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A week of world-class jazz and a Q&A with Adam Theis
Written by Paul Raymore
Tuesday, 01 July 2008

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Jazz fans interact with Grammy-nominated artists during fourth annual “Jazz Artists in Residency” at Moody’s Bistro & Lounge

Jazz fans will have the chance to completely immerse themselves in the music of Grammy-nominated musicians when Moody’s Bistro & Lounge hosts the Fourth Annual “Jazz Artists in Residency” for one unforgettable week July 7-12. The event includes free jazz shows by Grammy-nominated musicians, a week-long kid’s camp and a benefit for the Truckee Youth Music Program.

During the event, music fans mingle with jazz musicians from New York and San Francisco. The jazz artists are inspired as they interact with their musical peers, providing an elevated level of passion and creativity that isn’t usually heard during traditional shows. By immersing themselves in music for the week-long event, the artists infuse a lot of color and culture into Truckee nightlife.

“Jazz Artists in Residency” includes four free jazz shows at Moody’s from Monday, July 7 to Thursday, July 10. These same performers also will conduct free clinics during the “Jazz Artists in Residency” Kids’ Jazz Camp from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, July 7 through Friday, July 11, allowing children to develop an appreciation for music in general and for jazz as a whole. On Friday, July 11 and Saturday, July 12, the well-known musicians and special guests will give a whole new meaning to Truckee nightlife when they perform at Moody’s as part of a benefit for the Truckee Youth Music Program.

According to JJ Morgan, Moody’s Bistro & Lounge co-owner, “The whole week in itself is getting bigger especially due to the fact that we are able to get great, big name musicians to come in and perform and teach the students year after year. We’ve always wanted to have the camp be big and we are definitely getting there as we get ready for our Fourth Annual.”

As the musicians jam with each other and interact with fans throughout the week, Truckee takes on a culturally exciting flavor that goes far beyond what audiences would normally experience during a jazz show. The town becomes a base camp for the country’s most talented jazz musicians.”

Due to a week where nothing distracts them from their passion for jazz, the musicians deliver some of the most energetic and innovative shows a jazz fan will ever witness. For the four free evening shows at Moody’s, Will Bernard will perform on guitar, Peter Apfelbaum on piano, Adam Theis on brass, Ben Wendel on saxophone, Josh Jones on drums and Andrew Emer on bass.

As a grand finale to the Jazz Artists in Residency, the camp teachers and special guests will treat the audience to an energetic and innovative show by Dublin on Friday, July 11 and Saturday, July 12 as a benefit for the Truckee Youth Music Program. Bay Area rapper/songwriter Dublin will appear, providing an element of hip hop not seen in most jazz shows. Dublin combines the live elements of an MC with the range of a vaudeville performer. Dublin’s appearance at Moody’s, along with the musicians who will be teaching the music camp all week, will serve as a fitting finale for an event that promises to delight jazz fans while educating students on the joys of music.

Admission both nights for the Truckee Youth Music Program benefit is $5.

The Players:
• Will Bernard, whose CD Party Hats was nominated for the “Best Contemporary Jazz Album” Grammy this year, is a jazz guitarist/composer acclaimed for his imaginative genre-busting music. Once called “one of the best-kept jazz-guitar secrets on the planet” by Billboard Magazine, he is known for incorporating classical guitar techniques along with jazz angles, touching upon styles such as R&B, soul, blues, surf music and noise-rock.

• Peter Apfelbaum, another grammy-nominated musician, is also a participant in the “Jazz Artists in Residency.” Apfelbaum’s Signs of Life album received a Grammy nomination in 1991 for the opening composition. Apfelbaum is fascinated by how sounds fit together and his music is known to have a polyrhythmic mix of African and Western elements.

• Adam Theis is a member of the Shotgun Wedding Quintet Hip Hop Symphony, known for its marriage of two seemingly unrelated musical styles-hip hop and jazz. The San Francisco Jazz Festival recently awarded Theis a grant to compose a musical suite for the event.

• Ben Wendel also brings his considerable talent to the 2008 JAIR lineup. Educated at the Eastman School of Music in New York, he has enjoyed multiple domestic and international tours with such artists as Cuban drumming legend Ignacio Berroa, Thelonious Monk Piano Competition Winner Tigran Hamasyan, Electronica artist Daedelus and Hip Hop artist Snoop Dogg. As a composer he has scored multiple films, received an ASCAP Jazz Composer Award and was a finalist in the 2007 International Songwriting Competition.

• Josh Jones has played with Jazz Greats Don Cherry, Steve Coleman and Omar Sosa and the Hip Hop Groups The Coup, Digital Underground and Spearhead. Jones was the former lead of Hueman Flavor, a ground breaking hip hop jazz band of the early ‘90s and one of the most acclaimed groups of San Francisco’s jazz movement.

• Andrew Emer, a New York-based freelance jazz and experimental bassist, has performed and toured with such notable musicians as John Popper (of Blues Traveler), Billy Higgins, Kenny Werner, Adam Nussbaum, Kenny Wollesen, Vince Lateano, Bruce Forman, and Eric Mcphearson.

• Known throughout the west coast, Dublin has shared the stage with Blackalicous, Zeph & Azeem, Digital Underground, The Coup, Lyrics Born, Devin The Dude, Young MC, Tone Loc, Kid Beyond, and countless other acts from every spectrum of the hip-hop and jazz world. In 2005 he won the San Francisco MC battle and has been praised by journalists in the US and Europe for his original voice and songwriting ability.

Moody’s Bistro & Lounge is located at 10007 Bridge Street in Truckee (on the corner of Commercial Row). For reservations, more information, or to register for the kids’ jazz camp call (530) 587-8688 or visit www.moodysbistro.com.

Q&A with Adam Theis:
Adam Theis has been a part of every Moody’s Jazz Artists in Residency camp since its inception. The Tahoe World’s Paul Raymore caught up with Theis by phone last week to ask him a few questions about the week-long kids camp and performances at Moody’s.

Tahoe World: As a musician, what do you take from the Jazz Artists in Residency experience?
Adam Theis: For me, I don’t get opportunities to work with large groups of kids or adults very often. Sometimes we do little one-day things, but it’s usually more like a concert or a lecture. This is basically kind of like what I do when I’m teaching a student one-on-one, but with up 60 or so people when we’re teaching the full class.
It’s pretty intense. I come out of there feeling exhausted every day. But you just don’t get that opportunity that much.

TW: Not too many kids get those kinds of opportunities either, especially with musicians as accomplished as yourself and your fellow instructors. What do you see the kids taking home from the clinic after a week of learning and playing with you guys?
AT: I played in all the normal school [bands] and stuff, and even extracurricular things, and everything was real regimented. Marching Band, which is supposed to be pretty fun, was still really regimented. And all those jazz camps and things that were really fun were really expensive, and not accessible. So it took me until my first garage band to really get to hang with people my age and people above my age who were maybe a step or two ahead, people on different instruments…
It’s just a big cross-pollination thing that’s really hard to get because schools are struggling to just get the bare bones — just to get instruments or just to hire teachers… So this is a cool way for us to try to fill in the gaps that aren’t covered. It’s a pretty no-brainer really — we’re just trying to expose them to some fun stuff. But it’s intense too; they’re being pushed to learn stuff that’s challenging. But in a different way than they’re being taught in school.

TW: I would imagine you introduce a little more improvisation, being jazz musicians, than maybe most kids get in a school band setting.
AT: That goes back to everything being stretched to the maximum [in the schools]. They have barely enough time at school to get the horn players learn the basic parts of the melody of the song, to get the band tight enough for the concert coming up at the end of the semester of whatever. So basically, the soloists in the school bands are the ones who are taking private lessons outside. It’s always been like that since when I was in school really. And hopefully you have kids getting private lessons… a lot of schools don’t. But the teachers don’t really have the time. I think I had one [music] theory lesson in high school… And it was like, ‘Wow, that’s helpful.’

TW: Since you’ve been a part of every Jazz Artists in Residency camp that Moody’s has put on, do you see kids coming back year after year and improving each time?
AT: Yeah, there are some folks who have been there the last three years, and it’s really cool to see them come back and see how much somebody has progressed in one year, and their interests of what kind of music they’re into, and the way they look at music. It’s just really inspiring.

TW: How about the other side of the whole week: The performances you do in the evenings and the chance to spend a week with like-minded musicians from all over the place. What is that experience like and what do you take out of that as a musician?
AT: It’s something that’s pretty rare these days to have someone like JJ [Morgan] hand picking the most interesting jazz musicians around the country. A lot of times, when it’s that kind of ‘all star’ thing — and when I use that term it’s not always a complimentary term — sometimes it’s not a very good thing. If it’s somebody who doesn’t really know his music that well, maybe a promoter will just throw together the drummer from this well-known band and then this guy from another well-known band, and they’re just these people who don’t have much musically in common and don’t have a lot of interest in playing with each other, and it just doesn’t really go well.

But JJ really knows how to pick musicians and reminds you why those things do exist. Because, when they are put together well, it can be an amazing event: ‘Wow, these guys have never played together and it sounds better than a lot of bands I’ve heard lately.’

He has a knack for that, and it was cool because he randomly picked this bass player last year that I went to college with and hadn’t played music with for 10 years… That just goes to show that he has this sixth sense, this intuition, about what musicians will work really well together…

TW: What is it that makes a group of different musicians work well together?
AT: In this case, having a vision — somebody who is a leader or inspiring to those people. And it doesn’t always have to be a musician. In this case it’s JJ. We all have a lot of respect for him. A lot of us have known him or known of him for years… Everybody is always remarking on how cool the guys is, but also musically, how he is a great guy to know because he has a great respect for real jazz music. He likes all kinds of music, but he really sees his place in the community and the world is to put jazz forth, because it’s not being put forth by a lot of people. So whatever he says, we’ll do it…

TW: What’s it like being able to spend a full week in the mountains, playing music, teaching music, and hanging out in the same club for a week of shows?
AT: Last month I was up [in Tahoe] three out of the four weekends playing music. To me, just getting up anywhere around the Lake Tahoe area is a vacation. I don’t know any musicians who don’t like to go up there. It’s a lot of gas money, traffic can be a pain, but no one ever complains about it even in the snow… It’s a privilege to get to go up there and play music.

So getting up there for the camp, having the nighttime shows, and getting done at a reasonable hour and getting to hang out with the friends I have up there… It couldn’t be any better.