Saxophonist and ensemble pay tribute to musician dad

When Joshua Redman’s father heard that his son decided to skip Yale Law School to become a jazz musician, Dewey Redman knew the challenges his son faced.

“I think he was, let’s just say, concerned,” Joshua Redman, 48, said. “I think he was happy and proud, too, but he struggled for a lot of his life.”

The elder Redman was an accomplished saxophonist who played with jazz great Ornette Coleman. While on the cutting edge of avantgarde jazz in the mid-20th century, Redman never gained the fame of his peers, a fact that hasn’t plagued his successful son.

On Wednesday, Redman will honor the memory of his father, who died in 2006, in “Still Dreaming” at the Wexner Center. The show

is a tribute to Dewey Redman’s quartet Old and New Dreams — featuring Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell — that was itself a tribute to Coleman’s music.

“We’re doing a celebration of a celebration, which is a little meta,” Redman said. “This is a band that was very influential for all of us.”

Raised by his single mother, Renee Shedroff, in Berkeley, California, Redman saw his father no more than once a year, and then only when Dewey Redman passed through for a show.

Redman learned the saxophone at age 10, performed with his high-school jazz ensemble and listened to John Coltrane records but never gave professional musicianship a second thought.

Only after graduating from Harvard University in 1991 with top honors and a bachelor of arts in social studies did the casual musician deviate from his well-laid plan for law school.

Musician friends invited him to move to Brooklyn to contribute rent money, and Redman signed on for a year that turned into a full-blown jazz career.

During this period, Redman developed a relationship with his father, playing in his band on several occasions.

“He wasn’t a huge influence as a father,” Redman said, “but he was a huge influence as a musician.”

In 1993, Redman released his self-titled album debut, a high-energy collection of saxophone solos that earned the artist his first Grammy nomination.

He has released 19 other albums, garnered two more Grammy nominations and played with groups from the alt-rock Dave Matthews Band to new-age jazz trio The Bad Plus.

Thanks in part to hit movie “La La Land,” the debate about the state of jazz has surged in popular culture.

While he hasn’t yet seen the film, Redman said the claim that jazz is dead is neither new nor accurate.

“I feel this music is alive and well,” Redman said.

That being said, Redman believes jazz has always existed on the musical margins. The genre might be even more niche today.

“We kind of live in a clickbait culture, and I certainly

don’t think jazz is a click-bait music,” he said.

Making a living off of jazz might never be easy, even for a successful musician such as Redman, but he remains dedicated to pushing the genre forward.

The idea for “Still Dreaming” came to the saxophonist upon waking up one morning in early 2015. Calling the show a “minor epiphany,” Redman reached out to drummer Brian Blade, bassist Scott Colley and trumpeter Ron Miles, who immediately agreed to join the tribute band.

Ornette Coleman, who Redman said influenced every jazz musician after him, inspires much of the show’s setup.

Known for twisting melodies in such a way to sound nearly offkey, Coleman’s pieces meandered without much structure.

The “Still Dreaming” quartet follows a similar pattern.

“We never know what’s going to happen, which is jazz,” Redman said. “The songs are so wide open so it’s an adventure every night.”

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