Metro Pulse/Music/Knoxville Jazz Orchestra

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What:
Knoxville Jazz Orchestra

When:
Every first Monday of the month

Where:
4620

How much:
$5

The Knoxville Jazz Orchestra tries to woo new fans

by Jonathan B. Frey

The Knoxville Jazz Orchestra's year began on the first Monday of 2004 with a handsel, a sonic gift of promise. And while the setting—4620's basement blend of retro-meets-country-meets-industrial-chic—might suggest irrepressible whimsy, the KJO projected an undeniable singularity of intent.

"Developing an audience, that's a true jazz audience, is a challenge. I think we're making progress," says KJO director Vance Thompson. "I think there's a lot more potential in Knoxville that's unrealized as far as people that haven't heard this kind of music or don't realize the band exists or don't realize that this is something that they would enjoy. Those are things that we're grappling with and trying to build."

There's a disturbingly business-like feel to this whole audience development/growth thing, a tenacious fiscal mentality that drives commercial awareness, dissociated from the music, yet inexorable. Thompson expresses it in terms both uncomfortable and hesitating: "Targeted advertising is an art form. To advertise you really have to think of the band as a commodity that you're selling. As a musician it's hard sometimes to make that adjustment to your thinking. You want to do it without compromising yourself so much that the band loses its character or that you end up doing a bunch of things no one is excited about playing. You have to balance it...between things that might get a lot of people's attention versus things that aren't really exciting for the musicians and that offers...a lot of bang for people's bucks if you can get people to show up."

Certainly, the product's unquestionably solid. Since the KJO's founding by Thompson in 1999, it's been out there. There are the gigs about town at local clubs and schools. There have been three CDs of standards, Thompson originals and Donald Brown material, including 2002's accomplished a year in the life of the band. There have also been local concerts featuring "name" players—delivering to Knoxville some of jazz's finest—most recently pianist Mulgrew Miller, but also alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, pianist Monty Alexander, and tenor saxophonist Don Braden. There's also been the broader exposure of 2001's European tour, culminating in the well-regarded appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival. And of course there is regular monthly gig at Club 4620, its paper ceiling lamps and cement acoustics rising to meet the challenge of KJO's dynamics.

Even this regular gig's a tactically engineered affair. Irrespective of geographical location, a contemporary jazz orchestra's audience is not only relatively small compared to most pop acts, but also uniquely bifurcated. On the one hand there are advocates of traditional repertoire, the American songbook, arrangements of classic standards, possibly big-band-era classics. On the other, there are enthusiasts of jazz originals, harmonically novel arrangements, and new compositions. The KJO's tune selections on Jan. 5 reflected sensitivity to these not entirely compatible expectations, performing more traditional fare in the first set (e.g. "All of Me," "Stella by Starlight"), interrupted only once by a jazz original, Donald Brown's "The Thing About Harold Mabern" (during the performance of which Brown suddenly materialized, breezing into the club in the most uncanny and coincidental fashion, a spirit bidden).

The second set was the mirror image of the first, commencing with the rousing and tortured Thompson original "Angst," proceeding with its bookend, upbeat "Man, What a Beautiful Day," and continuing further with other original material, interrupted only once by the Hoagy Carmichael standard "Skylark," performed surprisingly uptempo. And while the evening highlight was arguably Blakey's hard bop classic "Moanin'" in the second set, especially trombonist Bill Huber's mannheim crescendoing solo, the evening served as further proof of Thompson's dictum that, "if [we] can get people there, [we're] virtually guaranteed that close to 100 percent of the people who come will leave thinking 'this is even better than I thought it was going to be.'" Certainly Monday night's audience left in that frame of mind, only reluctantly departing following the band's customary Monk close.

"We're not laboring under the assumption that one day we're going to be rock stars," Thompson observes, "but the potential is there for people to discover [jazz]. Most people don't know about it, but as people find out about it, more people will be interested in it than are right now."

With the KJO's first 2004 installment delivered, the market waits expectantly for more. KJO has announced concerts with Hammond B-3 organist Dan Trudell on March 20 and veteran pianist Hank Jones on April 27, launched a new website (www.yearinthelifeoftheband.com), planned a joint concert with the Knoxville Youth Orchestra in April, and continues the regular first Monday of the month gigs at Club 4620.