Live jazz to see in Minneapolis-St. Paul: This week’s picks

Are you in your car or near a radio at 8:30 CST on Friday mornings? Tune to KBEM to hear me and Mr. Jones—Jazz 88 "Morning Show" host Ed Jones—talk about these events and more. 88.5 FM in the Twin Cities, streaming live on the Web.

Last week, we mourned the end of the Clown Lounge as the weekly home of Fat Kid Wednesdays. This week, let’s celebrate the opening of Jazz Central. 

In fact, Jazz Central opened quietly last summer as an underground venue, a place where jazz artists could perform, rehearse, and teach. Now there’s a performance scheduled for most Mondays, followed by an open jam session, and the public is welcome. There’s no cover charge, but donations are accepted. Pianist Tanner Taylor and drummers Mac and Luis Santiago, who jointly run the place, want to keep it “for the cats, by the cats,” and any amount helps.

Here's the performance schedule. This coming Monday, Jazz Central hosts trombonist Jeff Rinear, whose resume includes work with the Butanes, the JazzMN Big Band, Pete Whitman’s X-Tet, and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. He’ll play with Jazz Central’s house trio: Taylor on piano, Mac Santiago on drums, Keith Boyles on bass.

8 p.m. Monday, January 17, Jazz Central, 407 Central Ave. SE (across the street from the Aveda Institute). No cover.

What else is happening this weekend and into the week? As always, plenty.

Friday, January 15: Pat Moriarty and Phil Hey at the Black Dog

Saxophonist Moriarty and drummer Hey met in 1973 and formed a band. In 1977, they released their first and only recording, Let Them All Come. They haven’t played together as a duo for many years (though fans will remember their performance at Studio Z with Ellen Lease and Adam Linz last May). Expect a night of free improvisation with all of the delicious possibilities that presents.

8 p.m. Friday, Black Dog, corner of 4th and Broadway, Lowertown, St. Paul. No cover but donations are accepted (and the right thing to do).

Jane Donahue, friend of jazz

I last saw Jane Donahue at the Dakota sometime in November. I can't remember the occasion; was it Evan Christopher's performance with Henry Butler? It could have been almost anyone or anything. Jane's tastes in jazz were broad and varied, and she was as likely to show up at the Dakota as the AQ or a JazzMN Big Band concert. We knew each other as jazz fans only, and would always stop and speak about the person or band we were seeing that night, or someone else we had seen recently and enjoyed. She was a kind and gentle soul, one of those people who come out to support live music over the years but don't call much attention to themselves and one day you realize--wow, that lady has known a lot of jazz in her time, and spent a lot of hours in booths and on chairs and bar stools, and paid a lot of covers.

When I saw her at the Dakota, she was wearing a sterling silver Kokopelli pin. Acting on impulse, given that we knew each other only casually, I said, "I have some Kokopelli pins in my jewelry box. I rarely wear pins. May I send them to you?" She was surprised but said yes. I sent them off a few days later and immediately received a warm and gracious thank-you note saying I had put a smile on her face. The point of this story is not my own wonderfulness; it's the randomness of life, the dearness of each moment, perhaps the importance of acting on impulses (the good ones). More and more, I'm discovering the power of the gift that has no strings.

Jane died on Friday, December 18, following a car accident on December 2. I heard she had a tough time--a broken neck and/or back, a heart attack while in the hospital, a respirator, dialysis. Family members who visited her reported that she seemed to be recovering and her sense of humor was intact. Her obituary in the StarTribune reads, in part:

The Twin Cities jazz scene is mourning the loss of one its most passionate participants. Not a singer, musician or composer.

A retired nurse, Jane Donahue.

A significant behind-the-scenes contributor to the genre for nearly three decades, Donahue died Friday from injuries suffered in a single-car traffic accident 16 days earlier in Lake Elmo. She was 77.

Donahue, of Roseville, helped promote jazz in the metro area in any way she could, whether it was recruiting members to the Twin Cities Jazz Society, editing the society's Jazz Notes monthly newsletter or compiling the jazz scene's most comprehensive metro area performance calendar.

"Jane was there at the start [of the Jazz Society] 30 years ago," said Lee Engele, a jazz singer and the current society president. "She was part of that group that really got it going. ... She was so exuberant about it, [but] calm and quiet and humble in her way."

Engele said that when she arranged to honor Donahue in February at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis for her tireless contributions, Donahue "just kept her head down, she didn't want to come up on the stage ... she didn't want to talk. It was so cute."

Arne Fogel, a society board member, jazz singer and regular host on KBEM (FM 88.5), the metro area's radio home for jazz, said of Donahue: "You might be excused if you saw her as a quiet suburban lady who didn't get enthused about much of anything, until you talked to her."

Photo from the Hudson Star-Observer (Jane was born and raised in Hudson).

Kevin Mahogany and the JazzMN Big Band

When: 3/22/08
Where: Hopkins High School Performing Arts Center
Who: JazzMN Big Band, Douglas Snapp, artistic director; Jimmy Hamilton, guest pianist; Kevin Mahogany, guest vocalist

A very enjoyable show from start to finish. JazzMN played the first half: "Greetings and Salutations" (Thad Jones), "7th Heaven" (Steve Huffsteter; a tune Snapp heard in LA last year and enjoyed), Chick Corea's "La Fiesta," "Come Rain or Come Shine." Jimmy Hamilton (a local pianist Snapp thinks we should know but a lot of us don't because he performs mainly at the Lafayette Country Club, and who belongs to that?) took over for Mary Louise Knutson at the piano for three tunes including Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore."

Following intermission, Kevin Mahogany gave us several songs of his choosing. I learned only recently that when a big band features a guest vocalist, he or she provides the charts, and the arrangements depend on how skilled the band is. We heard "Satin Doll," "Everything I Have Is Yours," "In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)," "Yardbird Suite," and a song by Mahogany, "Three Little Words." I came to hear his smooth, rich baritone and his scatting; Mahogany is a terrific scat singer. Surprising many in the audience, Snapp scatted with him on one song.



Mahogany was warm and generous and funny. He's a big man who's been dieting, and his custom-made suit was a few sizes too large for him. He told us after the show that he hasn't had time to have it taken in.

Near the end, Snapp announced JazzMn's next season, which will be its tenth (a considerable achievement for a big band these days):

October 18: The Latin Side of Conrad Herwig
December 20: A JazzMn Christmas (their first Christmas concert)
February 14: Nicholas Payton's Gumbo Nouveau
April 4: Ken Peplowski: Benny Goodman Protege

My MinnPost preview of this show.
More from my interview with Kevin Mahogany.

Kevin Mahogany

Kevin Mahogany sounds as yummy on the phone as he does when he sings. When I interviewed him for MinnPost about his upcoming performance with the JazzMN Big Band, I probably kept him on the line longer than I should have.

I mentioned how much I liked one of the songs on Another Time Another Place, his 1997 release on Warner Bros. It's a sassy, light-hearted banter between two men about the same woman. Mahogany wrote it and recorded it as a duet with country singer Randy Travis, which seems an unlikely choice but makes sense when you listen. It's all about the voices. Mahogany told me more:

It surprised a lot of people when we did that. I always thought [Travis] had a wonderful voice. When you hear that combination, it worked great. I was writing a duet for two men and didn't want to split a standard tune in half. [Travis] agreed to do it with me. We were both on Warner Bros. We had such a great time. As much fun as you hear on the record, that's how much we had in the studio, if not more so. What makes it exciting is that [Travis] has less twang [in his voice] than in his country music. And jazz people had the chance to hear an incredible singer who sings country.

On the recording, Travis doesn't scat (Mahogany does), but he swings.

Photo of Kevin Mahogany from his MySpace page.