News Release
June 2000
Bethlehem,
PA--The Moravian College Music Institute is holding the 8th annual July
Jazz Getaway week from Sunday, July 9 to Saturday, July 15. This year’s
July Jazz Getaway feature artist is jazz great Stanley Turrentine who
will perform in concert with the Moravian College Big Band and jazz
ensemble on Thursday, July 13 at 8:00 p.m., in the Foy Concert Hall
on Moravian College’s Church Street Campus in historic Bethlehem.
Stanley Turrentine will also conduct an instructional workshop on Friday,
July 15 at 10:30 a.m.
Stanley Turrentine’s performance and instructional
workshop are part of the July Jazz Getaway, a weeklong summer jazz vacation
camp at Moravian College. The Getaway is designed for non-professional
adult musicians. The program offers daily jazz, big band, ensemble,
and jam session playing with a faculty of professional musicians.
The July Jazz Getaway week events that are open to the
public include the following:
The Moravian College Faculty Jazz Concert will be held
on Sunday, July 9, at 7:00 p.m. The ensemble features Neil Wetzel
on saxophone, Skip Wilkins on piano, Paul Rostock on bass, and Gary
Rissmiller on drums. Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for Senior
Citizens, students, and children 12 and under.
The Lehigh Valley Open Jam Session will be held on Wednesday,
July 12 at 7:00 p.m. All area musicians are invited to bring their
instruments and join in the action on stage. The jam session is free
and open to the public.
Jazz great Stanley Turrentine in concert with the Moravian
College Big Band and jazz ensemble on Thursday, July 13 at 8:00 p.m.
Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for Senior Citizens, students, and
children 12 and under.
Workshop with Stanley Turrentine will be held on Friday,
July 14 at 10:30 a.m. Stanley Turrentine will review and critique
July Jazz Getaway players techniques offering suggestions and tips.
The workshop provides insight into the style and techniques that made
Stanley Turrentine a jazz great. All seats are $5.
The July Jazz Getaway Campers Concert will be held on
Saturday, July 15, at 8:00 p.m. The concert features the talents of
the camp participants. Admission is free.
All events are held in Moravian College’s Foy Concert
Hall at Main and Church streets in historic downtown Bethlehem. For
more information on the July Jazz Getaway and concert schedule, contact
the Moravian College Music Institute at (610) 861-1650.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective
liberal arts college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its
founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college.
Visit the Web site at www.moravian.edu.
Anyone who has the nerve to ask Stanley Turrentine if
he has any sugar has clearly never sampled the sounds the tenor man
has been laying down for four decades running. In his own way, Turrentine
invented "Sugar" in the form of one of jazz’s few lasting
standards from the 70s. But that’s a mere granule of his legacy,
which continues in smooth honeyed tones on his latest album, Do You
Have Any Sugar (CCD-4862-2), his first for Concord Vista.
The project is a seamless synthesis of traditional grooves
in a contemporary context that touches on a variety of styles Turrentine
has mastered over the years. The constant thread is his ever-cool, ever-tasteful
tenor saxophone sound-as engaging, melodic and subtly swingin’
as ever. Any staying contemporary has always been an integral part of
Turrrentine’s concept. Always conscious of making music for the
people first, he was the first artist ever to record with strings for
the Blue Note label on an album titled The Look of Love. Later on CTI,
he worked with a young arranger named Bob James on the album Don’t
Mess With Mister T, the title track of which was a cover of Marvin Gaye’s
cue from the film score of Trouble Man.
Ten years later when he returned to Blue Note, Turrentine
recorded an entire LP of Stevie Wonder material titled Wonderland, with
a guest appearance from Wonder himself on "Boogie on Reggae Woman."
Therefore, the 11-song Do You Have Any Sugar (CCD-4862-2)
is just a few more miles down a path that’s been paved in hipness
from the gate. "I’m really pleased with this album,"
he states with pride. "There are all sorts of flavors and moods."
From the genesis of the project, Stanley and John Burk,
at Concord, decided to do a whole gamut of music. "We didn’t
try to target just one segment of the audience. This way, there are
a lot of markets we can tap into. There’s easy listening, blues,
R& B, bop and straight ahead," Stanley relates. To get all
of this music across, some of L.A.’s top musicians were called
in, many of them old friends of Stanley’s. "It was great
seeing those cats again, let alone playing with them. They are some
of the best musicians you could ever want to play with you. And they
all came to play… played their butts off! It was a happy reunion."
A somewhat new idea for Stanley, was the use of a vocalist,
something he had rarely done in the past. But he had good reason to
try one when the vocalist in question was Niki Harris, daughter of pianist
Gene Harris, who goes all the way back with Stanley to his second Blue
Note album, Blue Hour, a 1960 soul session with Gene’s group The
Three Sounds. "Kiki just knocked me out," Stanley enthuses.
"When I saw her I told her, ‘I remember when you were just
a gleam in your father’s eye!" Ms. Harris graces the sexy
invitation of the title track, "Do You Have Any Sugar," the
gently inspirational "Pause To Wonder," which recalls the
music of ‘70’s fusion groups, and a cover of "Calling
You," harmonica player Bob Telson’s theme from the 1988 film,
Baghdad Café. "A friend introduced that song to me years
ago," Stanley muses.
"The lyrics to both of these songs were saying some
very important things I felt needed to be heard. It’s not about
me trying to prove how much I can play. I’m just trying to make
some music any kind of way I can that expresses the way I feel. People
come up to me and say things like they got married to ‘Pieces
of Dreams’ or they got through their college exams listening to
another album. You dig? It’s not about categories, it’s
about the emotions and memories they create for people."
Stanley William Turrentine was born April 5, 1934, in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother was a piano player. "She was
a great stride pianist," he gushes. "I think I got my bluesy
feel from her. I started playing piano by ear at seven on her upright.
Ahmad Jamal used to practice on our piano when he lived in Pittsburgh."
In high school, Stanley formed his first jazz band, Four
Bees and a Bop, playing proms and such. His first professional gig was
with his brother, trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, at the Perry Bar in Pittsburgh.
Then came a tour down south with bluesman Lowell Fulson during the time
of Jim Crow…very heavy memories for a 17-year-old. In his 20’s,
Stanley performed with the 158th Army Band, followed by a stint in Tadd
Dameron’s group in’53. The next year, he replaced budding
genius John Coltrane in Earl Bostic’s band. Stanley moved with
Tommy (six years his senior) to New York where they both gained immense
recognition for the year they spent in drummer Max Roach’s band,
recording on LPs such as Drum Conversation and Parisian Sketches.
Turrentine made his Blue Note Records debut as a sideman
on organist Jimmy Smith’s now classic Midnight Special album.
In 1960, he became a member of the Blue Note roster, recording his first
of many gutsy, R&B-based jazz platters, appropriately titled Look
Out. During this time, he met and later married organist Shirley Scott
and the two of them guested on each other’s LP’s throughout
the decade (hers for Prestige Records).
The 70’s brought about a switch to Creed Taylor’s
forward-thinking CTI label where Stanley recorded several more albums,
including his big hit, "Sugar" (which featured George Benson
on guitar, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Ron Carter on bass and was later
lyricized by Ted Daryll, as vocalized by quartet Raw Silk in 1983).
Another switch to Northern California’s Fantasy Records in 1974
yielded smooth fusion faves including Pieces of Dreams which was awarded
Billboard Magazine’s Jazz Album of the Year and in turn rendered
Turrentine Jazz Artist of the Year-honors for which he remains most
proud. Recordings for Elektra Records eased Stanley into the 80’s.
In 1985, Turrentine returned to a revived Blue Note Records
where he was reunited with Benson, Smith and Les McCann on the album
Straight Ahead, followed by the Wonderland project. In 1989, he delivered
the Bobby Lyle-produced La Place, named after the street he grew up
on in Pittsburgh. In the nineties, he switched to MusicMasters Records
recording three more albums, including T Time, which features an unforgettable
rendering of the ballad, "I Haven’t Got Anything Better To
Do."
"It’s been a blessing being able to do what
I love to do for this long a time," Stanley states in summation.
"It’s a privilege to play with the caliber of guys I have
on this album and for them to admire me enough to work with me. With
all of the records I’ve made, I feel like the best ones are always
the ones that just happen naturally.
