MUSIC - JULY 30, 2003

Jeff Haas brings humanistic, Hebrew-flavored jazz to festival

By LAWRENCE COSENTINO

Earnest music, music that was written to teach tolerance by reconciling cultural traditions, does not usually double as make-out music.

I mean no disrespect to Mr. Jeff Haas. On the contrary, it’s a privilege to have the Traverse City jazzman/educator/pianist and his trio (bassist Chuck Hall and drummer Alex Trajano), along with Detroit jazzman Marcus Belgrave and multi-instrumentalist Rob Smith, on the stage of Lansing’s JazzFest for the first time ever this Friday, Aug. 1. Haas has been criss-crossing Michigan for a decade or so, delighting diverse audiences with a unique brand of Hebrew-flavored jazz shaped by the twists and turns of his own life’s path. His many compositions have expanded eloquently on a long tradition of singing persecution and sorrow into joy, a tradition shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities of the United States.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Haas Trio

The Jeff Haas Trio.

So let Mr. Haas – a Detroit native, Hebraic scholar, sensitive white jazzman and goody-goody diversity counselor – explain this if he can. Last Saturday morning, I turned my living room speakers around so I could take some coffee on the porch and check out Haas’ last CD, “The Bridge Lives.” Two minutes after its soulful, sinuous opening groove began to unfold, two squirrels embarked upon a frisky amour under a nearby oak tree.

To give the tiny mammals a bit of privacy, I averted my eyes upward, only to spot two preoccupied doves severely taxing the same half inch of telephone wire. What is it with this guy’s music, anyway?

“It’s emotional music,” says Haas. “People get very caught up in it.”

To suggest that Haas’ melodies also penetrate hearts through feathers and fur would be foolish (at least without a Fulbright to research the idea further). But Haas’ jazz, for all its polish and erudition, is as direct and heartfelt as can be. It seems to seize all living things within its range in a vise-grip of sinewy beauty that could squeeze sugar from the driest maple tree.

Which is pretty much what it has been doing, all over the forests and concrete jungles of Michigan. “Whether we go into hinterland venues or the inner city,” says Haas, “it’s amazing how this music connects with all kinds of people. Inner city kids just love it. They get up and dance, they really groove to it.” The humanistic message of Haas’ hybrid creations are lost on some, but even the driest husks of humanity seem to get it at some level. “Once, after a performance at the Cheboygan opera house,” recalls Haas, “a guy came up to me and said, ‘I don’t care much for black people, and I don’t care much for Jews, but I really love your music.’ It’s not a pretty thing to recount, but that’s what he said.”

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The Cheboygan compliment comes off even stranger in view of Haas’ family history. The warmth of Haas’ music is in part a lingering, slow burn generated by suffocating layers of repression. His grandparents were murdered by the Nazis; his father escaped Germany in 1936. Haas himself endured the taunts of John Birchers as he walked to Hebrew school in Detroit in the 1960s, a scene evoked hauntingly on one track of the “Bridge” CD, when a dancing little Jewish melody is hassled by siren-like trumpet wails.

Repression, however, takes a variety of forms, some less virulent than others. Haas’ father happens to be the formidable Karl Haas, radio titan and avatar of the classical music scene in Detroit for decades “We weren’t allowed to listen to anything but classical music until we were 15,” says Haas. “It didn’t bother me at the time,” he adds, “because I was asocial anyway.” Besides, being a Haas had its advantages. While barely a tyke, Jeff took full-bore hits of musical grandeur sitting next to his father at the mighty organ of Detroit’s Temple Israel, where Karl was the music director. The Detroit Chamber Music Society was practically put together in his living room. (Rest assured that Karl, now 90 years old, genuinely digs his son’s music.)

Then, while working at the Michigan State Fairgrounds one summer, Haas was exposed to a panoply of jubilant Motown acts, then in their mid-’60s prime, and the Beethoven wig began to itch. “I asked my dad, ‘Where in the hell have we been?’ He didn’t get it,” sighs Haas. Later, his sister loaned him a classic jazz album featuring Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, both of whom immediately sunk into his skin like twin fangs of jazz addiction.

Ever since then, Haas has worked hard to harmonize the supposedly divergent cultures that have shaped his life. He blends the rich veins of Western classical music, traditional Hebrew music, and African-American jazz into a nourishing and intoxicating elixir that never seems forced or contrived. His first such composition, “Faith,” combined a John Coltrane composition (“Lonnie’s Lament”) with a 15th-century Hebrew melody Haas learned from his father. (The track appeared on the Trio’s 1997 CD, “Generation to Generation.”) Its huge success with both audiences and critics demonstrated that Haas’ musical synthesis was much more than a working out of his own personal issues. “The black experience and the Jewish experience are similar,” he says, “and both musical traditions express that. It’s sorrowful and hopeful at the same time.”

Some may find it ironic that Haas has drawn some old, if not decrepit, cultural blood to freshen up a much younger body of music, but many observers feel that contemporary jazz has been threatened for years by academic inbreeding among a limited number of styles. The ancient-is-new freshness of Haas’ approach will be reflected in Friday’s set list, in which Haas plans to backpedal the standards in favor of the hundred or so originals he has composed in the last several years – 40 of them since “The Bridge Lives” was released. Among these will be two brand new compositions, along with two sections of a suite he recently composed in honor of Detroit’s 300th anniversary.

With an established trio firmly in place and a growing orbit of distinguished guest-player “friends,” Haas has the tools to keep his musical workshop humming indefinitely. “I’ve been blessed with the same band for the last nine years,” he says. “And hanging with Marcus has made be realize how important it is to keep it beautiful and simple.”

By emphasizing new material so strongly, Haas has given himself a lot more to do as a composer and leader than call out “Sweet Georgia Brown” for the hundredth time. “It takes about six months for a piece to come together the way it should,” he says. “But when everybody’s got their eyes closed, there’s no music in front of them, and they’re speaking from the soul, I know we’re there. All I can do is pinch myself to make sure it’s really happening.”

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