For the love of Jazz

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Abe Weinstein admits he shot for the moon hiring musicians for his jazz fest's 1994 debut.

Buddy Guy, Doc Severinsen and all the other members of his Tonight Show Orchestra didn't come cheap. And Weinstein loaned a good portion of his own savings to get 'em here. A longtime Honolulu-area jazz musician, his goal was a splashy enough debut to show he was serious about launching an annual jazz festival in his backyard.

"When it was over, everybody said, 'There's no way Abe can do this again.' But we showed 'em, and we came back," said Weinstein. "And after four or five years, the naysayers finally gave up."

The Hawaii International Jazz Festival celebrates its 10th birthday this weekend.

Over that decade HIJF organizer Weinstein has managed to attract a consistently funky lineup of musicians — some name players, some forever niche — reaching out to the farthest corners of the jazz genre. Besides Severinsen and Guy, the HIJF stage has been shared by the likes of Cleo Laine, Lalo Schifrin, Martin Denny, Eric Marienthal and Paquito DeRivera.

Last year's jazz fest featured the final Hawai'i performances of flutist Herbie Mann, who died earlier this month.

Perhaps most impressively, however, the Hawaii International Jazz Festival has remained a high-profile annual showcase for hard-working local jazz musicians (and jazz-loving musicians) as well. Favorites here have included Gabe Baltazar, Jimmy Borges, Jake Shimabukuro, Amy Hanaiali'i Gilliom, Moe Keale, Betty Loo Taylor and Keahi Conjugacion.

We caught up with two of this year's headliners, vocalist Tierney Sutton (making her second appearance in two years) and guitarist Larry Coryell (a first-time HIJF artist) a couple weeks away from curtain.

Sutton makes classics her own

Tierney Sutton says jazz is "something I could do my way." The Hawaii International Jazz Festival 7 p.m. today and Saturday Blaisdell Concert Hall $20-$40 (two-night pass available for $5 off combined ticket price). Tonight: "Guitar Magic and Vocal Jazz," featuring guitarist Larry Coryell, vocalist Tierney Sutton and the USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra, and the Honolulu Jazz Quartet with Keahi Conjugacion. Saturday: "International Jazz," featuring flutist Nestor Torres, trumpeter Tiger Okoshi, pianist Makoto Ozone, 'ukulele stylist Jake Shimabukuro and Gypsy Pacific. Also: On Maui, 7 p.m. July 25-26 at the Wailea Marriott Resort's Aulani Ballroom, $30, $45. Tickets at Borders, Request Music in Lahaina and (beginning Tuesday) Wailea Marriott. July 25: "International Jazz," featuring Coryell, Okoshi, the San Diego State University Big Band, Honolulu Jazz Quartet with Conjugacion, and others. July 26: "Hawaiian Jazz," featuring saxophonist Gabe Baltazar, vocalists Jimmy Borges and Conjugacion, Gypsy Pacific, and Ukulele Madness. Jam sessions will follow the Maui concerts at the Lokelani Ballroom. 526-4400, 591-2211 www.hawaiijazz.com

And jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton's penchant for laying personal claim on yet another much-heard jazz chestnut is in full effect on a wonderfully original interpretation of "Autumn Leaves." Deliciously fast-paced, its chords reworked and brimming with more elegant scat than even Ella Fitzgerald might have thought to add — if you've got a version of the song by the awe-inspiring Fitzgerald, by the way, I'd love to hear it — Sutton's take on "Leaves" is the aural equivalent of a breath of brisk fall air. As with the rest of the CD, her voice is soaring and assured, and her improvisational skills impeccable.

"If it's a song like 'Autumn Leaves,' there is no reason in God's creation to do it in a normal way," Sutton said of her energetic take on a ballad generally dripping with melancholia in its million-and-a-half other interpretations. "(The band and I) should be arrested if we do it in a normal way."

Sutton, 40, and her longtime trio — pianist Christian Jacob, bassist Trey Henry and drummer Ray Brinker — have used a similar guiding principle to dictate their other interpretations of the standards.

"When you have this material that's been covered by Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Bill Evans ... you had better step out of the way if you're gonna do it the way they did it, because you're not gonna do it any better than they did it," Sutton explained. "Our approach is, if it's a very commonly done song, we are gonna twist, spindle and mutilate it, or it's not going on the record."

The acceptance — and expectation — of jazz artists imbuing their unique musical and lyrical stamp onto arrangements was one of the things that drew Sutton to the music form in the first place. Sutton discovered jazz when she was 19 and working a summer job as a singing cocktail waitress in her Milwaukee hometown between semesters at Boston University and Wesleyan.

"It was an accordion and organ, and it was the tackiest thing imaginable," said Sutton, remembering her first side players. "But there were songs that were fun to sing even in that context. 'Moonlight In Vermont,' 'My Funny Valentine' and 'Georgia On My Mind' were great songs anyway."

A trio playing real jazz across the street from that job impressed Sutton enough to take as many evening vocal gigs as she could at Wesleyan while studying Russian language and literature by day.

"The main thing that got me was that you could be yourself when you sang jazz," said Sutton. "With the pop music that I was exposed to, I felt that the people who were really making a statement were the people that wrote the songs. And once they became pop tunes, there was this version that everybody copied and tried to do exactly the same way.

"And jazz was something entirely different. The harmony was more interesting, for one thing. The melodies were interesting without finding the hip lick. And I immediately sensed that it was something I could do my way. That was an epiphany."

Two decades later, Tierney, now based in Los Angeles, has four critically well-received albums on her resumé and performs internationally as often as her full-time job heading the University of Southern California's jazz vocal department allows.

With the USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra set to back her this weekend, Sutton said she was flirting with the idea of singing, for the first time, one of several rare charts originally arranged for her musical hero Sarah Vaughn. The charts were presented to her by arranger Sammy Nestico, a legend in his own right for his work with the Count Basie Orchestra.

"He said, 'I was thinking of you and I was wondering ... I have some Sarah Vaughn big-band charts that nobody's using. Do you think you would like them?'" recalled Sutton, laughing. "And I said, 'Uh, let me think about that ... YES!!' "

Guitarist pioneered sound with jazz greats

Larry Coryell counts Herbie Mann among his greatest mentors.

Coryell even accompanied Mann's final performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on May 3.

"I really loved Herbie," said Coryell. "He accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish. His example is the best I can think of for a bandleader. He never had any pretensions about who he was. He did a lot to integrate jazz music — racially and musically — and I love that. And he was never intimidated by anyone.

"Our last conversation, which was in a car going back to the hotel, was absolutely wonderful." But Coryell politely opted to keep the conversation his own.

The pioneering musicians Coryell has worked with over his four-decade career — Charles Mingus, Gary Burton, Sonny Rollins, Chick Corea, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, among many others — would be impressive enough even if the 60-year-old guitarist weren't something of a musical founding father himself.

Along with a handful of jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Corea, Coryell is recognized as a pioneer of fusion — a 1960s-born melding of jazz sensibilities and electrified rock 'n' roll.

"Those of us who were coming up in the '60s couldn't just sit around and ignore the strength of the nonjazz music that was in our lives at that time," Coryell said of the era's musical jambalaya.

Coryell absorbed everything from Brazilian bossa nova to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

"We didn't want to emulate be-bop," explained Coryell. "We were encouraged very strongly when I moved to New York in the middle-'60s not to copy all of our heroes. So ... I looked to the areas of rock and pop music to find sources to develop an individual voice. And I hope that's still in my playing."

Asked how often he performed live these days, Coryell chuckled off any notions his inquisitor might have of an impending retirement.

"As much as I can," he replied, ticking off a list of post-jazz-fest gigs in Colorado, New York, Missouri, India and Dubai. "I wanna be like Herbie. I just want to play to the best of my ability with the kind of appreciation that a truly humble man like Herbie had. He was always happy to do it.

"He told me before that last gig (that) he was so excited, that he had gone through the entire concert in his mind before we even played. I wanna be just like that."