ARTICLE #3 |
|
| Musician, artist combine talents on multimedia 'Art Moves Jazz' The Post and Courier - Charleston, S.C. Author: JACK MCCRAY Date: May 1, 2005 The first thing Quentin Baxter did after coming off the bandstand was to ask John Duckworth, "Did you hear any landscape abstracts in there?" It was April 21 and the occasion was Baxter's regular Thursday night gig at Coast Bar & Grill. His band's music had been very intense that night, producing pure, palpable energy that charged the atmosphere. He, like everyone else in the place, was feeling good. The music had poured out of the band, just like the sweat dripping from Baxter's forehead when he made his way through the crowd of well-wishers to tease Duckworth. Baxter and Duckworth have been working for months on their much- anticipated multimedia event, "Art Moves Jazz," set to hit the stage Saturday at the Charleston Music Hall. This show has the same band interpreting images by Duckworth, a painter, graphic artist and photographer. In fact, Duckworth has produced an original film for the show that features his digital photographic series, "Landscape Abstracts." It was that body of work Baxter was referring to when he queried Duckworth at Coast. The question was fitting, too. Baxter, bass fiddler Delbert Felix and tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williams played way outside the box, hinting at what is to come Saturday. While they played jazz standards, such as Duke Ellington's "Caravan" and "C-Jam Blues," the individual and collective improvisations abstracted the melodies, harmonies and rhythms into something completely unrecognizable but irresistible. The music set to Duckworth's film is all composed by Baxter, except for some real-time improvisations he left room for in the program. Baxter is gaining fame around the world for his music. He has played most of the major cities in the United States and has performed in Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.He is a creative force in bands fronted by pianists Monty Alexander and Takana Miyamoto and emerging jazz diva Rene Marie. Duckworth's paintings and photographs have been sold to collections in New York, Charlotte, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Canada. Baxter said last week of Duckworth's career, "He's only at the beginning of being as good as he's going to be." The images in the "Landscape Abstracts" series are based on Duckworth's impressions of the four seasons as seen in the Lowcountry. Baxter's accompaniment will have four movements, one for each season. Duckworth is inspired by bicycle sojourns along the coast, seeking solitude, communing with the natural world. He said he calms and centers himself, his vision eliminating all but the essential matter of color and light. This is the same thing he has done to the images in the series. He shoots only digital now, a medium that lets him gradually alter the image captured by the camera. He said, "I started taking design courses at (Trident) Tech to learn the programs. I got a digital camera and started playing around with it. Digital programs freed me up tremendously, much more than traditional photography. I've put film down completely. You get instant feedback from the digital camera." Duckworth said the landscapes in his pictures are distilled down to their essence, hanging on to realism just before it falls apart. "Jazz tends to live in those areas as well, the place in time that exists just before things fall apart," he said. "You never really know where the limits are, so sometimes you go past the limits, but then you pull back. I pull back just enough with this stuff so you can still see the landscape." The stigma some attach to manipulating images in art means nothing to Duckworth. The need to express what an idea means to him outweighs any reluctance to change things. Like a jazz musician, he makes the subject matter his own. Baxter's trio uses the same ebb and flow around the limits of recognizable melodies. Like Duckworth with his images, Baxter uses his music to express to others his feelings based on memories. He well remembers the abstracts series. He said he was leaving a meeting at FIG restaurant in September and noticed the art on the walls now included images from Duckworth's series. "I said to myself, 'This is really cool,' " Baxter said. "Duck's stuff sneaked up on me. I looked closely and realized it wasn't a painting. So, I called him up and asked what was up with the photo. The more I saw the pieces, the more I knew I had to write some music. I asked him if he would be interested in doing this (Art Moves Jazz); he said yes. I would stand there and look at the pieces a long time. From then on, when I closed my eyes, the images would pop into my mind." The pair, both in their 30s, has known each other a long time. They both graduated from the College of Charleston's School of the Arts, neighbors in the Albert Simons Center for the Arts. "I was on the first floor and he was on the third floor," Duckworth said. Michael Tyzack, chairman of the studio art department at College of Charleston, is floored by the talents of Duckworth and Baxter. "Duckworth was a painting student of mine," he said. "He was incredibly versatile. That's his strong suit. He has a very broad reach." Tyzack is a working jazz musician as well as a professional abstract expressionist painter. What he likes about Baxter is that he's a very contemporary player who's not only grounded in the masters that came before him, he has incorporated the traits of the legends -- Warren "Baby" Dodds, "Big" Sid Catlett, Max Roach, Jeff "Tain" Watts, et al. -- into his own sound. This trio is the most experimental group Baxter is playing with right now, and they're all pumped for Art Moves Jazz. Baxter said of this ensemble, "I have no creative inhibitions whatsoever. Because the vision is always there with them, I have the ability as a practitioner to achieve the ideas I want to express. There's no fear. ... All three of us are natural musicians. Delbert dances on his ax, he's so in tune to what he and the rest of us are playing. "Then there's the spirit that we all play in. The spirit is about playing with one another, listening to one another. We all respond. There are no snap judgments. Everybody just responds." There's a growing buzz around about the show. Both artists have wide networks, and a lot of activity has been unleashed toward the goal of bringing this event to the stage. Friends, family and colleagues have pitched in with help administering the event, marketing, supplying materials, and giving moral support, a particularly key ingredient in planning something as avant-garde as Art Moves Jazz. Prints of Duckworth's pictures and recordings of Baxter's music will be available for sale. Portions of proceeds from prints will go to benefit the Gibbes Museum of Art and those from recordings to the Charleston Jazz Initiative. |
|
| Want to be added to the newsletter mailing list, please email John Duckworth at john@jduckworth.com. Copyright 2006 John Duckworth Artist & Photographer. All Rights Reserved. Home | Links | Press | Contact |
|