Vivid harmonies, expressive improv solos and powerful vocals infused the streets of western Massachusetts over the weeked of Sept. 27-28, 2024, with the annual Northampton Jazz Festival in full swing. With an electrifying lineup of 18 different performing groups hailing from Cuba, Argentina, India, Palestine, Cyprus, Cameroon, the United States and more, the festival was a celebration of international diversity. The Friday night “Jazz Strut” and Saturday “Jazz Fest Day” brought hundreds of spectators to various restaurants and performing arts venues. Through the beauty of live jazz, the festival’s 13th anniversary continued its legacy of preserving African-American culture and illuminating marginalized voices.
This year, the festival centered its global outreach around the theme, “Jazz Without Borders.” Anat Cohen Quartethino, the headliner for the 2024 festival, was the main inspiration behind the choice. Cohen is an Israeli clarinetist who intertwined Middle Eastern culture, Brazilian Choro music and New Orleans jazz into her Saturday night performance. The combination of these influences made her a multidimensional artist, capable of bringing worldwide elements to the stage.
Ricard Torres-Mateluna, 51, worked as the communications director on the Northampton Jazz Festival Board, and was the mastermind behind the three-word theme. He explained how each artist would be “bringing their own flavor of jazz, their culture, their rhythms, their sensibilities.”
Torres-Mateluna’s passion for jazz can be traced back to his childhood in Chile. He talked about how watching a Chilean pianist, Claudio Arrau, perform had a huge impact on his youth. It inspired him to organize an event catered towards teaching children about jazz music. The festival’s “Ask Me About Jazz!” interactive performance gave kids the opportunity to learn the fundamental history and rhythms that encompass jazz. “Ask Me About Jazz!” was led by drummer Richie Barshay, pianist Zaccai Curtis, clarinetist Evan Arntzen and bassist Wes Brown.
“We make jazz accessible for everyone,” Torres-Mateluna said.
Over at Northampton’s Unitarian Society, Ize Trio filled the air with exhilarating foreign harmonies. The Boston-based trio consists of Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash, Cypriot percussionist George Lernis and Californian pianist Chase Morrin. Alatrash and Morrin first met while studying in Boston at the Berklee College of Music’s Global Jazz Institute. Since meeting Lernis through a mutual friend, the three have embraced the diversity of their cultural backgrounds to create music that advocates for social justice.
“We keep composing, creating, we teach, and our goal is to really appeal to the immigrant communities that come to this country, to encourage them to bring their own cultural identity, whether it’s music or any kind of artistic medium into their craft,” Lernis said.
Alatrash composed a four-part suite titled “Bright Colors on a Dark Canvas,” centered around themes of childhood, war, nostalgia and hope. Alatrash dedicated the performance of the suite to all the children and families currently living in Gaza. With pulsating percussion hits, chromatic piano lines and elongated cello ties, Saturday’s live performance showcased each Ize Trio member’s musicality in an intimately powerful way.
“It’s about everything that’s happening back home when it comes to the . . . Israeli occupation of Palestine and the conflict,” Alatrash said when describing the second movement. “And so you have all these emotions, and so it’s a reflection of war itself.” Despite the syncopated rhythms and dissonant chords, Alatrash, Lernis and Morrin wove their individual timbres together to create a rich tone and incredibly unique sound. Listening to the suite felt like listening to a dance of humanity.
On Friday night, beautiful bossa nova vocals were heard outside Spoleto, a beloved Northampton Italian restaurant. Music has played an incredibly influential role in helping 34-year-old Haley Isadora find her place within a foreign country. Isadora, a jazz vocalist who performed with the Molly Flannery Trio, explained how there was a language barrier when she initially moved to Brazil after graduating college.
“Music was the way that I was able to relate to people, and it definitely helped me learn to speak Portuguese,” Isadora said. “So I feel like singing really helped me with languages. It’s a way of slowing it down.”
Isadora also explained how, for many years, she felt like an outsider to jazz music because of its African American roots. She wondered how she could practice the genre in a way that recognized its history without disrespecting a culture that wasn’t hers.
“Jazz is a music of inclusion, of resistance, of diversity, and that’s in part what makes it hard to define because it embraces many traditions,” Isadora said. “There is a big degree of understanding where the music comes from and respecting and reverencing it. But then once you come with that attitude, you can be home in this music because, as I said, it embraces so much diversity.”
At the end of the day, that is what jazz truly embodies: humanity’s vastness and the fusion of cultures that unite communities. This year’s Northampton Jazz Festival exemplified that tenet through the inclusion of many international cultures. It was evid when watching vocalist Ekep Nkwelle bring audiences to their feet and sing, “The power of love, the power of love!” in unison. It was evident when watching strangers salsa to Jesús Pagán y Su Orquesta’s Latin fusion harmonies in Pulaski Park. It was evident when watching Cohen smile after completing an enthralling improv solo on the clarinet and listening to the audience applaud in uproar.
The sheer passion that each artist exhibited for their respective cultures was unmistakable, at this year’s Northampton Jazz Festival. The energy that each audience member reciprocated was genuinely infectious. It is this dance between musician and spectator that makes jazz so special. Whether you’re performing it or watching it, the community it creates is unlike any other.
Erineah Quan can be reached at [email protected]
