Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Music, Music And More Music
Walton Arts Center celebrates most wonderful time of the year
The holidays are a busy time of year for everybody. That includes venues like the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville where staff begin preparing for a season full of holiday cheer months in advance. Although 2019 is the first time in a long time the WAC actually doesn’t have any performances the week of Christmas, there’s plenty of fare to put you in the festive spirit in the weeks leading up to it. Whether visiting the theater is part of your family’s annual traditions, or you’ve found the perfect early Christmas present, these upcoming offerings are just the beginning of the arts center’s celebration of the most wonderful time of the year.
The Swingles
First up, on Dec. 5, the Grammy Award-winning a cappella sensation The Swingles return to Fayetteville from London with a show full of traditional carols and nostalgic classics in “Winter Tales.” The Swingles were founded in 1963 and the group’s
current lineup of young musicians last performed at the WAC as the headlining act at the 2016 a cappella festival VoiceJam. Member of the seven-piece, Edward Randell, answered a few questions for What’s Up! ahead of their visit.
Q. What drew you to a cappella as a performance style?
A. I joined a jazz a cappella group in my first week at university, and was immediately hooked. I think it was the idea of getting to sing instrumental bass lines that blew my young mind. We’re not a cappella purists in The Swingles, but there’s something so immediate and intensely human about music made with voices alone — it still touches me in a way nothing else can.
Q. What does to it mean to you to be part of the unique legacy of The Swingles?
A. It’s an incredible privilege — it was quite literally my dream job before I joined. There’s nothing more thrilling than getting together with a group of former Swingles and singing one of the classic Bach fugues together. At the core of our approach, we still have the distinctive “Swingle sound” that has been there since the 1960s. On the other hand, we feel that part of what made the group so exciting back then was their inventiveness and originality — so it’s important that we keep the group moving forward artistically.
Q. While you’re in Fayetteville, you’ll also be participating in a master class with a high school a cappella group and an education show through the venue’s Learning and Engagement team. Can you speak to what experiences like this — sharing in the craft with other singers, helping to educate — mean for you as an artist?
A. We tend to learn just as much as the high schoolers from the experience! The U.S. has so many great vocal music programs, and I usually come away humbled and energized by the level of talent we see. There’s often a magic moment in master classes where you see the students start to take creative ownership of what they’re singing, going beyond just the notes and rhythms to find an emotional connection to the music.
Q. The Swingles are known for pushing the boundaries of vocal music. But so much of holiday music is something people already know and have certain expectations for. Is creating a holiday show that is fresh and unexpected a unique challenge?
A. I think the fact that the tunes are so familiar gives us some license to play around and twist them into surprising shapes. We will definitely be showing our bolder, more innovative side, but it’s fair to say that we’re not above some good old-fashioned corniness when it comes to holiday music.
Q. What can we expect from the performance?
A. It’s a very varied show: We want to take audiences on a journey from icy landscapes to fireside sing-alongs, classic carols to wintry original songs, with some year-round favorites among the holiday fare.
Catherine Russell
Another exciting Grammy winner returns to the Walton Arts Center a day later on Dec. 6. Not a holiday show, but seeing jazz/blues singer Catherine Russell perform will be an exceptional early Christmas gift for those who nabbed tickets before the show sold out.
“She’s just a remarkable vocalist, and her lineage is extraordinary,” enthuses WAC jazz curator Robert Ginsburg.
With a mother who held advanced degrees from Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, and a father who was Louis Armstrong’s musical director, Russell emerged from an impressive pedigree to establish herself as a celebrated and sought after musician in her own right. She’s appeared on more than 200 albums and toured with names like David Bowie, Levon Helm and Paul Simon. In fact, on the day of her chat with What’s Up!, she’d been in the studio with indie/bluegrass singer/ songwriter and one third of I’m With Her, Sarah Jarosz.
“The genre, to me, is less important than the quality of the material. So I like working with everybody that’s good because I always learn,” Russell says cheerfully about her studio freelancing.
On this mid-November day, the singer has more than her side-work to be cheerful about. Russell’s seventh and
latest studio album, “Alone Together,” earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album the same morning as our phone call.
“Well, first of all, I don’t record with that in mind,” she says of the recognition. “I just go in and record what I love to record with the people that I love to record with. And it’s very gratifying when other people like it, too. You know what I’m saying? ‘Cause when you do what you like, you don’t know if people are going to receive it well or not. So it just kind of puts a little wind in the sails when things are recognized like this.”
“Alone Together” is Russell’s second consecutive album to be nominated for the honor — following 2016’s “Harlem On My Mind.” Though she’s inspired by all types of music, and enjoys collaborating with other musicians in the studio, Russell’s own work remains rooted in early and traditional jazz.
“It’s always evolving because it’s a music that musicians inspire each other in the moment,” she muses. “That enables it to keep living and breathing. And, of course, each new generation wants their own identity connected to the music. People don’t want to do what their father did, what their grandfather did, for the most part. So, these days, you have a lot of composing. And sometimes they compose with the roots of jazz incorporated in it, but sometimes it doesn’t have anything to do with swing or blues or the roots. It’s not based in rhythm.
“That seems to be more of the focus these days in education and in the climate. And in education, also, there are not a lot of places, if any, where people are trained in the history going back before bebop,” Russell continues passionately. “Basically, students are trained that jazz started with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and they don’t go back further than that.
“That’s my motivation, and that is what I will do because that’s what I love,” she concludes assuredly. “As far as my personal expression, I would definitely preserve and promote and continue to live through the early forms of jazz.”
Boston Brass
Next up, it’s back to a categorically Christmas performance as the world class Boston Brass brings their show “Christmas Bells Are Swingin’” to Baum Walker Hall on Dec. 8. The brass quintet is another returning group and actually kicked off their holiday tour in Arkansas just before Thanksgiving with a concert in Conway.
“We are excited to be [in Fayetteville] because this is going to be our only solo holiday concert,” reveals trumpet player and founding member Jeff Conner. For the rest of the shows on the group’s winter tour, Boston Brass were joined by the Brass AllStars for a big band concert experience, making the WAC performance the only date with just the five-piece.
“With the brass quintet, we explore every single range dynamically. So you’re going to hear lots of sauce. We’re going to tear the roof down,” Conner says emphatically of the ensemble’s music. “For us, it’s all about sound, and what we call the meltdown of sound, that gives the music a Boston Brass signature sound. That’s one of the things that makes us unique.”
The musicians will play plenty of holiday favorites, but all the arrangements Boston Brass performs are written by current or former group members, Conner explains. That exclusivity of the content they present gives the group a signature sound, he shares.
“We’re very informal,” he adds of the show’s atmosphere. “I think when people hear the words chamber music, it’s almost off-putting in a way. And all chamber music means is one person on a part. So, a jazz trio is chamber music, a jazz band is chamber music. It’s one on a part; that’s all chamber music means, for our definition of it. So in terms of how we perform, how we interact with the audience, we’re in the lobby during intermission and after the concert so we have the opportunity to talk to audiences. We’re not closed off and just playing in a little box, letting people look over our shoulders and listen as we go, ‘We’ll let you peek into what we’re doing.’ We’re open in how we even set up on stage; our instruments are going right out to the audience, and you’re going to hear us.”
The Dec. 8 concert won’t be exclusively Christmas tunes, but the audience will recognize all the pieces, Conner assures. The evening will begin with the fast, exciting Argentinian piece the group opens with year-round as the perfect introduction to Boston Brass. A familiar cantata by Bach will also make an appearance, but Conner promises the evening will be “90% holiday music,” with a mix of classical and lighter jazz fare.
“We have a couple new arrangements that we’re going to be playing for this concert. Our tuba player William (Russell) is doing a brand new arrangement for the quintet of ‘The Grinch.’ We have a beautiful arrangement of ‘Silent Night’ that our horn player, Chris Castellanos, did that’s based off the wonderful vocal group Pentatonix. Every piece on the program people are going to recognize,” he shares.
One of the fun parts of the show for Conner is also “the members are going to have the opportunity to share stories [from] when we grew up — and some are pretty funny that we get to tell. So we really have an opportunity to share not only some great holiday music, but you get to know the personalities of the members of the group.
“In those two hours, we try to make the world a better place. That’s our goal. And we want to bring the audience along on that ride with us.”