Fire power

New England's premier free-jazz festival returns

by Ed Hazell

If you didn't make it to any of the jazz festivals in New York, or didn't head north for the Montreal jazz festival, you can catch a major

festival of jazz and improvised music right here in Massachusetts. On July 25, the third annual Fire in the Valley festival promises to deliver a full day of exciting, uncompromising avant-garde improvised music that will make up in power what it lacks in the scale of big-city behemoths. The featured bands at the Bezanson Recital Hall in the UMass, Amherst Fine Arts Building include fire-breathing tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman with a new trio, the Jemeel Moondoc-William Parker duet, New England radicals Paul Flaherty and Randall Colbourne, and the Joe McPhee string ensemble. Saxophonist Peter Brotzmann, a founding father of German free improvisation, headlines with a very rare appearance of Die Like a Dog, his quartet dedicated to playing music in the spirit of the great free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler.

There is nothing even remotely like the festival in New England, in fact there are very few festivals devoted to this kind of music anywhere in the world. Attendance has grown each year as word of the daylong free-jazz conclave has spread, and more artists want to play at it as its reputation for artistic quality and integrity has circulated.

San Francisco-based saxophonist Glenn Spearman has played on every bill since the festival's birth, and has seen it grow. He's no naive optimist but is encouraged to see a younger audience coming to hear him play. "I think people react to the energy and immediacy," he says of the music's appeal. "They react to the sense of abandonment in the music. I mean, you have thousands and thousands of people paying big bucks to hear a band like the Rolling Stones, and you know there are not going to be any surprises when they play -- it's all very familiar. Same with Wynton Marsalis, but don't get me started on that! I think the people who come to hear my music and like it are looking to be surprised. They feel like it's okay not to understand everything that's going on. They're reacting to the intuitive qualities of the music, and the elements of trance and magic that make it so confrontational and cathartic."

Spearman claims he's "never played straight. Although my father was a musician and I understand chord changes, I was never interested in playing that way." Instead, he rebelled and played in the high-energy, abstract style pioneered by musicians like Ayler. In the early '70s, he moved to Paris to find expatriate saxophonist Frank Wright, another tenor saxophone wild man known for his high-energy free jazz. Spearman learned from Wright and played with him on a few occasions, then returned to the States, where he later played with another cornerstone of free jazz, pianist Cecil Taylor. "Frank was my master degree and Cecil my PhD."

Today, Spearman is no apprentice but one of the leaders in new jazz, a commanding presence in any band. His latest release, Trio Hurricane: Live at Fire in the Valley (Eremite), documents an awe-inspiring climactic set from last year's festival, which he played with bassist Parker and drummer Paul Murphy. This year, he returns to open the festival with a different trio, featuring drummer Rashid Bakr, who is also an alumnus of Cecil Taylor bands, and an exciting young pianist named Matthew Goodheart.

Another returnee is alto saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc. Moondoc has enjoyed one of the most welcome comebacks in modern jazz, thanks in large part to one of the festival's sponsors, the Northampton-based Eremite label, which has issued the first new Moondoc albums in about 10 years, one of them from the first Fire in the Valley festival in 1996. Moondoc was one of the brightest stars in the New York loft scene of the early '80s. His tart, plaintive tone, razor-sharp linear improvisations, and the bluesy inflections of his soloing anchor his music in post-bop music of musicians like Jackie McLean and Charles Mingus, but his conception is firmly on the contemporary cutting edge. Despite leading one of the killer quartets of the period and fronting a now legendary rehearsal big band called the Jes Grew Orchestra, Moondoc had all but disappeared until Eremite picked him up again. For his second festival appearance, Moondoc is reuniting with festival mainstay Parker, who was the regular bassist in Moondoc's '80s quartet.

Each year New England artists are featured, and this year is no exception, with the Connecticut-based duet of drummer Randall Colbourne and saxophonist Paul Flaherty representing the regional scene. Colbourne and Flaherty are major proponents of the ecstatic, high-energy school of free jazz, much like Spearman and Brotzmann. A collaboration stretching back nearly two decades with almost a dozen recordings to their credit, they nevertheless remain cult favorites with a small but devoted following. This is a rare chance to hear some homegrown heroes who have persevered in their singular vision against long odds.

Joe McPhee, who plays several saxophones as well as trumpet, has one of the most poetic individual styles in contemporary improvisation -- a unique amalgam of traditional, thematic jazz and collective free improvisation he calls Po Music. The term comes from pop psychologist Edward DeBono's hypothetical; realm of thought "beyond yes and no" that is predicated on the possible, the positive, the poetic, and the hypothetical. In keeping with this idea, McPhee's compositions are evocative blueprints that are designed not to restrict players, but open them up to new musical possibilities. He's documented this approach primarily on the hat Art label, releasing some of the most intriguing improvised music of the past 25 years. McPhee's musical vocabulary is highly individual, to say the least, but it rewards careful listening with some of the most provocative and even beautiful sounds in new music. His band the Joe McPhee Wind and String Ensemble are an unusual one, featuring violinist Rosie Hertlein, cellist Monica Wilson, and reed player-flautist Joe Giardullo.

Headliner Peter Brotzmann exploded onto the European free music scene in the late '60s with an all-out brand of playing that earned the tag of "kaput play." It was an assaultive blast of sound that was forceful, exultant, and not for the faint-hearted. Brotzmann hasn't exactly mellowed in recent years -- he's still capable of working up a very impressive head of steam -- but he has explored a more lyrical side to his music. The Die Like a Dog quartet -- with Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, bassist Parker, and trumpeter Roy Campbell subbing for Japanese brass man Toshinori Kondo -- are one of his most wide-ranging groups, capable of both awesome wrath and prayerlike joy. The band's self-titled debut CD is one of Brotzmann's best, and this is a very rare opportunity indeed to hear one of the premiere free-improvisation groups in the world.

With the inclusion of Brotzmann this year, the Fire in the Valley festival becomes international, a healthy sign for the continuation of what is possibly the best jazz festival in New England.

Fire in the Valley takes place on July 25 at Bezanson Recital Hall, Fine Arts Building, UMass, Amherst. The music runs from 1 to 10 p.m., with a two- hour break for dinner at 5 p.m. Tickets are $18 in advance, $20 at the door. To charge tickets, call (413) 545-2511 or 1-800-999-UMAS. For information, call (413) 584-9592.