AS
OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN
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NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
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Remember
the name Camille Thurman. As a composer, multi-instrumentalist,
vocalist, and unique interpreter of the jazz tradition, she is quickly
becoming one of the standard bearers for the form, making a considerable
and dynamic contribution to the legacy of jazz while paying tribute to
its heroes.
Fluid
and powerful on the tenor saxophone and highly inventive as a vocalist,
she also plays bass clarinet, flute, and piccolo. Her rich sax sound
has been compared to Joe Henderson and Dexter Gordon, while her vocal
approach—including an impressive scatting ability—has been classified
alongside those of Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter.
In
a few short years, Thurman has shared stages with such jazz and R&B
luminaries as George Coleman, Roy Haynes, Dianne Reeves, Wynton
Marsalis, The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JALCO) featuring Wynton
Marsalis, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams, Charles Tolliver, Jack
DeJohnette, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jon Hendricks,
Harry Connick Jr., Jon Batiste, Audra MacDonald, Diana Krall, Patti
LaBelle, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, Louis Hayes, Russell Malone,
Nicholas Payton, Jacky Terrasson, Janelle Monáe, Alicia Keys, Lalah
Hathaway, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu, among others.
The
New York City native has already amassed several distinctive honors for
her musicianship: runner up in the 2013 Sarah Vaughan International
Vocal Competition, two-time winner of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz
Composers Award and a winner of the Fulbright Scholars Cultural
Ambassador Grant, The Chamber Music of America Performance Plus Grant
(Sponsored by the Dorris Duke Charitable Foundation) and the Jazz
Coalition Composers Grant among others. Thurman also has four
full-length recordings as a leader to her credit.
Her
compositions were featured and performed by her quartet in the
ASCAP/The Kennedy Center “Songwriters: The Next Generation” showcase as
well as the Greenwich School of Music “Uncharted” Series. Camille has
appeared on BET’s “Black Girls Rock” as the saxophonist and flutist in
the All-Star Band. Equally adept as a player and a singer, and
recognized for her compositional abilities as well, Thurman has also
earned accolades from the media, from Jazz Times to Downbeat, All About
Jazz to the New York Times, NPR to Sirius XM Satellite Radio, BET to
Jazz Night In America.
Thurman
toured internationally toured two seasons withe the world-renowned Jazz
At Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis as a saxophonist, becoming the
first woman in 30 years to tour and perform full time (2018-2020). After
guesting with the JALCO on several shows, including a tribute to Ella
Fitzgerald, and again during the 2017-2018 season as a featured vocalist
for the world premiere of the historic work, “The Every Fonky Lowdown,”
Thurman was invited to play the tenor saxophone chair for the past two
seasons, which covered four continents. When she is not touring with the
JALCO, Thurman is on the road leading her band, The Camille Thurman
Quartet. She is also a featured artist with the Darrell Green Trio,
where she has performed at the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, and
numerous respected international jazz festivals and venues.
Thurman
was chosen by the State Department under the Fulbright Scholarship
grant to perform in Paraguay and Nicaragua with her band. She and
Darrell Green were selected by American Music Aboard to travel and
perform in various African nations including Cameroon, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Senegal, and Mauritania.
The
dynamic musician is endorsed by D’Addario Woodwinds & Co. for
reeds, Conn-Selmer Inc. for saxophones and Key Leaves saxophone
products.
AS
OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN
THE SOUND PROJECTIONS MAGAZINE THAT BEGAN ITS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON
NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
THE
500th AND FINAL MUSICAL ARTIST ENTRY IN THIS NOW COMPLETED EIGHT YEAR
SERIES WAS POSTED ON THIS SITE ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2023.
BEGINNING JANUARY 14, 2023 THIS SITE WILL CONTINUE TO
FUNCTION
AS AN ONGOING PUBLIC ARCHIVE AND SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE
RESOURCE
FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THEIR LOVE OF AND INTEREST IN
WHAT THE VARIOUS MUSICAL ARTISTS ON THIS SITE PROVIDES IN TERMS OF
BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND VARIOUS CRITICAL ANALYSES AND COMMENTARY
OFFERED ON BEHALF OF
EACH ARTIST ENTRY SINCE NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
ACCESS TO EACH ARTIST CAN BE FOUND HERE, WHERE YOU CAN FIND THE 'BLOG ARCHIVE' (ARTISTS LISTED IN WEEKLY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) AND ‘LABELS' (ARTIST NAMES, TOPICS, ETC.) ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. CLICK ON THESE RESPECTIVE LINKS TO ACCESS THEIR CONTENT:
AS OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN THE SOUND PROJECTIONS MAGAZINE THAT BEGAN ITS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
THE
500th AND FINAL MUSICAL ARTIST ENTRY IN THIS NOW COMPLETED EIGHT YEAR
SERIES WAS POSTED ON THIS SITE ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2023.
FROM JANUARY 14, 2023 FORWARD THE SOUND PROJECTIONS SITE WILL CONTINUE TO FUNCTION
AS AN ONGOING PUBLIC ARCHIVE AND SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE RESOURCE
FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THEIR LOVE OF AND INTEREST IN
WHAT THE VARIOUS MUSICAL ARTISTS ON THIS SITE PROVIDES IN TERMS OF BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND VARIOUS CRITICAL ANALYSES AND COMMENTARY OFFERED ON BEHALF OF
EACH ARTIST ENTRY SINCE NOVEMBER 1, 2014. ACCESS TO EACH ARTIST CAN BE FOUND HERE, WHERE YOU CAN FIND THE 'BLOG ARCHIVE' (ARTISTS LISTED IN WEEKLY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) AND ‘LABELS' (ARTIST NAMES, TOPICS, ETC.) ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. CLICK ON THESE RESPECTIVE LINKS TO ACCESS THEIR CONTENT:
Marcus Shelby is a composer, arranger, band leader, bassist, and
educator who currently lives in San Francisco, California. His work
focuses on the history, present, and future of African American lives,
social movements, and music education. In 1990, Marcus Shelby received
the Charles Mingus Scholarship to attend Cal Arts and study composition
with James Newton and bass with Charlie Haden. Currently, Shelby is an
artist in residence with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival and a new
resident artist director for the San Francisco Jazz Festival 2019-2020.
Shelby is also an artist in residence at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival
where he is the music director of the 100 member Freedom Jazz Choir,
youth choir, and youth music ensemble. Shelby has composed several
oratorios and suites including “Harriet Tubman”, “Beyond the Blues: A
Prison Oratorio”, “Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.”, “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues”, “Green
and Blues”, and a children’s opera “Harriet’s Spirit” produced by Opera
Parallel 2018. Shelby also composed the score and performed in Anna
Deveare’s off Broadway Play and HBO feature film “Notes from the Field”
and has also worked on a range of productions, such as Joanna Haigood’s
“Dying While Black and Brown” (2014), Margo Hall’s “Bebop Baby” (2013)
and “Sonny’s Blues” (2008), the Oakland Ballet’s “Ella” The SF Girls
Choir (2013), The Oakland Youth Chorus (2014), and many other
productions over the past 21 years. Shelby has served on the San
Francisco Arts Commission since 2013.
In 1999, Marcus Shelby's
interest in composing for big band orchestra and his work in
collaboration with the Bay Area multidisciplinary arts organization
Intersection for the Arts led him to form the Marcus Shelby Orchestra.
The Marcus Shelby Orchestra is comprised of some of the San Francisco
Bay Area’s most respected musicians including vocalists Faye Carol and
Kenny Washington, and several well-known instrumentalists over the years
such as Howard Wiley (tenor/soprano), Rob Barics (tenor/clarinet),
Patrick Wolff (tenor/clarinet), Dayna Stephens (tenor), Sheldon Brown
(tenor/clarinet), Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Mike Olmos (trumpet),
Adam Shulman (piano), Matt Clark (piano), Mitch Butler (trombone), Doug
Beavers (trombone), and Joel Behrman (trombone). In the last 15 years,
Shelby has written an extensive series of original compositions and
suites as well as orchestrated a broad survey of arrangements from the
great composers Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Shelby has been
awarded two residencies with Intersection for the Arts through Theater
Communications Group and Meet the Composer and in 2000 was awarded the
Creative Work Fund grant to compose for the Marcus Shelby Orchestra. The
project resulted in the a theater production of Howard Korder’s play
called “The Lights” and featured the Marcus Shelby Orchestra performing
the original music live. In 2002, Shelby was commissioned by the Equal
Justice Society to composer a suite for jazz orchestra in honor of the
40th Anniversary of the Port Chicago Mutiny. In 2005, Marcus received
the Creative Work Fund grant to compose an oratorio for big band
orchestra, which honored the life and history of Harriet Tubman. In
2009, Shelby received the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
Fellowship in Chicago to conduct research at the University of Chicago
and the Columbia Black Music Research Center for his project
investigating the music in the civil rights movement. This research was
in preparation for the Marcus Shelby Orchestra’s 4th CD release on
January 15, 2011 titled “Soul of the Movement”. This CD received
critical acclaim and reached #2 on National Jazz Radio Charts (February
2011). In 2011, Marcus Shelby received a Gerbode Award and was
commissioned to compose an original musical with Bay Area director,
writer, and actress Margo Hall called “Bebob Baby” which premiered in
November 2013. This production featured the Marcus Shelby Orchestra,
which performed the score live at The Z Space in San Francisco. In 2013
the Marcus Shelby Orchestra also performed the live score to “Gwah Guy:
Crossing the Street” by artist and writer Flo Oy Wong and Marcus Shelby
at the ODC Theater in San Francisco. In addition to developing
commissioned works, the orchestra currently performs at Bay Area clubs,
universities, high schools, elementary schools, churches, festivals, and
concert venues.
The Marcus Shelby Orchestra is set to release their 5th CD titled “Transitions” Spring 2019.
Coronavirus Blues: A Q&A With San Francisco Jazz Leader Marcus Shelby
Shelby’s work often dives deeply into American history, but the pandemic isn’t a source of inspiration yet.
Marcus
Shelby at the SFJCC on February 25, three weeks before San Francisco
issued its shelter-in-place order. (Photo: Alex Lash)
For
25 years, the multi-talented Marcus Shelby — bass player, bandleader,
teacher, composer, and arranger — has forged art from jazz and history,
often in multilayered suites that invoke the compositions of his hero,
Duke Ellington, and take inspiration from African-American people and
stories: Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Negro Leagues baseball and the Port Chicago naval disaster and protest during World War II. He recently began a project based on San Francisco’s homeless.
Like
all San Franciscans, the 54-year-old Shelby has been forced to
drastically change his life during the coronavirus pandemic, and like
all artists who depend on performances, his livelihood is in limbo.
I caught up with him and asked about the impact of the pandemic on his life, career, and the San Francisco arts scene.
This Q&A has been edited and condensed from two conversations.
Lily O’Brien: How has your life changed as a result of the pandemic?
Marcus
Shelby: When it first happened I thought, “Three weeks, and we’ll be
back.” Then about a week ago, I thought, “Okay, this is going to be
probably three or four months of shutdown.”
I’ve
been doing music professionally for 30 years nonstop, and I don’t think
I’ve ever shut down. The only vacation I take every year is to see the
Giants’ spring training. So I’m really appreciative, in a way. I’m going
to take advantage and relax and read. I’ve been reorganizing and
catching up on old baseball games. Because at some point, everyone’s
going to have to jump back on the treadmill.
Sounds like you are not too worried personally.
I’m
worried, but I’m also practical. I have some things in place and a very
strong family network. I have two kids, so a large part of my
activities are occupied by home-schooling — monitoring homework like a
full-time tutor, and just passing the time with them. They are 10 and 17
and they live nearby.
How are you going to get through this financially?
I’ll
be creative like everybody else. Right now, I have a lot of financial
needs, including children, so I’ve had to diversify my income stream,
and live performances may only be one-third. I also teach, and a lot of
that can go online, and I am very lucky and thankful that I have a
number of commissions.
The cover of Shelby’s 2019 album Transitions.
Is one of those commissions the homeless project?
I have begun the research stage of the work, which I’m doing with Joanna Haigood,
the great choreographer. We find out if we get a big grant in June. I
like to spend a year to a year-and-a-half reading and meeting people who
can address an issue from scholarship or from real-life experience. The
next phase will be conferences and meetings, then trying to create
music that pushes a lot of these issues to the surface through songs,
and with Joanna through movement.
I
can’t apply for it because I’m a city arts commissioner. I am not
eligible for any money that comes from the city, and it should be that
way, even in this unprecedented time. I’ll be creative like everybody
else.
‘A
lot of people need to write about this. When you’re a creator, you need
inspiration, and this is life and death — this is unprecedented. But I
need time for reflection.’
I
think everyone’s pretty much in the same boat, whether you’re an
independent artist or you work for a company. The only difference is,
independent artist incomes have been completely cut off. You see this
outburst online — live performances and people tipping through apps. I
don’t know how well musicians are doing, but they’re being creative,
they’re promoting, they’re finding the best ways to record, and they’re
doing what they would do if it was a live performance.
We
are all kind of holding hands and being hopeful that once this is over,
organizations, institutions, local governments, and funders will help
us put our lives and our employment back together, however that may look
in the new world.
What other positive things have you seen?
I
think everybody is using this moment in a different way. When everybody
feels collective uncertainty about life and death, it brings out a
humanitarian spirit. I see more people in my neighborhood working out,
jogging, and walking dogs, and there’s a nod, and a smile, and it’s
genuine. And there’s that instant of, “I don’t care who you are or who
you voted for — in this moment, you’re my friend.”
Are you planning to do any projects virtually?
I’ve
been teaching at Stanford, and we moved our live classes online. They
just asked me to do ensemble classes [where everyone plays music
together], but I don’t know if this technology allows for it to be
synced, so it might have to be just lectures.
At the Community Music Center
I have a teenage big band program with 20 kids, and I’ve been giving
them weekly work online. Initially, I gave them videos to watch and to
respond to, more of an intellectual journey with the music we’re
playing, giving them a little bit more knowledge about Duke Ellington,
or any of the masters that we might be studying. I know every kid in the
class and where they are, so I’ve been able to tailor these individual
curriculums.
Do you think performance venues will survive?
SFJAZZ just cancelled their spring season,
but they have money from other sources, so they’re going to be fine.
But I don’t know how a lot of the smaller live clubs are going to start
back up without government support.
You have written many pieces about history. Do you think you’ll eventually compose a piece about this?
I
don’t see myself needing to write about it. But I think a lot of people
are — I have a friend who has already recorded an album about it — and I
don’t blame them. When you’re a creator, you need inspiration, and this
is life and death — this is unprecedented. But for me, I need time for
reflection.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lily
O’Brien is a Bay Area writer, editor, singer, Buddhist, and bicyclist
with a passion for the performing arts and world travel. Her articles
have appeared in a variety of publications, including the San Francisco
Classical Voice, Downbeat, JazzTimes, the San Francisco Chronicle and
the Marin Independent Journal.
Duke Ellington’s music defied easy categorization. His compositions
were concerned with rhythm, melody, timbre, and harmony, and he refused
to describe his music as simply “jazz” — a word he considered limiting —
instead referring to it as “American music.” David Schiff, a music
professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, wrote in his book The Ellington Century
that “no single oeuvre represents the full cross-categorical range of
mid-20th century music more than the vast repertory … of the Duke
Ellington Orchestra.”
In many ways, San Francisco-based composer, arranger, bandleader, and
bassist Marcus Shelby could be considered Ellington’s 21st-century
counterpart. Shelby started his own orchestra in 1999, in part, to
perform Ellington’s music, as well as his own compositions. And like
Ellington, Shelby doesn’t subscribe to the label “jazz” — even though
his sixteen-piece ensemble is called the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra.
“I play blues and swing,” he said. “I grew up playing open string bass,
all in the key of G. But I’m open to all styles: I find the power and
potential of musical inflection, of call-and-response. I lose the
labels.”
In
honor of Ellington’s birthday and the fifteenth anniversary of Shelby’s
orchestra, Shelby will present “The Legacy of Duke Ellington: 50 Years
of Swing!” at Zellerbach Hall on May 2. The first half of the show will
pay tribute to Ellington’s fifty-year career with selections such as
“Creole Love Call” and “Black Beauty.” The second set will consist of Such Sweet Thunder,
a twelve-part musical suite written by Ellington and his longtime
collaborator Billy Strayhorn and inspired by the work of William
Shakespeare. The performance will also incorporate actors from the
California Shakespeare Theater, and while Shelby wouldn’t reveal
specifics, he said “you might find yourself sitting next to Hamlet.”
Throughout the evening, the orchestra will be accompanied by top-notch
talent, including singer Faye Carol, violinist Mathew Szemela,
saxophonist Jules Broussard, and trumpeter Joel Behrman.
Cal Performances Associate Director Rob Bailis likened Shelby to
Ellington, describing him as a formidable composer, arranger, and
performer with a creative process similar to Ellington’s. “We’ve come to
respect that Marcus is truly an Ellington scholar,” he said. “He brings
rigorously researched interpretive nuance to these classics.”
But despite being well versed in the Duke’s music, Shelby still had to do lots of research on Such Sweet Thunder.
“I wasn’t sure why the plays and the music connected,” Shelby said. “I
had to understand the motives. I learned Ellington put his impressions
into sound.” The music is meant to evoke the essence of Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
and other Shakespeare plays, rather than to depict a particular
character or scene. Throughout his fifty-year career, Ellington wasn’t
limited by “cultural constructs,” said Shelby.
In his own work, Shelby has been informed by his religious
upbringing. As the grandson of a Baptist minister, he learned music
wasn’t just entertainment; it was a fight for civil rights. “Slavery was
on this land and the blues were the tool oppressed people used to try
to free themselves,” he said.
Over the years, Shelby has been commissioned to produce pieces based
on the lives and work of several of his heroes, and he conducts thorough
research on his subjects. For example, a project relating to Martin
Luther King Jr.’s legacy had him traveling through the South for years
before he wrote a single note. “I think of composition as more than
sitting around and imagining,” Shelby said. “I learn about characters,
stories, action — these things turn into melody, harmony and rhythm.”
Shelby is also inspired by musicians such as Louis Armstrong, who he
calls “the father of his language, improvisation”; Nina Simone, who used
her music to make positive change during the era of segregation; and
Stevie Wonder, for incorporating “the full breadth of black music.”
He said he admires Ellington’s ability to listen astutely and learn
from everything around him — “and he could talk a good game,” Shelby
said. But it was Ellington’s ability to write for the talent he had on
hand that most inspires him. “He knew how to use their gifts and wrote
tailor-made parts for them to play,” he said. “It was critical to
Ellington’s development.”
Shelby said his job is much like Ellington’s: “showing racial pride,
tearing down perceptions of African Americans in this country, and
trying to learn through history how music can carry ideas and make
change.” In Shelby’s capable hands, such a task looks easy.
Marcus Anthony Shelby is a composer, bassist, bandleader, and
educator who currently lives in San Francisco, California. His work
focuses on the history, present, and future of African American lives
social movements and music education.
In 1990, Marcus Shelby received the Charles Mingus Scholarship to
attend Cal Arts and study composition with James Newton and bass with
Charlie Haden. Currently, Shelby is the Artistic Director of Healdsburg
Jazz, an artist in residence with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and a
past resident artist with the San Francisco Jazz Festival and the
Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Shelby has composed several oratorios and
suites including “Harriet Tubman”, “Beyond the Blues: A Prison
Oratorio”, “Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.”, “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues”, “Green and Blues”,
and a children’s opera “Harriet’s Spirit” produced by Opera Parallel
2018. Shelby also composed the score and performed in Anna Deavere
Smith’s Off-Broadway Play and HBO feature film “Notes from the Field”
(2019). Shelby is also the voice of Ray Gardener in the 2020
Oscar-Winning Disney Pixar film “SOUL”. Shelby has also worked with a
range of artists including Angela Y. Davis’ “Blues Legacies and Black
Feminism” (2019), Joanna Haigood’s “Dying While Black and Brown” (2014),
Margo Hall’s “Bebop Baby” (2013), and “Sonny’s Blues” (2008), the
Oakland Ballet’s “Ella” The SF Girl Choir (2013), The Oakland Youth
Chorus (2014), and many other productions over the past 23 years. Shelby
has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission since 2013 and has
worked with the Equal Justice Society for over 20 years. The Marcus
Shelby Orchestra has released 5 CDs--“The Lights Suite”, “Port Chicago”,
“Harriet Tubman”, “Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.”, and “Transitions”.
Marcus Shelby Orchestra bio
In
1999, Marcus Shelby's interest in composing for big band orchestra and
his work in collaboration with the Bay Area multidisciplinary arts
organization Intersection for the Arts led him to form the Marcus Shelby
Orchestra. The Marcus Shelby Orchestra is comprised of some of the San
Francisco Bay Area’s most respected musicians including vocalists
Tiffany Austin, Faye Carol and Kenny Washington, and several well-known
instrumentalists over the years such as Howard Wiley (tenor/soprano),
Rob Barics (tenor/clarinet), Patrick Wolff (tenor/clarinet), Dayna
Stephens (tenor), Sheldon Brown (tenor/clarinet), Ambrose Akinmusire
(trumpet), Mike Olmos (trumpet), Adam Shulman (piano), Matt Clark
(piano), Mitch Butler (trombone), Doug Beavers (trombone), and Joel
Behrman (trombone). In the last 15 years, Shelby has written an
extensive series of original compositions and suites as well as
orchestrated a broad survey of arrangements from the great composers
Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Shelby has been awarded two
residencies with Intersection for the Arts through Theater
Communications Group and Meet the Composer and in 2000 was awarded the
Creative Work Fund grant to compose for the Marcus Shelby Orchestra. The
project resulted in the a theater production of Howard Korder’s play
called “The Lights” and featured the Marcus Shelby Orchestra performing
the original music live. In 2002, Shelby was commissioned by the Equal
Justice Society to composer a suite for jazz orchestra in honor of the
40th Anniversary of the Port Chicago Mutiny. In 2005, Marcus received
the Creative Work Fund grant to compose an oratorio for big band
orchestra, which honored the life and history of Harriet Tubman. In
2009, Shelby received the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
Fellowship in Chicago to conduct research at the University of Chicago
and the Columbia Black Music Research Center for his project
investigating the music in the civil rights movement. This research was
in preparation for the Marcus Shelby Orchestra’s 4th CD release on
January 15, 2011 titled “Soul of the Movement”. This CD received
critical acclaim and reached #2 on National Jazz Radio Charts (February
2011). In 2011, Marcus Shelby received a Gerbode Award and was
commissioned to compose an original musical with Bay Area director,
writer, and actress Margo Hall called “Bebob Baby” which premiered in
November 2013. This production featured the Marcus Shelby Orchestra,
which performed the score live at The Z Space in San Francisco. In 2013
the Marcus Shelby Orchestra also performed the live score to “Gwah Guy:
Crossing the Street” by artist and writer Flo Oy Wong and Marcus Shelby
at the ODC Theater in San Francisco. In addition to developing
commissioned works, the orchestra currently performs at Bay Area clubs,
universities, high schools, elementary schools, churches, festivals, and
concert venues.
The Marcus Shelby Orchestra released their 5th CD titled “Transitions” June 2019.
Marcus Shelby (born February 2, 1966, in Anchorage, Alaska)[1] is an American bass player, composer and educator best known for his major works for jazz orchestra, Port Chicago, Harriet Tubman,[2]Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio.[3] He has led the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra since 2001 and has recorded with artists as diverse as Ledisi and Tom Waits.
When Shelby was five, his family moved from Memphis, Tennessee, to Sacramento, California. Shelby played double bass briefly as a teen, but abandoned music until 1988, when he attended a Wynton Marsalis concert with his father, which inspired him to rededicate himself to music.[4]
From 1991 to 1996 he recorded and toured with Black/Note (credited as Mark Shelby), a hard bop group based in Los Angeles.
When Black/Note broke up in 1996, he moved to San Francisco because he "had seen groups like Broun Fellinis" whose tenor saxophonist of the time, David Boyce, "was playing a totally different style", and he felt a need to grow.[7] There he founded the Marcus Shelby Trio and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra. He has served as Artist in Residence at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival[8] and Composer in Residence at Intersection for the Arts.
Marcus
Shelby with his bass after teaching a workshop to Oakland youth at
the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, Tuesday June 15, 2010, in
Oakland, Calif.
Young girl Amina ScottLacy Atkins/The Chronicle
The workshops grew out of Shelby's research on Underground Railroad founder Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr. and jazz legend Louis Armstrong.
In February, Shelby took his family on a tour of the South to visit
historical sites important to the civil rights movement - Memphis;
Little Rock, Ark.; Jackson, Miss.; and Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala.
He lives in the Mission District with his partner, Vanessa Silva, their 7-month-old daughter, Billie, and Shelby's 7-year-old daughter, Kennedy, from a previous relationship.
I was born in Anchorage, Alaska. My dad was stationed
there. Then we moved to Sacramento when he got transferred to McClellan
Air Force Base.
My parents weren't professional musicians. They sang
in church. So that was the sort of my musical DNA. My mom plays piano;
she knows how to play all the spirituals. That for me was very
grounding.
I went to Cal Arts in Los Angeles and studied bass with Charlie Haden and composition with James Newton.
The bass is the foundation. Listen to reggae: That bass line tells you
it's a reggae song. Listen to swing or blues, the same thing. The bass
is like the heart beating involuntarily.
Everything else kind of centers around that pulse. So there's a lot of responsibility in the bass. It's the timekeeper.
Twenty years ago, I decided I wanted to only play
acoustic bass. No amp. I wanted to develop a style that was almost the
way a person would sing in a mike. And have all the components of that:
the overtones, the attack, the subtleties and nuances.
I was losing those qualities with an amp. What you gain in
amplification, I was losing in something very guttural, very natural and
human that you can only get if you don't use an amp. The overtones
aren't resonating naturally. They're going through some sort of box,
some sort of equalizer.
Three years ago, a friend came over and he's like,
"Man, you need a new bass" and sold me his German flat back. Over 100
years old. It makes a big difference: The wood, the way the neck is
carved, the size of the bass, the strings. The tailpiece, the endpin.
All the things you might think are just ornamentation are part of the
entire sound emanating from that instrument.
My girlfriend plays guitar. My 7-year-old's been
studying piano and violin. I play bass and a little piano, and we have
sessions here, my family. Me and my daughter play together all the time.
Music has always been for me an extension of a lot of other things, like politics and history and teaching and social justice.
The first year (of my workshop), I did a program
called Harriet Tubman and Jazz. I talked about the music that came out
of slavery - field cries, work songs, blues hollers, spirituals - and
how that music was a form of communication to give messages to slaves,
to help along the Underground Railroad. I wanted to expose that to young
people, to show how these early strains of music evolved into all of
American music - from the early blues to hip-hop.
The second year was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and
the third year Louis Armstrong. I told them about Armstrong: "Look, he
was born to a prostitute, didn't know his father and yet he was able to
overcome that. Let's listen to his music, but let's talk about his
character."
Some of these kids have very challenging homes or in
some cases no home at all. Those are the kids for whom a story like
Louis Armstrong's resonates the most.
The Marcus Shelby Orchestra, with Shelby conducting, at the Presidio Officers Club | Credit: Jessica Levant
Hearing live performances a couple of days apart had me musing on the
parallels between Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, premiered in 1944
and presented last week by the San Francisco Symphony, and Marcus
Shelby’s Port Chicago: Suite for Jazz Orchestra, premiered at
Yoshi’s in 2006 and performed last Saturday night at the Presidio
Officers’ Club, by the 15-piece, all-star Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra,
under the auspices of the Presidio Trust.
Both the Prokofiev and the Shelby are long-form pieces which advance
the deployment of large ensembles, with music sourced in tradition but
blossoming in polychromatic variety that at the same time forms a
cohesive whole.
The Presidio venue, with its hefty exposed beams and elegant
curtains, seemed a comfortable and appropriate place for Shelby to
showcase a piece commemorating two disastrous explosions,
75 years ago, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, a munitions depot in
the East Bay. Of the 320 persons killed in the widespread blasts, the
vast majority, due to the Navy’s assignment policies, were
African-Americans, who’d been inadequately prepared. The reassignment of
surviving personnel to a nearby munitions depot, under similarly
dangerous conditions, resulted in a work stoppage, deemed a mutiny and
criminally prosecuted. An appeal, launched by Thurgood Marshall (then
executive director for the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund),
had a significant influence on Harry S. Truman’s presidential
declaration on the desegregation of the armed forces, in 1948.
Composer Marcus Shelby conducts his Port Chicago Suite | Credit: Jessica Levant
The
sharply attired Shelby introduced his first-ever long-form composition
and interpolated commentary on the piece’s sections, referencing the
historical and socio-psychological circumstances of the story. The
"Introduction" to the 12-part suite set an affecting, dolorous mood,
evocative of the similar musical social commentary of Kurt Weill. By
contrast, in the “Opening Dance: Port Chicago Blues,” Shelby effectively
evoked the era in lively, Ellingtonian fashion, walking the bass
(skillfully played here by Tomoko Funaki), with shuffling accompaniment
on drums (Sly Randolph), and separating the melody choruses into ’40s
big band sections for the seven brass, then the five reeds. Pianist Gaea
Schell comped smartly behind the virile, burnished tenor sax solo of
Patrick Wolff. Shelby conducted from the front, animatedly pacing,
sometimes clapping and shouting, summoning up a spirited tutti shout
chorus, with a clarion solo by Santana trumpet master Bill Ortiz.
Aftermath of the Port Chicago Disaster
The “Call to War” slowed down to a second line dirge, with Schell
working twelve-tone anguish and Wolff doubling soulfully on clarinet.
“Training Day” seemed to evolve the big band sound into a less dancey,
more artful Woody Herman rollick. But Shelby also proved here that,
whatever mode he moves in, his melodic lines are distinct, tuneful, and
attractive. “Mechanized Women” shifted alluringly between 3/4 and 4/4,
the alto sax solo delivered with delightful bounce by Kristen Strom, one
of four women in the Orchestra.
Taking a verbal break, Shelby allowed that his 90-minute nonstop
spell as conductor was “a workout, in which I’m trying to be like Steph
Curry,” The “Work Routine I” challenged the ensemble with 7/8 time, with
canny polyrhythms and polytonalities. Charles Hamilton, former director
of the award-winning Berkeley High School Jazz Program, blew a skillful
and sassy trombone solo, and this section demonstrated another of
Shelby’s theatrically effective buildups of critical musical mass, in
which the Orchestra’s virtuosity showed brightly and consistently.
Half
of the Marcus Shelby Orchestra: from left, Patrick Wolff (ts), Tom
Griesser (as), Rob Ewing (tb), Kate Williams (tp), Kristen Strom (as),
Danny Brown (ts), and Fil Lorenz (bs) | Credit: Jessica Levant
“Barracks Life” revealed the troops’ troubled dreams, while “Black in
Blue” moved the big band sound forward again, into the more
experimental regions explored by the likes of bandleaders Gerald Wilson
and Don Ellis. “Big Liberty Blues” envisioned time spent away from base,
perhaps in the lively clubs of nearby Oakland. Baritone saxophonist Fil
Lorenz seemed an audience favorite, suave and seductive, with
intricate, biting runs. Rob Ewing displayed a trombone impressive in its
soft sweetness, quite different from Hamilton but equally meeting the
composer’s needs. This was a Shelby tune fully fit for a standard place
in the jazz repertoire, as was the following “Letters Home (Sweet
Brownness),” a sweet ballad rather evocative of Kern and Hammerstein’s
“All the Things You Are.”
It was next, in affecting theatrical fashion, that Shelby chose to
position the “Explosion,” heard fortissimo on all parts of Randolph’s
drum set and then in a sustained anguished brass chord. What came
“After” was set as a limpid, palliative theme passed from instrument to
instrument, with Wolff’s clarinet sounding a particularly appealing call
to the heart and auguring the final standing ovation from an
appreciative full house. Composer, the individual and collective
players, and the commemorated event all deserved it.
Marcus Shelby | Credit: Courtesy of BayTaper.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeff Kaliss has featured and reviewed classical, jazz, rock, and world musics and other entertainment for the San Francisco Chronicle and
a host of other regional, national, international, and web-based
publications. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco
State University, is a published poet, and is the author of I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone (Backbeat Books) and numerous textbook and encyclopedia entries, album liner notes, and festival program notes
A Note from Notes in the Field Composer and Performer Marcus Shelby
August 15, 2016
American Repertory Theater
I have had the greatest honor of my life working with Anna
Deavere Smith on her School-to-Prison Pipeline Project. I have learned a
great deal from her about communication and empathy. Both are central
to the blues form given to us by our ancestors, who found a creative way
to express hope, determination, and identity in the face of
overwhelming oppression. The musical score for my work is born out of
this blues tradition, which includes call and response, improvisation,
inflection, and tension and release. I have found the power of the blues
in all of Anna’s past work, so this is a natural form for us to work
with. Each of the individuals whom Anna interviewed has a personal and
succinct musicality that embodies the very essence of the blues—triumph
over tragedy. The music aims to provide a soulful addition to Anna’s
words. The subject material for the School-to-Prison Pipeline Project
has personally inspired me to fight for reform using my creative tools. I
am eternally grateful to Anna for this opportunity.
Marcus Anthony Shelby is a composer, arranger, bassist,
and educator who currently lives in San Francisco. His work and music
have focused on the history, present, and future of African American
lives, social movements, and early childhood music education. In 1990,
Shelby received the Charles Mingus Scholarship to attend CalArts and
study composition with James Newton and bass with Charlie Haden. From
1990-1996, Shelby was bandleader of Columbia Records Recording Artists
Black/Note. Currently, Shelby is artist in residence with the Yerba
Buena Gardens Festival. In 2013 Shelby received a MAP Fund Award to
compose Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio, an original composition for
big band orchestra about the prison industrial complex. In 2015, Shelby
was commissioned by Anna Deveare Smith to compose the score for her new
play Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education.
Shelby also has arranged for Ledisi and the Count Basie Orchestra,
recorded with Tom Waits, and received the City Flight Magazine 2005
award as one of the “Top Ten Most Influential African Americans in the
Bay Area.” Shelby teaches at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and in March
2013, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee appointed Shelby to the San Francisco
Arts Commission.
Bay
Area bassist and composer Marcus Shelby premieres his new work, "Beyond
the Blues: A Prison Oratorio," at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Sept. 27 with his jazz orchestra and four singers, and plays songs from
the piece with a smaller group Sept. 10 at MoAD on a program called
"Beyond the Blues: Ending the Prison Industrial Complex."
Photo by Peter Varshavsky
Marcus Shelby, the jazz bassist and
composer whose swinging music is often fueled by his passion for history
and social justice, just finished a monthlong run at Berkeley Rep accompanying Anna Deavere Smith in her new multi-voiced solo work, “Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education.”
It deals with the so-called school-to-prison pipeline that funnels
mostly poor young people of color into the unforgiving criminal justice
system, a subject even more relevant now, in this post-Ferguson moment,
than when Smith wrote the piece.
Shelby, who wrote the music and plays off the actress in
call-and-response-like phrases that suggest blues shouts and field
hollers, got so absorbed in the subject while developing the piece with
Smith over the last few years that he wrote a musical suite about mass
incarceration and the so-called prison industrial complex, “Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio.”
Commissioned by the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, where it premieres
Sept. 27, the piece was written for Shelby’s big band and a vocal
quartet featuring Tiffany Austin, Joe Bagale, Mujahid Abdul-Rashid and Kennedy Shelby, the composer’s 12-year-old daughter (Kennedy was DukeEllington’s middle name).
“The people I’ve always admired — Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone,
Duke Ellington — used their music to make social change. For me, that’s
been a personal calling, to try to understand the world around me,
particularly as it relates to social justice,” says Shelby, whose
previous works include “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman,” and “Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Shelby, as always, did copious research for this two-year project,
reading about mass incarceration and the history of U.S. prisons,
visiting California jails and doing monthly programs at San Francisco’s
Juvenile Justice Center, where he brings in musicians to play,
encourages and helps the kids to make their own music and exposes them
to “art, culture and critical thinking.”
He’s also been attending conferences and restorative-justice
workshops, and putting on monthly meetings on incarceration-related
issues at the Red Poppy Art House, where he performs prison songs by
everyone from MaRainey (“Chain Gang Blues”) and Bessie Smith to Johnny Cash and B.B. King.
In addition to composing new songs, he has rearranged
some of those classic numbers orchestrally for “Beyond the Blues: A
Prison Oratorio.” He’ll play some of them with his quartet next
Thursday, Sept. 10, at the Museum of the African Diaspora on a program called “Beyond the Blues: Ending the Prison Industrial Complex.”
Kennedy Shelby — who plays piano in the San Francisco Community Music Center’s Teen Jazz Orchestra, led by her father for the last three years — will also perform at MoAD, along with a few other ringers from the CMC band.
“I’ve been able to work with these young people at
CMC consistently, and it’s a great project for me,” says Shelby, whose
5-year-old daughter, Billie, named for Holiday, plays percussion in the band.
What’s in a genre? Bassist Marcus Shelby questions what makes jazz, jazz
Bassist
and composer Marcus Selby brought his orchestra to SFJAZZ Center on
December 2. The show was a twist on Tchaikovsky's holiday classic "The
Nutcracker." (Photo courtesy of Ronald Davis)
In 1944, Tchaikovsky’s famous “The Nutcracker” landed in North
America at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. 78 years later —
and just down the street — Marcus Shelby and his jazz orchestra hit the
bandstand with Duke Ellington’s arrangement, “The Nutcracker Suite,” a
true jazz masterwork. But was it really jazz?
“There’s no such thing as jazz,” Shelby said before the Marcus Shelby
New Orchestra’s performance on Friday at SFJAZZ as part of their
holiday concert series.
On Thursday, Shelby gave a lecture for students in the ITALIC
program, who attended Friday’s show. The thesis of the lecture was “Why
Jazz?”
Shelby argued that much of what we call jazz is actually the blues.
“Not the blues as in the sense of the style of music, but blues as in
communication,” he said, referencing the music that goes back to the
blues “shouts” and “complaint calls” of slavery. He also referenced
ideas of call and response of voices which later became instruments, a
technique used heavily in the Ellington arrangement.
Shelby talked about how important it was to capture the sound of Duke
Ellington’s band with his ensemble. “It’s not something that you
change,” he explained, saying that altering the original arrangements
would be akin to changing a Beethoven symphony.
The
Marcus Shelby New Orchestra sets up at SFJAZZ before their performance
of “The Nutcracker Suite.” The ensemble played Duke Ellington’s
arrangement of the piece. (Photo: SEBASTIAN HOCHMAN/The Stanford Daily
Instead, he focuses on bringing out the work of improvised solos. One
of the true standouts was the 16-year-old third trumpet, Skylar Tang.
Her solos were dynamic and unpredictable, yet melodic and honest.
Another standout soloist was first alto saxophone, Kristen Strong. Her
lines were excellent examples of storytelling in jazz; it was obvious
she wasn’t just playing for playing’s sake.
The second half of the show
featured vocalist Tiffany Austin in a series of holiday songs, ranging
from “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to “Oh Hanukkah” and an
original Kwanzaa song written by Shelby and Austin. The night culminated
with an audience sing-along of “Jingle Bells.”
In the ITALIC lecture, Shelby taught the class listening techniques
to enjoy the concert. He played a clip from Ellington’s 1960 TV promo
for “The Nutcracker Suite,” and then played the overture from
Tchaikovsky’s version. He asked the class to take a Ratatouille-esque
approach to listening, ingesting all the “flavors” of the piece,
experiencing each of the instruments separately and then all at once.
He instructed the ITALIC students to point out moments of call and
response, as well as moments when leading instruments took over. Singing
along as the jazz overture played, Shelby displayed a love for the
music that was both moving and electric.
Tiffany
Austin performs with the Marcus Shelby Orchestra at SFJAZZ Center. The
singer has released two powerful jazz albums. (Photo courtesy of Ronald
Davis)
“I’ve heard [The Nutcracker Suite] thousands of times,” said Shelby
in his lecture to ITALIC students, “and I hear something new every
time.”
Besides authenticity, Shelby has but one other simple goal: “Keep
the energy alive. Jazz musicians are always beating their own time … but
it’s about bringing people in, bringing in the energy, bringing the
dynamics down,” he said.
Shelby also told ITALIC students why the term “orchestra” was
important. At a time when large jazz groups headed by Black musicians
were referred to as “big bands,” Ellington wanted to bring the gravity
of the “Tchaikovsky aesthetic” and “apply it to his own visage,” as
Shelby put it.
His grace and professionalism in the classroom was duly matched
onstage as well. The performance was strong yet intimate. Those sitting
behind the stage were able to see his conducting up close; his quiet
remarks to the band made the whole experience feel very personal.
Shelby is a bassist, composer and director of the Healdsburg Jazz
Festival. He is best known for his compositions for jazz orchestra,
including “Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.” He also voiced the character Ray Gardner in the Oscar-winning Pixar
movie “Soul.”
Shelby had a strong command of the band, and the group’s
synchronicity was astounding. The Marcus Shelby Orchestra lived up to
its name — the 15 musicians sounded like a symphony.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sebastian Hochman is a staff writer at The Stanford Daily for Arts &
Life and University desks. He is a music major. Maybe. You can contact
him at shochman 'at' stanford 'dot' edu.
Bassist and composer Marcus Shelby says his career has been shaped by performers and institutions in the Bay Area. (Photo: Ronald Davis)
On the final evening of a four-night run as resident
artistic director at San Francisco’s SFJAZZ at the end of May, Marcus
Shelby was visibly exuberant.
Stylishly dressed and elegantly poised, the charismatic 53-year-old
bass player, composer and educator presented “Ellington: Blues and
Swing,” a show featuring the 16-piece Marcus Shelby Orchestra, which the
bandleader founded 20 years ago.
The evening included Shelby’s original compositions and arrangements of standards, some of which are on his latest album, Transitions.
Using his entire body to conduct the big band, San Francisco-based
Shelby jumped, danced and waved his arms to inspire the band during a
long first set, which was dominated by Ellington tunes. Violinist Mads
Tolling displayed considerable chops, and offered smooth, lyrical
phrases on tunes like “Mood Indigo” and “On A Turquoise Cloud.” The
second set featured a trio format with pianist Adam Shulman, drummer
Genius Wesley and Shelby on bass, backing up guest vocalist Kenny
Washington on classic Ellington tunes like “Take The A Train” and “In A
Sentimental Mood.” They were followed by guest vocalist Faye Carol (with
pianist Joe Warner), a longtime collaborator and mentor, who opened
with “The Maestro,” by Shelby, and closed out the set with flamboyance
on “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.”
A well-known figure in the Bay Area arts community,
Shelby is involved in a wide variety of activities and organizations,
and works as an educator at the San Francisco Community Music Center and
the Stanford Jazz Workshop, as well as serving as a teaching artist at
the Healdsburg Jazz Festival and the San Francisco Jazz Festival.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Was there a theme for your four-day artist residency at SFJAZZ?
The whole idea of the residency was to celebrate the Bay
Area, and that’s why I used primarily Bay Area artists. With this
residency you can get top artists from all over the world to perform
with you, but my career has been defined by the artists and the
institutions I have worked with here that have supported me.
I got to work with Angela Davis, who is a local entity,
and who wrote the most articulate treatise on the history of the blues
and black feminism. It was an excellent opportunity to celebrate not
only her, but to work with three of our great local vocalists—Paula
West, Tiffany Austin and Kim Nalley. And I was also able to get Terri Lyne Carrington and Tia Fuller. These musicians are not only fierce in their music, but in their activism, and that’s what this whole thing was about.
What was your inspiration for Transitions?
For this record, I wanted to document what the band had
been doing for the last six years. It is a representation of what it
might be like to come and hear the Marcus Shelby Orchestra. The whole
record is structured like a live concert, where we might come out and
the band plays two numbers, and then we bring out our featured vocalist
and we do five standards. And then we do an original suite—four pieces
from my “Black Ball Suite,” which is all about baseball and the blues
and how things changed over time—there are all these relationships that
deal with migration and transition, and the birth of the blues and Negro
League Baseball.
Duke Ellington has been a big inspiration for you. Why do you think he’s still so important?
Duke Ellington wrote about people, places, events—he was just one of the most inspirational figures I know. Wynton Marsalis
kind of did the same thing throughout his career, creating these
large-scale works. They were inspirational in their ambition of how you
can use history and use music and use this language called the blues and
swing to create music that informs, inspires, entertains, educates. And
in our music, the big band format is the large canvas. I needed to have
a band to learn to play Duke Ellington’s music, so that’s all we did in
the beginning. I collected over 200 Duke Ellington scores and over 100
Duke Ellington charts.
How do you see your role as the conductor?
I’m appreciative of the opportunity to have this band. I
used to play bass in my band, but now I primarily just conduct, and
that’s been a big thrill. It’s a whole other skill and has allowed me to
be the coach that I want to be, and inspire and try to get the most out
of these compositions. There’s nothing more enjoyable than being in
front of my big band and yelling and screaming, and laughing and telling
jokes.
You want good players, and you want to build a good
culture and environment, just like a team. And that starts with the
leader. So, I have to walk the walk and talk the talk, and treat every
member of that band with the ultimate respect. DB
Jazz
bassist and composer Marcus Shelby grew up in Sacramento. Despite the
lure of a promising New York jazz career and a Columbia Records deal, he
made his home in San Francisco and has been a leading figure in the Bay
Area's blues and jazz scene. He's especially known for his trio of big
band suites, "Port Chicago", "Harriet Tubman" and "Soul of the
Movement," which are steeped in his deep research of African-American
history. On Friday, his 16-piece band the Marcus Shelby Orchestra will
celebrate the legacy of Duke Ellington, born 115 years ago this week,
with a tribute concert presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall.
We talk with Shelby about his music, his career and the enormous
influence and talent of jazz legend Duke Ellington.
Marcus
Shelby first gained major public attention with the hard swinging unit
BLACKNOTE and their debut recording from the indie label of rhythm
master Billy Higgins (World Stage Records) in 1991. After four
recordings from Blacknote the bassist/composer began seeking different
avenues for his musical expressions. From writing and recording with
poet D Knowledge, Savage Dance, to film (love jones) and stage (Murder
In B Flat), Marcus Shelby has continued to grow and develop as an artist
while running his own label, Noir records. Today Marcus is an acclaimed
band leader (Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, Marcus Shelby Septet, Marcus
Shelby Trio) and award-winning composer whose recent works have touched
on important moments of history (Port Chicago, Harriet Tubman). Also a
dedicated educator, Marcus has helped instruct and influence many of
Jazz’s upcoming artists and entrepreneurs. The following interview is
from a conversation that Marcus and I had in 1999…
G1: Marcus, you first came to my attention, and I think
national attention, with the group BLACKNOTE… What’s happening with
BLACKNOTE now?
Marcus Shelby: It’s interesting that you ask that,
because I’ve recently been in conversation with Willie Jones, the
drummer, and we’re in the creative stages of putting together a new
recording project that we’re going to do on Noir Records, our label
here. We’re real excited about that because we haven’t actually played
together for some time. He was in town about six months ago, and we hung
out for about a week and did some playing, but the group BLACKNOTE
hasn’t actually done any work together for the last two years… at least
two years. We’re excited about the new project because we’re going to
have some guest artists: Anthony Wonsey, perhaps Roy Hargrove on some of
the tracks, along with James Mahone. We’re going to record that in
July. You know, BLACKNOTE, I don’t think we’ll ever break up. We took
some time off; Willie went to New York, James went to New York, and I
stayed here in San Francisco.
G1: BLACKNOTE’s first recording, 43rd & Degnan,
was done on World Stage Records, an independent label run by legendary
musician Billy Higgins.
Marcus: Yeah, Billy Higgins is the owner. Kamau
Daaood (noted poet), he was also part of the whole World Stage movement
and he provided the space. Billy was the one who financed the label and
threw us in the studio when we could barely hold our instruments right.
We went in there with a lot of heart and a lot of fire and we did 43rd
& Degnan, and every now and then I’ve gotta pull it out and dust it
off and remember where I came from.
G1: How did all of that come about?… the hookup with Billy and the recording??
Marcus: I moved to L.A. (Los Angeles) in 1990. I
went there, I knew Billy was there, but I didn’t really know anybody
else. I didn’t know any other musicians, so I started asking anybody who
I saw was involved in music where Billy was and they told me to go down
to Leimert Park. I went down there and hung out for about a month
straight, then I heard that he was out on the road. I kept going back
every day, and then one day he was there practicing. I told him that I
had been looking for him. He didn’t know who I was, but he took me in. I
guess he saw something in me, because he took me in, gave me a key to
the World Stage and over the course of the next four months was when I
met the different members of BLACKNOTE, Willie, Richard Grant (trumpet),
and James.
We
decided to put together a project after four months, but we didn’t want
to play anywhere. We wanted to shed for about six months. We didn’t do
any playing, no gigs or nothing. We just practiced for six months at the
World Stage. Billy would bring in different cats, like he brought Elvin
Jones in, Cedar Walton came, like, every Wednesday and worked with us.
Barry Harris, Ron Carter, anyone who was in town he’d bring down to the
World Stage and have them work with us. We’d talk about concept,
technique… After, I would say, six months we got our first gig at a
health food restaurant, this place called The Good Life. We played there
every Tuesday.
G1: Having the chance to shed like that, I could
only imagine the value in that. It seems like a lot of musicians, once
they learn a few phrases on their instrument they want to get out and
gig right away. For you, what was the benefit of just taking that time
to actually just shed and connect with the group?
Marcus: The big benefit was that I got an
opportunity to work out different concepts about playing and learn
different concepts. You can do a lot on your own, but when you have a
collective of musicians who want certain music aesthetics as you do… I
mean we thought the same way, we breathed the same way, and we all
wanted… we all had a clear vision, which was the same. Four guys, and
that’s really incredible, when four people see the same goal and are
willing to work hard to reach it. That was really what BLACKNOTE was all
about. We all had this clear vision, musically. We had the same
influences: Miles’ bands in the 60’s, Coltrane’s rhythm section,
Clifford Brown’s rhythm section with Max Roach and George Morrow, Wynton
Marsalis’ first band… We all worshiped the same Jazz gods, and that
influence you can only get when you have four people like that. You
can’t really individually get it yourself. We worked out the kinks, we
worked on concepts, we worked on skills, we all wrote music, we brought
music in, we shed… it was like a workshop. Those were the type of things
that made us jump from just four guys who knew how to play, to being a
real strong unit that was headed in the same direction. We got on each
others case, you know, in love and only within the rehearsal situation,
once we were outside the rehearsal situation it was all laughs and
jokes. But when we were together, playing on the bandstand it was very,
very serious.
G1: …And now, down the line, four albums later, and
you’re the owner and head of a record label, NOIR records. Was that in
your vision back at that time?
Marcus: You know, I thought about it. I entertained
the idea of a record label, but I was always kind of intimidated because
there are so many components to a record label that you can’t even
imagine. A lot of people think it’s just making a record and then
putting it out and hoping the world likes it. That’s far from the truth,
I mean, it’s a business so there are business issues that you have to
deal with… from the lights, to having computers, to having phones, and
then when you think you have all of that together you have to think
about what kind of business it is. We’re going to make records, so we
have to promote them,
we have to market them, we have to make GOOD records, we have to have
people to produce records, we have to have distribution, we have to have
some sort of promotion. Ok, where do you get all of this money to do
it? So I was always intimidated. I always thought owning your own record
label could be pretty cool. Even though we did an indie for Billy
Higgins there really wasn’t a machine behind pushing those records; it
was like “Let’s make the record, send it out, and see where it lands.”
When I came out here I really wanted to do something that was going to
have a, I don’t want to call it a machine, but something that would be
able to sustain itself and something that would allow multi talented
artists working in Jazz, working in Spoken Word and classical music to
have a place where they could be promoted, be marketed, produce their
own works, have control of their own compositions, and have the
distribution that could compete with the major labels.
I was with Columbia records for three years, Impulse for two years,
Chrysalis music I was with for three years. I saw what the majors were
doing, and I knew that if we could take some of the ideas and concepts,
it’s almost impossible to have the resources because they’ve got
billions of dollars, but if you could do things where you can compete
with them, like innovative recording techniques, internet stuff, which
is free pretty much, creative art work, and those areas where we can
compete with the majors, and have some sort of message that the world
can hear…
It was intimidating four or five years ago, but two and a half years
ago when we started the label I felt that this is something that could
happen. If I can get a collective of people who were interested in
music, an artists’ base, that’s why I chose the Bay Area. The Bay Area
has the artist base and the support of the public on the live
situations. So, I ended up here. I love this city and this is where I
felt something like this could happen.
G1: How long did it take from the actual thought of
starting a label, to putting everything together, to putting out that
first disc?
Marcus: It took about nine months. I did some
research. I thought about how I was going to do it. We didn’t start with
investors. We didn’t start with a bank loan. None of us has a rich
uncle. So it was like, the thing to do was to put together a project
that could get the ball rollin’ so we did the first trio cd Un Faux Pas!
(with Jaz Sawyer and Matt Clark) that helped us get our distribution,
that was kind of our calling card. Then we figured we’d keep knocking on
the doors and learn the distribution game… because it is a game and if
you can learn all of the options and opportunities that you can get out
of distribution, and know how to speak the language, you can start to
make things happen. It took us about two years to do that. We did
another project, a Langston Hughes/Romare Bearden project (Midtown
Sunset vol.1), then we did a spoken word project with Jazz, and then we
did The Sophisticate and by the time
we got there, we’d figured out how to promote and we’d raised enough
capitol and resources to promote. It does cost a lot of money, even if
you know the game you still got to have some money to play it. We were
able to pull that together and at the same time make sure that the
creative aspect, which is the most important thing, was still
progressing and getting to a level where we could feel proud about what
we were creating and being able to promote that with pride.
G1: Noir Records is more than just a Jazz label, you
record and distribute different types of music. One of the things that
you’ve done is the disc Spoken City, which features some of the talent
from the Bay Area’s ever-growing poetry and spoken word scene.
Marcus: That’s something that came from a project
that we pitched to Levi’s, or Dockers Khakis more specifically, to
record shows they had already set up to produce live. We had a very nice
contact and friend at Dockers who saw the value and how it could work
and still be a part of their overall marketing strategy. Their whole
idea and concept was to work with companies that are involved in grass
roots type projects, and that’s what this was about. All of the proceeds
go to this organization called YOUTH SPEAKS, which is a youth
organization that’s committed to poetry from kids; a community based
non-profit organization. We’re very active in spoken word, so this
project and the live concerts were right up our alley. Recording them is
something that we would do whether Levi’s sponsored it or not.
G1: Marcus Poston is another spoken word artist on the label, did you know him before signing him to Noir?
Marcus: Yes. I met him at different art gatherings
in the city and we became friends. He told me he was a writer, and
showed me some of his work, and I thought it was interesting. It was
like an extension of Kerouac into the 90’s. I felt like there was
something that could happen that would celebrate the beat poetry
of Jazz without being too stuck into it. So, we spent about nine months
plotting and planning his album. It was the first time he’d ever been
in a studio, and he went in like a true professional to knock out his
work and consequently put out a great album. That was a very rewarding
project because here’s a guy who was, like, 21 at the time who, from one
year didn’t know that anyone would ever read his work to the next year
having it recorded on a cd. It completely changed his life. Now he’s
totally active on the arts’ scene and he’s doing workshops for kids,
he’s launching a magazine under the Noir label, that deals specifically
with art and culture in the Bay Area. That’s what this label is trying
to do, inspire people to try to reach their full potential.
G1: How did the concept of the label come about?
Noir Records. I mean, when I look at the cd covers and just hearing the
name Noir, it reminds me of film. Film noir… black and white, sharp
images. What did you have in mind?
Marcus: The name has a lot to do with my personal
influences in art. Film noir is an art form that I’m very fond of. Old
films, old French films, old American classic films that were shot in
film noir fashion have influenced me as a composer, as an artist, and I
just think the word Noir has a very strong significant meaning to it,
just being Black and being strong. I wanted something to represent what
we were doing, having something that was strong and spoke about who we
were, you know, without being too much in the face. But, I think there’s
a message there about being Black and strong, and Noir was the best way
that I could do that without being pretentious or catchy or self
absorbing. I think all of my interests kind of came together in that
word, Noir. BLACKNOTE was the same thing, something that was strong and
positive, and had a musical connotation to it.
G1: On the BLACKNOTE cd, Jungle Music, you used a Malcolm X soundbite…
Marcus: Willie and myself, we came up with that
idea. There were a lot of Malcolm X tapes floating around Leimert Park
and we heard this one speech and we were like “Man, let’s use that at
the beginning of our album”, it was like “It’s time to stop singing and
start swinging”. Our whole concept was swing, from A to Z and that’s
what BLACKNOTE was all about. This was our first major release and
that’s the way we wanted to step to the public eye. We were heavily into
Malcolm’s work at that time and we heard this speech that was like an
eye opener. We thought, whoa that’s the beginning of the album. They
made us pay for it too. That few seconds cost a couple of grand, man.
G1: Since BLACKNOTE, you’ve taken your music into
different arenas; you’ve composed for dance companies, and film, and
even had an acting role in a play about musicians. Is this something
that you just see as a natural extension of what you do as a musician?
Marcus: I kind of wanted to be… My interest in art extends to dance, ballet, theatre, and film, and in performance.
I’ve had the fortunate experience of being in every aspect of the
record business, as an artist, involved with management, involved with
publishing and production. Some of the other things that have happened
have been by chance, I didn’t plan it. It was just by chance, as an
artist and then on the other side. So, I was able to bring some
experience to the table. The timing, being here in San Francisco at a
time that’s ripe with art, and meeting certain people that wanted to do
the type of project that was community and grass-roots based and having
the artists to work with. There are probably a number of Jazz musicians
who could do an operation like this. It takes a lot of patience, it
takes a lot of perseverance, and it takes a lot of resources and a lot
of heart. If you can think business wise, because you have to have some
sort of business acumen… My background is, I was an engineer before I
did all of this, an electrical engineer. I went to Cal Poly and studied
double E. So I learned how to think in college, and how to problem
solve, and was into technology based discipline. That may have a little
bit to do with my business background.
G1: How do you see Noir records as time goes on?
Marcus: I would like to see us maintaining our
independent spirit of helping artists do things that allow them to
control their own work and still have their work have the same type of
exposure that they’d get from the major labels. We’d also like to
provide opportunities for people to work as artists and with artists
without having to move to New York or Los Angeles. We’ve been lucky that
we’ve been able to pull together what we have, and do what we have. We
just want to continue to build on that. There are other people who want
to work in promotions, marketing, and business affairs, they’re not
necessarily artists but they want to work with artists. There’s got to
be some sort of machine set up for them to do that.
Industry has to keep supporting the works or it will die. By
supporting I mean recording and distributing the works so that other
people could recognize that there’s something going on. Writers have to
continue to write about it. That’s how things keep going, because if
people turn their backs on it, no one records it and no one writes about
it they’ll go by as if it never happened.
Marcus Shelby continues to flourish as one of today’s
true Jazz ambassadors. When he’s not leading his award winning orchestra
or one of his swinging smaller units he can be heard accompanying
masters such as John Handy or Faye Carol, collaborating with
contemporaries such as Howard Wiley, or providing soundscapes for a
dance company. More information about Marcus Shelby and Noir records can
be found at:
Marcus Shelby at San Francisco Giants Spring training. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Twenty years ago, when bassist Marcus Shelby formed a 15-piece jazz orchestra, he began to think big and thematically.
“I have been on a mission for the past 20 years to compose and create
music about African-American history,” he says. These pieces have
included an oratorio on Harriet Tubman and a suite about Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.
Shelby, in a different sort of uniform, playing bass. Photo courtesy of the artist.
On “Transitions,”
released on his own MSO Records, Shelby’s lush arrangements of classic
tunes by Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Cole Porter frame the
album’s centerpiece: “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues,” his
smart, slick and soulful four-part suite inspired by the history of
Negro League Baseball. Here, Shelby merges his mission with his two
driving passions—jazz and baseball.
While working on my next column for Jazziz magazine, I spoke with Shelby about these passions.
Have you always been a baseball guy? Did you play?
I have always loved baseball. I played little league up to high
school, but later focused on basketball as I entered my junior and
senior years. I actually played basketball, football, baseball, and ran
track. I received a full ride basketball scholarship to attend Cal Poly
(SLO) in 1984 and put my bats and gloves down. It was the Michael Jordan
effect. Most black kids my age at that time were mesmerized by Jordan
and basketball became more attractive. Perhaps it was the opportunities,
like scholarships, that basketball provided. It was also less expensive
for low-income communities. You just needed a bucket and ball.
Baseball, you needed all the equipment and 18 guys, plus a well-groomed
field. Nonetheless, I played outfield and also pitched. Now I play
catcher because I’m mostly playing with young kids and that’s the one
position you need someone who is not afraid to get hit.
After playing basketball for four years at Cal Poly, something
strange happened that altered my course. I went to a Wynton Marsalis
concert in Sacramento at the Radisson Inn, in 1988, and I lost my mind.
The band included Marcus Roberts, Bob Hurst, and Jeff “Tain” Watts. You
see, I also played bass in high school but had no dreams of becoming a
professional musician. After seeing Marsalis and understanding that my
sports career was coming to an end, I was inspired. I found an old bass
and began playing again. I fell in love with music! Specifically blues
and swing. I left San Luis Obispo after graduation in 1990 and went to
LA where I met Billy Higgins and joined the World Stage Jazz Workshop. I
got a job at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena which is why I went
to LA. I didn’t really want a “real” job but that was my reality in
1990. Soon after landing in LA, I applied and received a scholarship to
attend Cal Arts and study bass with Charlie Haden and composition with
James Newton. Goodbye JPL and electrical engineering. Things moved
fast. I started a group called Black/Note that featured drummer Willie
Jones III and trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos. We all went to Cal Arts. We
signed a record deal with Columbia Records, toured with Wynton Marsalis
as his opening act, and my life became only music for the next 6 years.
I did not follow baseball as closely. I think it was because I was
surrounded by nothing but Dodger fans.
When did that change?
Fast forward to 1996, when I moved to San Francisco, I became
interested in baseball all over again having settle into a career as a
musician. It was the Giants and Barry Bonds that did it. San Francisco
is a baseball town. Like St. Louis, Chicago, and Philly, baseball is
part of the civic culture. It’s hard to live here and not be aware of
what’s going on with the Giants. All of this brought me right back to my
love of the game. Since I’ve been in San Francisco (23 years now), I
have been active over the past 5 years working with kids on simple
baseball skills, organizing pickup games at my daughter’s school, and
just having fun getting to know people by inviting them to play catch. I
carry gloves, balls, bats, bases, and other equipment in my car and
will play catch with anyone willing to. I have 2 daughters (9 and 16).
My 9-year old daughter plays baseball. We play every day. Before school
and after school. Weekends too. It’s our common passion. We go to 50
Giants games a year as we live 10 minutes from Oracle Park (former
AT&T park). I attend Spring Training in Arizona every Spring. I’m
good friends with our flagship station (KNBR) and have been a guest on
that radio program (Talking Baseball with Marty Lurie) twice, talking
about the Negro Leagues and related subjects. So that’s it in a
nutshell. I started off has a hard core athlete in four sports, became a
full time musician, and have married my two interests together creating
music about the history of baseball.
What gave you the idea for this suite?
I have been on a mission for the past 20 years to compose and create
music about African American history. I’ve written an oratorio on
Harriet Tubman, a suite about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil
Rights Movement, Port Chicago, the Prison Industrial Complex, and other
collaborative projects about black history through plays, ballets, and
films. The Negro Leagues have been on my mind for years. Back in 1993, I
wrote a piece called “The Ballad of Josh Gibson,” but I was not at a
point where I truly understood the history of the Negro Leagues, its
impact on the Civil Rights Movement, and certainly not all of the
colorful characters that make up the rich history—including Fleetwood
Walker, Rube Foster, Effa Manly, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, and of
course Jackie Robinson.
I have had my big-band orchestra now for 20 years. I have great
support from my artistic home the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival and also
from SF JAZZ. This support has allowed me to create a piece about the
Negro Leagues where I was able to spend three years researching the
subject, attending conferences, interviewing surviving Negro League
players, reading all the books, and sufficient time to compose and
orchestrate.
Are there specific musical aspects that relate in some specific way to the sport of baseball?
I have a section that is called “At Bat” that is the re-creation of
an at-bat, and features three clowns that I employ throughout the suite.
In this case, the music follows the action which ends up being a
strikeout; this starts an argument between the batter and the umpire
(both played by clowns) and turns into an aria sung by the umpire.
I am very interested in the sound of baseball and have tried to
create the essence of a crack of bat, or the blues holler of the ump, or
the space between action which baseball and music use to create tension
and release. Most of these reincarnations are found in the full outdoor
presentation of our piece “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues”
which incorporated clowns and actors. Our recording is a mini-suite of
four pieces that frame the important cities that birthed black
baseball—Chicago, NY, Pittsburg, and Kansas City.
Can you tell me more about your research for this suite?
I spent three years researching “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and
the Blues”. This research included joining SABR (Society of Baseball
Research), attending conferences, reading no less than 30 books,
watching films, pretty much living on YouTube, making in-roads with the
SF Giants organization, studying all music recorded that I could find
about baseball, and being active on online forums to obtain information.
I had generous support from the MAP fund, the Yerba Buena Gardens
Festival, and SFJAZZ.
What did you learn in doing that research?
I learned that the real hero of Negro League baseball was Rube
Foster. He taught black people to be self-sufficient and to build their
own infrastructure to support segregated baseball. This including owning
your own fields, booking agencies, concessions, hotels, travel, and of
course teams. I believe he died of a broken heart because of the
collapse of this solidarity.
Do you see a parallel between Negro leagues and pre-integration music scenes?
Absolutely. That inspired the suite in a way—the parallel history of
the birth of blues music and the birth of the Negro Leagues. The first
black baseball players in MLB was Fleetwood Walker and his brother
Welday Walker. Fleetwood played for the Toledo Blue Stockings but was
banned in 1884 because of the most popular player at the time, Cap
Anson, and his reluctance to play with black players. This ban of course
lasted until 1947, when Jackie Robinson got signed by the Brooklyn
Dodgers.
Rube Foster started the first organized Negro League in 1920, right
about the same time Gertrude Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith,
Sara Smith, and others made the first blues recordings and toured the
infamous wheel which ran through the south, Midwest, upper south, and
parts of the south east. Barnstormin’ Negro League baseball teams
employed the same traveling routes, stayed at the same hotels, ate at
the same homes, and in many cases were booked by the same agents. This
would be true all the way up to the 1960s. If you were Nat King Cole
Jr., or Ella Fitzgerald, or Satchel Paige, or Toni Stone
(second basewoman for the Indianapolis Clowns in 1962) you probably
stayed at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis Tennessee as that was the only
place a black artist or entertainer could stay during segregation. The
impulses between Negro League players and early “jazz” musicians were
the same. The style of baseball was loose, fast, and furious. Style was
of the essence. Same as in music. The cultural connections that informed
both the sport and the music are unmistakable such as their “lingua
franca” and improvisational necessity.
The live presentation of this music
went even further, in an attempt to re-created the environment of a
Negro League baseball park. How did you do that?
When we performed “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues” at
the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival September 2018, we performed the suite
outside in a park and borrowed from the recorded history of what
happened at Negro League parks or at least parks where Negro League
teams played (such as Comisky Park in Chicago). This included using
clowns that “shadow-balled” and recreated infield practice, We recreated
a live radio show that interviewed black luminaries like Satchel Paige,
Jackie Robinson, Effa Manly, and Rube Foster, and my big band orchestra
performed the suite with three vocalists and four actors to bring
interesting aspects of the history to life though monologues and
original and re-arranged songs.
In what way were
the four cities—Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Kansas City—central to
the Negro leagues, and do you see a parallel there with jazz in those
towns?
I highlight these four cities in my suite because they were most
central to the history of Negro League Baseball. The first Negro League
team was the New York Cubans. New Yorkhad a big influence on Negro
League baseball because of its market size and also its large black
population that included Afro Latinos. I’d also include one of the most
influential owners Effa Manly who ran the Newark Eagles and was central
to Negro League baseball in New York. Chicago is where the Negro Leagues
as an initial entity began through the efforts and leadership of Rube
Foster, who migrated from Texas to Chicago (like so many other musicians
who traveled up the Mississippi River like King Oliver and Louis
Armstrong). Rube Foster first started the Chicago American
Giants.Pittsburgh was home to the rebirth of Negro League baseball in
1931 because of the numbers runner Gus Greenlee, who owned the Crawford
Grill (and managed several boxers). He put together a tenacious team
called the Pittsburg Crawfords that sported a roster that included Cool
Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Sam Bankhead, and the great
Satchel Paige. In 1933, Greenlee started the Negro League Allstar game
that would ultimately save the Negro Leagues from financial ruin until
World War 2 started, which actually in a strange way helped the Negro
Leagues (and MLB) due to the fact people had jobs. Kansas Cityis where
the most legendary team is from—the Kansas City Monarchs, which had
Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Jackie Robinson at some point on their
roster. The Kansas City Monarchs are also the first team black or white
to use night lights to be able to perform at night.
In all four cities, we also see independent musical styles that were
influenced by factors of migration early on. New York City was
experiencing a population boom that defined life, surrounded by subways,
cultural diversity, street cars, and city sounds. Chicago saw a
migration from the South, such as New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas, and
with that they brought with them a tinge of the blues that would define
Chicago “jazz”. Same with Kansas City, which birthed the Count Basie
Orchestra. I love the story of Pittsburgh, and how families like Josh
Gibson’s family migrated there like many other black families that
produced artists like Ahmad Jamal, Art Blakey, Billy Eckstein, Kenny
Clarke, Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, Earl “Fatha” Hines, and Errol Garner.
There is a consistency of refined musicmaking in all of these cases.
Pittsburgh, a steel town full of sand lots, is a perfect example of the
cultural simpatico between baseball and music.
Obviously, this concept has to do
with many things, especially African American history. But do you also
see a natural affinity between playing jazz and playing baseball, things
that are inherent in the doing of both?
I see some connections. If you watch players like Mookie Betts, Dee
Gordon, Billy Hamilton, Yasiel Puig, Jose Altuve, Javier Baez, Lorenzo
Cain, or even Cody Bellinger, you will see the spirit of “jazz” being
played out every time. These players play in the moment. They read the
situation and respond. I wouldn’t say baseball has the same rhythm as
“jazz”, but it does swing and it grooves. Watch the rhythm and motion
between a pitcher and a catcher. It’s critical that it has rhythm or the
pitcher will be rattled. Watch any infield practice. Same thing. There
is a flow and rhythm to it: You have to be ready because it’s different
every time a fast hop is coming at you, just like being fora bassist
being in the middle of walking rhythm changes.
Also, baseball takes patience. I’m old school. No clocks, please.
Jazz, of course, is a patient art form with little gratification that is
quick and easy. A good composition is an experience that involves a
group effort in which you have leads and you have role players.—just
like in baseball. It unfolds over time and can not be reduced to a bite
size understanding. You either like “jazz” or you don’t. You either
like baseball or you don’t. There really isn’t any way to dumb down the
two, to make them more accessible, and I’m OK with that.
Were your jazz orchestra a baseball team, what position would you play?
I think about this question every day, as I’m always trying to learn
the values of baseball by watching games,” he says. “I would certainly
be the catcher. As a bass player, I think the catcher has the equivalent
role: steady and consistent; involved in every pitch; controlling the
tempo by calling the game; rarely the front-person but in the center of
the action and comfortable with that role.
Marcus Shelby’s deep dive into blues royalty with Angela Davis and more
by Thurman Watts
May 17, 2019
San Francisco Chronicle
Marcus Shelby planned to be an electrical engineer until he heard Wynton Marsalis play live. Photo: Peter Varshavsky / Peter Varsahvsky
Marcus Shelby wasn’t supposed to be a jazz musician.
For starters, he was born in Alaska, hardly an outpost of cultural
import. Then, after his military family relocated to Memphis and later
Sacramento, Shelby became enraptured with sports, skilled enough to be a
four-sport high school athlete who earned a basketball scholarship to
Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
But it was during his time at Cal Poly, studying electrical
engineering, that his life’s arc was redirected. While talking to his
father about an upcoming date with a girl, his dad suggested taking her
to a Wynton Marsalis concert. Seemed like a good idea. It was so much
more.
“From the first note, I forgot about her. I got hooked on the music,” Shelby recalled. “It hit me upside the head.”
The music by Marsalis, a lion of the contemporary jazz scene, struck
Shelby so hard, he was transformed. Shelby backtracked into music, got a
bass, an instrument he played during his teen years, woodshedded in
earnest and joined a church to start playing regularly.
Shelby did an about-face from engineering to jazz and now has his own quintet and recording label. Photo: Peter Varshavsky / Peter Varsahvsky
After graduating, he ditched electrical engineering and migrated to
Los Angeles where he studied under musicians Billy Higgins, Charlie
Haden and James Newton.
What followed was as much determination and hard work as talent or
serendipity. Shelby moved to the Bay Area, formed his own record label,
Noir Records, and focused on creating music that embraced social
awareness. On that path toward creative enlightenment, Shelby’s
education included reading “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism,” a book
by author and activist Angela Davis that examined the careers of singers Bessie Smith, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Billie Holiday through a feminist prism.
“I read ‘Blues Legacies and Black Feminism’ 10 or so years ago as I
was seeking all things that could tie up my understanding of the blues. I
had read every scholarly work I could get my hands on,” Shelby said.
“When I came across the Angela Davis book, I was like, ‘Oh my God,
this is the most articulate account of the blues I’ve ever read.’”
Activist
and author Angela Davis’ book “Blues legacies and Black Feminism” had a
powerful influence on Marcus Shelby and she will join him at SFJazz
Center on Friday, May 24. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle
Like the Marsalis concert, it left an impression on Shelby. Now a
decade later, Davis is slated to join Shelby, resident artistic director
at SFJazz, and his quintet on Friday, May 24, for a performance
inspired by her book as part of a four-day run at SFJazz Center’s Miner
Auditorium. Davis, as spoken word artist, is expected to offer her
feminist commentary on the lyrics and performances of Smith, Rainey and
Holiday.
Guest artists Terri Lyne Carrington, Tia Fuller, Paula West, Tiffany Austin, Kim Nalley and Tammy Hall will also be on hand to lend their voices and musicianship.
“Sometimes I’m not sure of their effect on the culture, because we
have to keep rediscovering them,” Hall said about Smith, Rainey and
Holiday. “It’s a shame that people don’t know who they are.”
Tammy Hall will be a guest artist during Shelby’s stint at SFJazz Center.Photo: Irene Young
Shelby hopes to change that, and further educate Bay Area audiences during his string of concerts that blend history with music.
Kicking things off is “Green And Blues” on Thursday, May 23, a
collaboration of the Marcus Shelby Orchestra with author Daniel Handler,
most famous for his series of children’s fiction stories, “A Series of
Unfortunate Events.” They have assembled a musical history of famous and
infamous San Francisco neighborhoods from the indigenous Ohlone tribe,
to the evolution of Hunters Point and the Gold Rush era’s inception of
the Barbary Coast red-light district. They’ll also describe the flora
and fauna peculiar to each neighborhood, juxtaposing them with a blues
backdrop.
The third show brings Shelby’s intimate knowledge of athletics into
union with his music. “Black Ball,” scheduled for Saturday, May 25, is a
musical suite examining Negro League Baseball, which is where most
African American players before 1947 — when Jackie Robinson broke the
color barrier — got their professional start.
“My research shows that black folks have been playing baseball pretty
much as long as America at large,” Shelby said. “Ironically, the first
African American to play professionally was a fellow named Fleetwood
Walker in 1884, decades before the game became segregated.”
Shelby’s suite of concerts concludes Sunday, May 26, with a look at a
legend as he explores the legacy of Duke Ellington, an artist whose
music also had an impact on Shelby’s life.
“Ellington’s body of work hit me hard … I found that the deeper you
swim in his water, you’ll likely find the essence of Louis Armstrong and
Bessie Smith,” he said. “If you swim deep enough, you will find
(proto-jazz musician) Buddy Bolden.”
It’s a week of concerts that dive deep into the black experience with a theme of social justice for all.
“There’s a sort of celebration and buoyancy of these aspects of black
life,” Shelby said. “Admittedly, some of it is sad, yet out of it came
songs that helped us in the struggle.”
Marcus Shelby residency: “Green and Blues”: Marcus
Shelby Orchestra with Daniel Handler. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 23.
$25-$26; “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism”: Marcus Shelby Quintet with
Angela Davis. 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 24 (sold out); “Black Ball: The
Negro Leagues and the Blues.” 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 25. $30-$70; “The
Legacy of Duke Ellington” featuring the Marcus Shelby Orchestra, Faye
Carol, Kenny Washington and Mads Tolling. 7 p.m. Sunday, May 26.
$25-$65. SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium, 201 Franklin St., S.F.
866-920-5299. www.sfjazz.org
Marcus Shelby brings Ellington’s ‘Thunder’ to Berkeley
Portrait
of Bay Area jazz bassist and music educator Marcus Shelby at the
Community Music Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, April 15,
2014. (Josie Lepe/Bay Area News Group)
This
is the story of a “local guy” who stuck to his guns and made it on his
own terms. He’s a DIY musician. His name is Marcus Shelby.
Twenty years ago, Shelby — bassist, bandleader, composer, big musical
thinker — was part of the “Young Lions” movement in jazz, recording for
Columbia Records and seemingly destined for fame and fortune in New
York City. Shelby, however, moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and
began gigging six and seven nights a week. He was forging a reputation,
teaching in schools and collaborating with theater companies,
choreographers, filmmakers and poets, while building a discography
focused on grand historical themes in African-American history.
He’s never left the Bay Area. Lucky us.
“In New York, I’m not sure I could’ve built the vision,” he says,
during a two-hour conversation at the Red Poppy Art House, a cozy
community center near his Mission district apartment. “This is my city.
This is where I am. My kids go to school here. I work in the schools. I
believe in them.”
Dedicated to Duke
Now 48, he brings his latest project to fruition
Friday at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, where the Marcus Shelby Orchestra
will perform a Duke Ellington tribute under the auspices of Cal
Performances. It will include early classics by Ellington, as well as
his “Such Sweet Thunder” suite, inspired by Shakespeare — and here
performed by Shelby’s 16-piece orchestra in a collaboration with Cal
Shakes. Actors just may pop up around the concert hall to render Bardian
bits: i.e., from the balcony scene of “Romeo and Juliet,” which
inspired Ellington and Billy Strayhorn to compose the suite’s sublime
ballad “The Star-Crossed Lovers.”
The collaboration was Shelby’s idea; he knows Jonathan Moscone, Cal
Shakes artistic director. Well, Shelby knows everybody, it seems.
On stage, wrapped around his double bass, grounding bands with his
fat tone and deep rhythm, he is all business, rarely cracking a smile.
In conversation, he is a charismatic dynamo, expansive and prone to
breaking into laughter — and, as on stage, wearing a fedora tipped at
just the right angle, his signature.
He veers from one topic to the next: from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth
Night” (he scored a 2012 production for San Francisco’s African-American
Shakespeare Company) to actor-playwright Anna Deavere Smith (he’s
scoring her new play “Pipeline Project”), from San Francisco’s juvenile
hall (where he teaches music) to the 100-voice choir he conducts in
Sonoma (it performs in June at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival) and somehow
on to the California Gold Rush, Ohlone Indian culture, Grizzly bears
and naturalist John Muir (about whom he wrote a piece, “Muir’s Walk,”
part of his “Green and Blues” suite for his orchestra).
“I’ve tried to combine different things that inspire me,” he says.
“When I want to learn about a subject, then I find a way to write music
about it.”
Shelby has composed a triptych of big band suites drawn from
African-American history. His “Port Chicago” (2006) was inspired by the
1944 explosion at an East Bay naval yard, where more than 320 men were
killed, mostly black American sailors. His “Harriet Tubman” suite (2007)
evoked the Underground Railroad’s abolitionist hero. His “Soul of the
Movement” (2011) drew on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., while
exploring work songs, spirituals, blues, jazz and Curtis Mayfield’s
“We’re a Winner.”
Doing his homework
It involved three years of research, including
residencies at Stanford University, the University of Chicago and the
Columbia College Center for Black Music Research, also in Chicago. He
drove from Alabama to Tennessee, interviewing scores of men and women
who lived through the civil rights years, including his aunts Katie Mae
and Lucille Greer, retired nurses who had participated in the Memphis
protests on behalf of the city’s black sanitation workers, led by King
in 1968.
“It’s research and immersion, and that turns into melody,” Shelby
says, explaining his process. “It’s action and movement, which turns
into rhythm.” He adds, “Music has to be about something.”
Pianist and composer Rebeca Mauleón directs the education program at
SFJazz, where Shelby’s family concerts (including two with author Lemony
Snicket) have been sell-outs:
“Everything he does is with this spirit of curiosity and
experimentation — one foot in tradition and one foot in the modern
world,” she says.
Deborah Cullinan has known Shelby since the late ’90s, when she
directed Intersection for the Arts. Now she directs the Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts and has helped guide funding toward his projects for
16 years. She says, “He’s special. He’s one of these constantly
evolving, constantly questioning people.”
Asked to imagine what Shelby might be doing in 15 years, she says,
“His curiosity is kind of insatiable, so the question would be like,
‘What kind of wild collaborations would he come up with?’ Astronauts and
musicians and who knows what? But also the themes and questions that he
feels required to explore: What will they be?”
Memphis boyhood
As a boy, Shelby lived in Memphis, where his
grandfather was a preacher and family life revolved around church. “Oh
yeah, every Sunday. Twice on Sunday,” he says.
When he was about 5, Shelby and his family moved to Sacramento. At 13
— inspired by the bass-playing older brother of his best friend — he
took up the double bass, playing it alongside the choir at Mt. Calvary
Baptist Church and in his high school orchestra. He never had a private
lesson — and quit at age 16 to pursue sports.
He won a basketball scholarship to Cal Poly, where he majored in
electrical engineering, thinking, he recalls, “I was going to be an
electrical engineer or a professional athlete, if God let me be.”
In his senior year, though, his father suggested that he “check out
this trumpet player.” It was Wynton Marsalis. Shelby took a date to see
Marsalis’ band at the Radisson Hotel in Sacramento — and quickly forgot
about his date. “Because it was like they were playing to me. This
swing, this up-tempo swing, this multi-polyrhythmic — oh, man. And
Wynton was so articulate. And I was, ‘Wow, that’s what I want to be,
right there.'”
This was in 1988. Shelby was 21 or 22. He dusted off his bass and
practically was laughed off the stage during a gig in Pismo Beach, where
the bandleader shouted to the drummer to “Play louder,” to drown out
Shelby’s mistakes. “I was horrible,” he says.
He practiced maniacally. He moved to Los Angeles and found a home at
the World Stage, a community arts and performance center founded by
Billy Higgins, who was one of jazz’s most infectiously swinging
drummers. Higgins saw the spark in Shelby and his friends, mentored
them, taught them the connection between community and music. At the
World Stage, the young bassist and his pals formed the Black-Notes, the
group that later recorded for Columbia Records and toured Europe in
1994, opening for Marsalis.
We’ll have to fast-forward through Shelby’s two years at Cal Arts,
his studying with flutist-composer James Newton, his self-education in
classical music, his obsessing on Tchaikovsky and attending more than
100 Los Angeles Philharmonic rehearsals at the Hollywood Bowl with
pocket scores in hand.
No wasting time
We’ll jump to 1996, the year Shelby performed at a
Billy Higgins tribute in San Francisco. He soon moved to the Mission,
began gigging and meeting with arts administrators. He “got into the
middle of our stuff immediately,” remembers percussionist-educator John
Santos. “He’s a mover. He’s not a guy who’s wasting time.”
Shelby has never stopped moving. He teaches the music-history
connection in two schools. His daughters, 4 and 11, play in the teen
jazz band he directs at the Community Music Center in the Mission. He
has become a mentor to a new generation: “Without Marcus, there is no
me,” says Oakland-reared trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who’s now a star,
tours the world, but still texts Shelby for advice “whenever I’m
feeling stuck or boxed in.”
Last year, Shelby was appointed to the San Francisco Arts Commission:
“I’m here 18 years, man,” he jokes. “Sooner or later, people will call
you for things.”
He’s here. He plays bass. He swings, infectiously, like Billy
Higgins. And he’s got something big on tap for Friday, his Ellington
extravaganza. Expect sweet thunder.
THE
MUSIC OF MARCUS SHELBY: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION
OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH MARCUS SHELBY:
