream" (written by Billy Strayhorn for Duke Ellington) were multi faceted musical diamonds whose sparkle was refracted through instruments in the hands of masters.

When we get close to royalty, whether it’s jazz, poetry, or theater, some of their greatness rubs off on us and we feel elevated a notch above our normal stations in life. For a brief moment last week, the celebrity dust from Jimmy Heath’s slim shoulders transported us to jazz heaven.

"Theater District", written by Richard Kramer

"Theater District", written by Richard Kramer
Roberts Auditorium at the Calderwood Pavilion, Tremont Street, Boston, MA
Presented by the Speakeasy Theater Company, resident theater company at Boston Center for the Arts
Runs from September 30 - October 29

Watching this performance of “Theater District” at the Roberts Auditorium in the Calderwood Pavilion, I felt like a voyeur. The characters on stage didn’t seem to be acting roles, they seemed to be living their lives. Their physical presence, the unforced delivery of lines, their natural mannerisms, gave me the feeling of being an invisible witness to a pivotal day in their lives. It felt mildly embarrassing, like it might be impolite for me to be listening.

Forty something actor turned restaurant-owner George lives with his partner Kenny, a gay-rights lawyer, and Kenny’s fifteen year old son Wesley. While Kenny is emotionally impotent to dial into his son’s unfolding life, George connects with Wesley, and is the one who generally knows the answer to the question, “Do you know who your child’s friends are and where he is?”

The play’s underlying theme is ignited one morning when Wesley asks his dad Kenny, “Do you think it’s a choice? ... You know, your general gayness?” Wesley’s best friend has just come out at a tenth grade school assembly. Kenny fumbles his answer, George recovers enough to keep the door open between father and son.

Wesley’s teenage angst and search for identity ring alarm bells to his mother Lola, with whom he spends weekends. She insinuates, after Wesley is beaten up defending his gay best friend, that Wesley’s living with two gay men is problematic, and his bond with George is more than platonic. The echoes of what she says and what she implies tear at George and Kenny, threatening to destabilize their comfortable relationship.

Supporting roles of Wesley’s friend Theo, Lola’s second husband Ben, and restaurant headwaiter Mario fit together with the familiarity of an ensemble cast.

The play’s ending walks a tightrope between concrete resolution and a sense that these characters have endured a brutal awakening and no matter where they go from here, may just have the tools to deal with the next storm.

Imaginative use of a video camera, a versatile two level set with several points of entry and exit, and spot lighting add to the sense of intimacy and tensions that simmer. Written by Richard Kramer, who has a solid portfolio of TV credits including writing and producing “thirtysomething’, “My So-Called Life”, and “Now and Again”, it is his first play.

In synch with part of the play's setting in George’s restaurant in the Theater District, Kramer’s play is julienned with dialogue that shows us dark little corners of the character’s psyches and the currents of struggle that eddy below the surface. Several memorable one-liners that Kramer pens are both hilarious and revealing, but he knows when to slow down and let what’s unsaid echo through the theater. The audience laughs, winces, and wonders.

The play's strength lies in a balance between showing and telling and offers enough ambiguity to stir the emotional guts of the audience. It make us wonder where we take sides in the human drama before us.

Claude Ledoux is this year's town historian

Thursday, October 20, 2005
Claude Ledoux is this year's town historian

It's hard to imagine anyone more vigilant in preserving the town's history than Claude Ledoux. And Mr. Ledoux has used every imaginable media to document local history, including video, literature and the computer.

The Westport Historical Society acknowledged those efforts at its annual meeting on Oct. 13 when it presented Mr. Ledoux with the 2005 History Award. The citation reads, "For his skill in saving the Westport past for the present and the Westport present for the future."

Beginning in 1993, Mr. Ledoux embarked on three initiatives to preserve local history. The cable access program "Westport Matters" documented the people and life in Westport around the turn of the millennium. It contained about 300 episodes and spanned 11 years.

"I estimate I spent about 1,500 hours and a few thousand dollars on this activity," Mr. Ledoux said.

Mr. Ledoux co-authored the booklet "A History of Westport in the 20th Century" with his good friend Carmen Maiocco, a project that lasted from 1993 to 1995.

"My part was to trace the evolution of the last century's events, which determined the status of Westport at the turn of the century and at the millennium. That project occupied a few hundred hours of my time," Mr. Ledoux said.

The third idea that preoccupied him was the ambitious project of inputting the official town records from 1787 to the present into computer format. With the help of a few others, Mr. Ledoux completed the conversion of records up to 1927, when they began to be typewritten, not handwritten. In the new computer format, the records are searchable and easy to reproduce.

"The conversion from 1927 to the present involved a monumental amount of work," Mr. Ledoux said. "Town Clerk Marlene Samson and (her assistant) Beverly Kut wore their fingers out finishing in that time frame," Mr. Ledoux said. "My best guess is that I spent about 1,000 hours on that project over the period of a few years."

Mr. Ledoux thanked his wife, Clarisse, for her forbearance while he was engrossed in these projects and thanked the society for the recognition of his work.

The Westport Historical Society's annual meeting also provided an occasion to introduce the newly appointed, part-time director, Jennifer O'Neill.

Ms. O'Neill has a background in museums and she spoke about the historical society from that perspective. She said that since 1990, the American Association of Museums has articulated a code of ethics that provides an ethical framework for three aspects of museum activity - collections, programs and governance.

Ms. O'Neill said Westport Historical Society has intuitively embraced the essence of this code. She said it now needs to articulate its mission to the public and set a standard for other institutions.

Ms. O'Neill summarized three major issues facing the society in the coming year - the Bell School house itself, the society's collection and growth of the organization.

As pluses, she counted the location of Bell Schoolhouse at the Head of Westport and its watertight nature as distinguishing characteristics and said the building itself was part of the historical society's collection.

While the interior space is adequate for displaying the present collection, on the down side, "The temperature and relative humidity levels inside the building pose a real threat to the collection it houses," Ms. O'Neill said.

Ms. O'Neill said there are reasonable, low cost, low tech ways to improve the situation. She said the first thing on her wish list is to monitor the interior environment and use the data to decide how best to resolve the problems.

"The greatest uptapped resource you have is the collection," Ms. O'Neill said. "We need to find out what we have, track its location and condition and record the significance of the objects and their meaning to Westport."

Ms. O'Neill said she wants to scan photographs in the society's collection and digitally photograph each object in the collection. These efforts will pave the way for developing high quality exhibits and educational programs, she said.

"We can set the standard for preservation and documentation. We can open the collection to researchers and offer access to Westport history to others in the community," she said.

Ms. O'Neill deferred discussing the society's growth until later in her tenure. She said the initiatives with the Bell School House and collection will help define how the society might evolve.

by Paul Tamburello

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