The
significance of performing at the Monterey Jazz Festival can not be
understated. The longest-running jazz festival in the world features the best
of jazz through performance and education. It hosts unparalleled world talent
and legends and stands as a legacy to this musical genre, and impacts future generations of jazz musicians
and afficionados alike.
Thomas
Chapin Film at the Monterey Jazz Festival
It would
have been a momentous milestone for the career of saxophonist-flutist and
composer Thomas Chapin and an unforgettable, exhilarating ride for the audience
if he had been able to play with his Trio back in 1997. At the peak of his
form, he was booked to play for the festival's 40th anniversary.
After
standout appearances on other big world jazz stages in New York, Newport,
Europe, Japan, and Canada, the Thomas Chapin Trio was ready to play Monterey in
the fall of 1997. Regrettably Chapin was forced to cancel after he was
diagnosed with leukemia. Thomas Chapin died months later on February 13, 1998
after he cancelled the booking. He was about to turn 41. His star was gaining
altitude, rising to the pinnacle of the Monterey Jazz Festival, which would have
skyrocketed him into a household name in jazz. Now, 20 years later and through
the award-winning film, THOMAS CHAPIN, NIGHT BIRD SONG, this unknown jazz
virtuoso will finally come full circle and "play" Monterey.
For his two
decades of performing, Chapin was a force, a player with "massive
chops," whose sound was sui generis. He had an uncanny gift of melding all
forms of jazz into a single body of music. His pathway of moving sound was so
multi-directional, yet singular, so original, yet steeped in tradition, that
the jazz community struggled to categorize him.
Peter
Watrous of the New York Times captured his extraordinary power and versatility
when he described Chapin's performance in 1995: "Chapin … is a virtuoso …
also one of the more schooled musicians in jazz, both technically and
historically, and for his set he dug into the styles of everyone from Benny
Carter to the 60's avant-gardists, screeching and howling and huffing as if
this were 1964 and he was breaking the rules of jazz into pieces."
Aidan Levy,
who knew of Chapin and reviewed the film this year for JazzTimes Magazine,
wrote that Chapin was "considered by some to have fundamentally expanded
the boundaries of the jazz discourse."
Dan Melnick,
a concert producer in the 90's with George Wein's Festival Productions and its
Newport Jazz Festival spinoffs that the Thomas Chapin Trio performed for, said,
"For me and many others, Thomas stood at the center of numerous disparate
worlds of jazz at that time. He was a master of all forms of jazz and maybe
proved that these 'schools' or 'styles' weren't so different at all."
MONTEREY
FILM SCREENING
THOMAS
CAPIN, NIGHT BIRD SONG, a 150-minute epic tale of this brilliant and
extraordinary jazz master, will be screened at the Monterey Jazz Festival on
September 18, 2016, at 4:30 pm in the Jazz Theater.
Emmy-winning
filmmaker Stephanie J. Castillo's documentary tells Chapin's story using the
intimate details and captivating storytelling of 45 featured musicians,
promoters, music critics, friends and family. The film, which has received high
acclaim from reviewers and viewers, reveals Chapin's music formation, including
his six-year stint as Lionel Hampton's music director and lead alto sax. It
goes on to detail Chapin's emergence as a musical force in the late 1980s in
the New York downtown jazz scene. Using archival performance film and video
footage, the film shows how Chapin's distinct and inimitable style helped move
the music forward in the 1990s.
The film
also clearly establishes Chapin as one of the few artists of his generation to
exist in both the New York City's downtown experimentalist scene and in the
uptown world of traditional jazz. Fearless in his pursuit of creating an edgy,
engaging, cutting-edge sound that pushed jazz forward, he was also tireless and
passionate in showing his classical and mainstream influences.
Thomas
Chapin was an artist who "was his own man," a "free
musician," but whose music resonated loudly with the work of reed giants
from an earlier age. He met his life's end way too soon, while his dreams still
burned bright and his audiences yearned for more. Today, new listeners and
young players seeking inspiration are discovering and playing his music. Thanks
to the film, Chapin will no longer be a footnote in jazz. His indelible mark
will be known for all time.
In May 2016
in Nice, France, NIGHT BIRD SONG received the Nice International Filmmakers
Festival award for Best Story. It was also nominated for Best Director of a
Feature Documentary and Best Documentary at the New York City International
Film Festival.
To view the
film's trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvWHsVSoPME
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