MUSIC - JUNE 18, 2003

Long day's jouney into jazz in East Lansing

By LAWRENCE COSENTINO

Jazzmen aren't called cats for nothing; both species love to go outdoors and stretch when the weather warms up. Hence East Lansing's annual Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, set for this Friday, June 20, from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. in a big tent on MAC Avenue between Albert and Grand River.

Wynton Marsalis holds forth at the Creole Gallery during Sunday in one of four sets he performed over the weekend with Rich Roe (piano), Rodney Whitaker (bass) and Randy Gelispie (drums).

The timing is impeccable; they're going to need the longest day of the year to contain all the solos, breaks, head arrangements, and extended dance grooves sure to be generated by the four fine combos involved in the bash.

Thoughtful EL city planners have carefully calibrated a four-part sequence of moods. First comes the relatively cerebral listening jazz of the Diego Rivera Quartet (4:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon). Rivera ismaking a triumphant return to the Solstice Festival, having participated seven years ago as a student musician on a "firing line" performing Kansas City-style jazz. Now Rivera is on the jazz faculty of MSU and spews intense, swinging hard bop out of the Sonny Rollins mold. He'll be joined by bandmates Rick Roe on piano, Lawrence Leathers on drums and Dave Rosin on drums.

The swing gets slightly more explicit after that, with the eclectic old-timey jazz of Ray Kamalay and his Red Hot Peppers from 6 to 7. Kamalay is a local treasure, a music historian, sparkling instrumentalist and charming singer whose group specializes in chunk-chunk-chunk Django Reinhardt-style rhythms many folks still associate with Woody Allen movies.

Any lingering temperance folk who already find the evening degenerating into jungle rhythms better get back to 1890 before 7:30, when the Ritmo Latin Jazz Band takes the stage for some genuine, get-off-your-hams-and-shake-it salsa.
Then, as the city lights wink on, the rosy fingers of dusk descend upon downtown East Lansing, and festival-goers of a certain age discover muscles they haven't used for some time, the energy arc will gently and mercifully curve back downward. The elegant swing of the Uptown Society Jazz Orchestra will close the festival with a flourish, from 9-10:30 p.m.

Of course, when we say "Orchestra," the reader must exercise a certain amount of caution. The USJO is actually a six-piece band, but a mighty one, insofar as it contains trumpeter Richard Holland, a veteran OF the Louis Bellson and Jimmy Dorsey Orchestras, Kansas City trombonist Earlie Braggs (only jazz and baseball come up with names like that) and reedman Carl Cafagna of East Lansing.

To review the sequence of activities: listen, listen and tap feet, get up and shake it, stay up and swing it. Needless to say, the EL fathers hope that folks
take advantage of the many restaurants in the area. Where, after all, would "East Lansing" be without "eat" and "sing"? (The answer is "sLan.") The way the festival is configured this year, it won't be hard to bounce back and forth from Mexican food to music to ice cream to sandwiches to music to pizza to music until a state of complete synaesthesia, with salsa burning up every orifice, has been achieved.

In case of inclement weather, the event will be moved to the East Lansing Hannah Community Center. For more information, contact the Community Events office at 517-319-6927.

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