Tough Thursday Night decisions

16th September 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

New Orleans is known for getting a jump start on weekends — the traffic at 3 o’clock on Friday afternoons looks more like five or six o’clock anywhere else. The music scene this Thursday, September 18, lights up like a Friday or Saturday night with great options from one side of the town to the other.

It starts with Jazz in the Park’s third concert of its fall season with a double-header of bands taking the stage that promise to be funky. Shamaar Allen & the Under­dawgs get top billing at the free event that is held at Armstrong Park. The trumpeter and vocalist pumps up a crowd with his fusion of jazz, funk, rock and hip hop and he even gives out his phone number to the audience that also just happens to be the title of his latest album 504-799-8147. The homeboy is also appreciated for teaching another generation of kids the magic of music.

Trumpets abound at Armstrong Park with Trumpet Black & the Heart Attacks kicking at 5 p.m. Travis “Trumpet Black” Hill, who in recent years is best known playing with trombonist Corey Henry’s Tremé Funktet and often blowin’ his renowned high notes and singing with the Treme Brass Band and other groups, gets to show his stuff as leader on Thursday.

The monthly Latin Jazz series presented by the CubaNOLA organization continues at the Prime Example this Thursday with the arrival of Alexey Marti & Urban Minds. With ambitions to be New Orleans’ newest Latin Jazz King, the Cuban-born percussionist who has lived in New Orleans for six years, has been all over the scene playing with some of the cream of this city’s jazz musicians — drummer Herlin Riley, pianists David Torkanow-sky, Davell Crawford and Victor Atkins. “They’re really jazz players,” he exclaims. “It’s been a challenge to play with Davell. He plays in many, many, many styles. Every time you have to play something different — you don’t know where he’s going. I like that.”

Marti, who in Cuba studied under the noted Oscar Valdes, the co-founder of the island nations renowned Irakera, promises a night of Latin Jazz, Afro-Cuban music and Latin funk at the North Broad Street club and restaurant. The group will include bassist Pat Casey, saxophonist Brent Rose, pianist Austin Johnson and drummer Peter Varnado plus vocalist Michaela Harrison.

In 2012, the percussionist made big waves in this big musical lake of a town, when he opened for the legendary Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes at the newly re-opened Joy Theater. In 2014 he performed under his own name for the first time at the Jazz Fest.

Marti has been majoring in music at the University of New Orleans for the last four years, studying with noted professor, guitarist Steve Masakowski and, for the percussive end, drummer Ricky Sebastian. “I’m a musician. If I have to sleep under the bridge, I’m going to be a musician,” declared Marti when asked whether his major was music.

“In New Orleans, there is Cuba here. We are the same place,” Marti says of the similarities between his native country and this city. “They move in the same direction. New Orleans is the mecca of American music — the roots of the music of the United States. People in New Orleans, with me, they have been really, really cool. They opened the door to me. This is my house.”

While Marti misses some aspects of Cuba — “everybody misses something” — he says he is on a “mission to learn” things that he was never able to see.

Meanwhile, over at Snug Harbor on Thursday, there will be a reunion of sorts when people welcome home — for the time being at least — saxophonist Reggie Houston. Until 2004, when he left for Portland, Oregon, the New Orleans native was a mainstay all over this city’s music scene. For years, the ever jovial saxophonist led vocalist Charmaine Neville’s band and spent 22 years blowing behind legendary Fats Domino. Remarkably, at age 12, he began his musical journey with the Batiste family band, the Gladiators.

The musicians he’s assembled for the Snug date represent the diversity of styles that he’s played in his over 50-year career. The band includes his longtime partner, keyboardist/accordionist Amasa Miller, drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Jeffrey “Zak” Cardarelli and guitarist/vocalist Jimmy “Bean” Ballero plus special guest, saxophonist Kirk Ford.

The set will start out with he and Miller playing as a duet as they did back in the day at the Gazebo on Decatur Street. Ford’s participation is vital for when he and Houston take on avant-gardist saxophonist Albert Ayler’s “Ghost.” Houston and Ford were both students of the creative jazz artist and educator, Kidd Jordan to whom they are dedicating the song. “It’s intense at first, but fun at the end,” Houston assures. The group will head to the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras spirit with the help of guitarist Ballero.

In, Portland, Houston has been spreading the “gospel” of New Orleans music in his playing, which includes regular gigs at two New Orleans-themed restaurants, as well as by gathering many artists from the city to come up and play. In other words, Houston has definitely not lost his New Orleans identity while living in the Northwest. In the future, he hopes to split his time more evenly between Portland and New Orleans.

“Well, I can’t help it,” he confesses. “I mean even if I tried to disguise it, I’d get busted when I relax.”

The saxophonist, not one to be pigeon-holed, retains the distinction that marks so many of this city’s musicians, of moving effortlessly between genres. In Portland, he sees jazz musicians, blues musicians, alternative rock musicians who stay exclusively within their styles.

“I don’t,” Houston says adamantly. “I have been accepted — I play the Portland Jazz Festival, I play the Portland Blues Festival. His method: “I engage the people with humor, with historical facts and reel them in with songs.”

“Thank you New Orleans for making me the follower and leader that I have become. I thank you for allowing me to continue this journey in your wonderful name. I am a proud, proud citizen of my city.”

This article originally published in the September 15, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.