Andre Hayward

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra trombonist Andre Hayward took first place, and a $20,000 scholarship prize, at the 16th Annual Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition held over the weekend in Washington, D.C. Hayward, 30, is a native of Houston, but now lives in New York City. His program, which included Monk's Pannonica, Curtis Fuller's Time Off and one of his original compositions, wowed trombonist judges Steve Davis, Fuller, Grachan Moncur III, Julian Priester, and Steve Turré and set Hayward apart from the other 10 competition participants. Hayward has played with Betty Carter, Roy Hargrove and Russell Gunn, among others, and appears on recent discs including Dave Holland's What Goes Around and Slide Hampton's Spirit of the Horn.
Second place honors and a $10,000 scholarship went to David Gibson, 33. The $5,000 third place award went to Noah Bless, 35. A fourth place prize of $2,500 was awarded to Karin Harris, 23. A $1,000 fifth place prize was presented to Marshall Gilkes, 24.
- Russell Carlson

Wynton sprang a surprise on the Symphony Hall audience that came to hear his "All Rise" Wednesday.
Jazz pianist Marcus Roberts showed up and improvised a solo in one of the movements of Marsalis's blues oratorio, temporarily sitting in for the regular pianist of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, 18-year-old Aaron Diehl. At encore time, Roberts joined Wynton for an impromptu jam session...
And last night at the Biarritz Lounge in Roxbury trombonist Andre Hayward, a Boston-based member of Marsalis's orchestra, hosted a jam session (like the kind he and friends have every Sunday) that included Roberts, Wynton and Wes Anderson.
- Boston Globe

The University of Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival will return for its 47th year Feb. 23 (Wednesday) and Feb. 25 to 26 (Friday to Saturday), featuring 11 collegiate bands competing before a panel of distinguished judges.

Jazz bands performing in this year's festival represent Notre Dame, Western Michigan University, Middle Tennessee State University, Jacksonville State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Oberlin College and the University of Illinois.

Sponsored by Notre Dame's Student Union Board, the festival officially begins Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. in the LaFortune Student Center ballroom with Preview Night, featuring a performance by Notre Dame Jazz Band II and Jazz Combo.

The performances by the bands selected to this year's festival begin Feb. 25 at 6 p.m. in Washington Hall, concluding with the traditional Judge's Jam, featuring trombonist Andre Hayward, saxophonist Frank Catalano, pianist Lynne Arriale, bassist Jay Anderson and percussionist Steve Davis.

A judge's clinic at 2 p.m. Feb. 26 in the Notre Dame band building will feature free instruction sessions by the panel of judges. The evening session will begin at 6 in Washington Hall, to be followed by the awards ceremony.

- Shannon Chapla

Houston, TX-No one who knows Andre Hayward would have guessed three and a half years ago that he would be performing with the world's largest and acclaimed producers of jazz resident orchestras, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra led by world reknown Wynton Marsalis. Everyone would have thought he should have been, but was uncertain if Hayward believed it himself.


Back in Houston a few years ago, unsure of where his future was headed, Mr. Hayward had become the audience of the music that he was accustomed to being the performer. He was often seen sitting in with bands at local spots, being a featured performer with other local bands or on the scene where there was jazz, but never without his horn.


"I just couldn't figure out if this was truly what I wanted to dedicate myself to, especially with all the other pressures life puts on you.' At one point I even considered going into the Army but, I realized that wasn't where I was supposed to be," Hayward explained. Everyone knew that to be definitely the truth including his cousin, Eric Harland, an acclaimed jazz drummer currently performing with Terrance Blanchard. "Andre has always been undeniably gifted and talented. I told him all he has to do is make up his mind and God will bring him success in his playing," Harland explained. "His touch and sound is so smooth. 'He has always blown Jazz Kats away and gotten their attention," Harland continued.


Before taking heed to his cousin Eric and other concerned individuals and allowing life's pressures to build up, Hayward had slowly patterned himself in the jazz community as one who was talented and demanded but not committed or dependable. He then realized three years ago that what he needed to do was "raise up!", which meant leave Houston and move to Boston. And that he did. "Leaving Houston was a hard but necessary decision. 'I love my city, but I had become too stifled and lost direction of myself," Hayward explained.

At 26, the subdued and soft spoken, 6'3" Hayward has finally decided to dedicate himself to his instrument, which there has never been any denying by anyone he was brought on this earth to play. Upon arriving in Boston, there was no haste in finding work, especially for someone like Hayward who had already performed and recorded with many acclaimed musicians.

Born in Houston, Texas in 1973, Hayward began playing trombone and tuba at age 11. He performed in his junior high school jazz band and began studying with local trombonist Steve Baxter, who played with Ray Charles. Hayward continued playing through high school where he attended the High School for Performing and Visual Arts and graduated from Furr High School in 1992.

Hayward landed his first engagement with Trumpeter Roy Hargrove for a European tour after being heard at a jam session during a festival while playing with the TSU ensemble, that led him on his path of discovery.

After Hargrove, Hayward played with many acclaimed performers including Joe Williams, Diane Schuur, Eartha Kitt, Rosemary Clooney, Kirk Whalum and others. Mr. Hayward performed and recorded extensively with the late singer/bandleader Betty Carter for five years in her acclaimed "Jazz Ahead" summer program. Hayward has recorded with Russell Gunn, the Ellington Orchestra under Mercer Ellington, Swing Association, Illinois Jacquet and many others.

- Nique Montgomery

It was a beautiful fall day outside of Seattle. While touring with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in January 2005, Edmonds (Woodway) High School band director, Jake Bergevin, invited me and my LCJO cohorts—Wess Anderson, Walter Blanding Jr., and Andre Hayward—to perform clinics for his award-winning jazz band.

After working with the kids, Bergevin mentioned that the great tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson was residing at a local convalescent home. We insisted on making the trip to visit him and Bergevin obliged to take us.

Upon our arrival, we were briefed that Lucky was incapacitated and most likely wouldn’t respond. They said he hadn’t spoken a single word in months.

As we walked down the halls of the nursing home, we were guided into a large meeting room. Inside this cold room were five folding chairs, a table, and a very small man sitting in a green recliner. It was Lucky.

He looked at us like we were aliens. We greeted him individually and told him how much we loved his sound and how it was an honor to meet him. His eyes wandered off. He was still and didn’t s peak. Despite his reaction to us, we were in awe of the legendary tenorman.

After a short while, we realized that he had no idea who we were or what we were saying. It was decided that we would play for him then leave him to his much desired solitude.

This is when the magic began. As we took out our horns, Lucky’s eyes gazed upon Wess’ alto saxophone. It was probably the first time he’d seen a horn in years. Wess played the introduction of Charlie Parker’s “Parker’s Mood.”

The beauty of music turned this bland room into a concert hall. Other residents poured in to see and hear what was happening. To see them all swinging to the music was beyond priceless.

Lucky gradually regained himself and started to smile. After one selection, (we played for almost an hour) Lucky looked at us and said, “Wait a minute…where’s my horn?” We were stunned. He then asked, “Where are you all from?” We told him we were from New York. He then replied, “ New York? How is ole Clark Terry doing? How about Milt Jackson? He died? Where are you cats playing tonight? You all sound so good.”

We were all full of emotion on this great day. The performance for Lucky meant far more to us than playing for thousands of people in a sold-out auditorium. It even went beyond playing music. The music transcended into spiritual healing.

We as jazz musicians have great power to heal, to soothe, to encourage others to prosper. That is the true meaning of music and life. Unfortunately, we lost Thompson last year. Rest in peace, Lucky. It was a pleasure to meet you.

- Marcus Printup

Jazz concerts don't usually feel like sporting events, but Friday night's homecoming of the SFJAZZ Collective had the happy, celebratory feeling of a big game at the ballpark. One by one, the band's eight members walked onstage to a roar from the sold-out crowd at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre: ``Bobby Hutcherson!'' (Roar). ``Nicholas Payton!'' (Roar). ``Joshua Redman!'' (Roar).

Back from a tour that included performances at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Barbican in London, the Collective was playing the first of three consecutive weekend concerts on home turf. It felt something like a Major League All-Star Game, and this is definitely an all-star band, though it has also become a working band. In its third season, it sounds gleaming and gritty and very much at home with itself.

So much so that most of the night was devoted to new tunes by the group's members. These surrounded a handful of compositions by pianist Herbie Hancock, whose music the Collective is exploring this year, as it explored the music of John Coltrane last year, and Ornette Coleman the year before.

There was a lesson here: As much as it wants to pay tribute to Hancock, one of jazz's defining composers, the group (founded by SFJAZZ, for which it is house band and ambassador) was also showing just how good it feels about the eight composers within its ranks. The new tunes stood up fine next to Hancock's, and offered some of the night's best moments.

Best of all may have been trumpeter Payton's ``Sudoku,'' named for the Japanese logic-puzzle game and introduced by Redman, the group's de facto leader, as ``a song in the form of a puzzle.'' It began with a series of raucous chords distributed through the group -- bleep . . . blat . . blomp -- bringing to mind Schoenberg infused with blues (and a little flatulence). Gradually, the music's blanks were filled in; harmonies outlined, bits of melody echoed in call and response fashion.

Tune gets cooking

As with the tune he wrote last year for the band -- titled ``Scrambled Eggs'' -- this one also brought to mind a meal cooking on the stove top. You could hear it congealing and, along the way, splattering, as when alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon leaped out with a solo.

The Collective's youngest member at 29, he makes his teeming improvisations sound as if the notes are being squeezed through a pressurized tube and then launched, free and exuberant, into orbit. (He almost didn't play Friday, as he was suffering from food poisoning. But you wouldn't have known it.)

Each member of the group is heavily endowed as an improviser. On Hancock's swaggering ``And What if I Don't,'' Payton entered with clarion Armstrong bravura then steamrolled like Fats Navarro or Freddie Hubbard; he encapsulates the tradition as he moves it forward.

On his own ``Imminent Treasures,'' Hutcherson wove one of his liquid-gold solos, which couple inevitability and surprise. And tenor saxophonist Redman improvised with meditative cogency and then cascading urgency on drummer Eric Harland's ``Triumph.''

It opened with glowing, faraway chords -- memories of Baptist church, maybe -- and moved to the cusp of ecstasy, capped by a whirling, thickening, almost bruising solo from Harland.

Trombonist found

A couple of thoughts: The group had trouble filling its trombone chair the past couple of years, but now seems to have found its man in Andre Hayward, a storytelling player with a composing style that's part elegance and part battle cry. Also, the Collective's rhythm section of Harland, pianist Renee Rosnes, and bassist Matt Penman -- back for its second year -- has merged into a simpatico, risk-taking unit.

If there was anything wrong Friday, it was this: Unlike the genre-bending compositions of Coleman and Coltrane -- rarely played by this sort of expanded combo -- Hancock's music is almost too good a fit for this group. His warm, mushrooming harmonies are practically custom-made for the Collective, with its four horns and two chorded instruments. As a result, his tunes, though somewhat recast by Collective arranger Gil Goldstein, didn't really go anywhere new.

Beyond that, Hancock, with his advanced harmonies and intricate blend of elegance and urgency, represents the very jazz milieu in which these players have come of age. (Hutcherson, a contemporary of Hancock's, helped invent that milieu.) The great pianist's approach infuses their approach, their thinking as improvisers, even their writing. As a result, the night ultimately felt like too much of a very good thing -- lots of beautiful continuity, but not enough surprise.


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- Richard Scheinin Mercury News

Betty "Bebop" Carter, one of the greatest female Jazz vocalist of the 20th century has passed on into eternity, September 26th in her home in Brooklyn, New York. Ms. Carter, who was remembered in a memorial service at the Riverside Church in Harlem will be greatly missed by family, friends and numerous fans with whom she has touched in so many ways with her music. "She will always be remembered because she brought dedication, understanding, reverence and individuality to Jazz and music in general," said Jazz Diva, Abbey Lincoln.

(Editors note: More pictures will be posted on Monday).

This memorial service, presided by the Dr. James A Forbes, Jr. and Fanny Ericson, was a celebration of her life and music. Although, I never heard her music before today's observance, attending and reporting this heartfelt event opened my eyes to a woman who represented constant progress, musically and spiritually. A letter from President Clinton and first Lady Hilary Clinton was read by Dr. Lionel Smith, Dean of Faculty at Williams College, that said, "We can take comfort that her music will live on in her legacy."

People who knew Ms. Carter, remembered the revolutionary style she brought to jazz. She brought something different to the music every time she sang it. "Her style was unique. Her music always brought a 'freshness' and she was always searching for different ways and always taking chances," said one of her students, Mr. Andre Hayward. Betty Carter's life was more than her style it was one of the sources of modern jazz.



In 1993 she began the Jazz Ahead series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, better known as the Betty Carter School of Music, an annual boot camp that enlisted young and promising musicians. Last year she was given the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.







She has inspired many of her students and contemporaries to be original, to eliminate uniformity from life and be creative. A close friend in the last days of her life, pianist Danny Mixon, said, "She inspired me to be myself."

Carter meant something super-extraordinary to Jazz musicians and singers. She was extremely innovative and she epitomized individuality and independence. "She did not do things for reputation or money," said Abbey Lincoln at the memorial, "She did it from the heart."

"Bebop" represented true learning -- the ability to synthesize from something already existing and turn it into something entirely different from the norm or the original. It is this characteristic which separated Betty Carter from many of her contemporaries. During the memorial, Monifa Carson, a DJ on Newark, New Jersey's jazz FM radio station WBGO recited a poem she wrote for Ms. Carter. "Your voice inspiring us... Knowing no boundaries. Your voice takes me higher, to the eternal ascension." Her music created for her fans a bridge from rough times to good times, infecting them with her will to move on. Her bold stance against uniformity set her against commercialization and popularity. Ironically it gave her respect.



Ms. Carter, Grammy award winner, had what many people did not, a total sense of self, of certainty in whatever she did. She once said, "Jazz in many ways is about risk that you take when you are trying to find out about yourself, what you can do and what you can be... But if you want to stick your neck out and find out something about yourself, you have to think."





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This memorial, for the "Godmother" of Jazz, that turned into a three-hour jam session that included everyone from Buster Williams on acoustic base to Jimmy Heath on sax will remain forever one of the most indelible events in jazz history. Included in this musical tribute were John Hendricks, Max Roach, Benny Green, Abbey Lincoln, Bruce Flowers, The Reed Sisters, and George Faison. Ms. Carter was the jazz connoisseur. 's favorite. Along with over a thousand people in attendance, many of whom are renowned in the world of jazz, paid their respects and shared their thoughts on Betty Carter, the artist, the mother, the teacher, and the friend.

(Hear what jazz great Buster Williams had to say at the memorial)
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John Hicks, jazz pianist:" I've worked with Betty on several occasions and she contributed a lot to the jazz world. I admired Betty's Independence".

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Rhonda Ross, actress and daughter of singer Diana Ross: "I last spoke to her a year ago at one of Abby Lincoln's gigs. she was one of the Pioneers of this Music and she was an Flame Carrier. It is important that we are all here. I'm only sorry that we did not do this while she was alive. I think it is more important to celebrate, honor and to make your feelings known when somebody is alive".

--------- - Jean Charles and Michael Flowers

A bass player was not the key figure in ''Scenes in the City,'' the program of Charles Mingus's music at Alice Tully Hall over the weekend. It would seem at first that the most direct route to Mingus is through his bass sound. But try to fill that order, and you're in for trouble.

Rodney Whitaker, the bassist of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, is as solid an accompanist as anyone can hope for, but he isn't an extroverted musician. And at Tully Hall, one missed the hard, pizzicato bass lines of Mingus the composer-player -- the way they always rose combatively to the surface of the music, whipping on the song like a sled dog driver.

Instead, the concert was largely organized by Ron Westray, part of the orchestra's three-man trombone section. That was a lucky break. The trombone -- connector of the symphony orchestra, Pentecostal churches and prewar jazz -- is the second most important instrument in Mingus's work, full of orchestral leanings, soul-adrift agitations and black American modernism. From the 1940's to 1979, when Mingus died at the age of 56, trombonists had a prominent place in most of his music. It made perfect sense for one to lead the study group.

In the first half, Mr. Westray had the orchestra take on some tough assignments. The evening began with ''Scenes in the City,'' a piece written to accompany a prose poem about a down-on-his-luck jazz lover. It's one of Mingus's less significant pieces. The splintered background music, with imitations of Jimmy Blanton and Miles Davis keyed to the text as read by the actor Keith David, and the general beat mood was an of-its-time experience.

The suite ''Tijuana Moods'' had glorious writing in it: wholly original material, echoes of mariachi, group improvisations. It was originally recorded with whoops and cries from the band that may have already been a little forced in 1957, and the Lincoln Center group played the music well but had trouble replicating the atmosphere. Their rambunctiousness was twice removed.

After that, the band got down to business and the music got more complicated. ''Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul,'' with a charge from its formal structure (it's full of antiphonal, canonlike writing), propagated the first good solo of the night, from the trombonist Andre Hayward, growling and shouting while the other musicians clapped. ''Meditation on Integration'' was powerful and jarring, with trumpets and trombones playing counterpoint figures at a slightly faster tempo than the rhythm section.

''The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'' from 1963 -- one of Mingus's masterworks -- was beautifully played, and an effective representation of Mingus's scope, from wild, expressive, collective improvising (could this have been the first time this orchestra played something resembling free jazz?) to Ellingtonian form. The band did it again in ''Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too,'' with a battling mood, even as the tone-painting of circus music kept drifting up to leaven the piece. The feeling of these two last pieces -- emotional complexity -- was what you walked away with; for Mingus, whose legacy resists nostalgia, that was as it should be.


- Ben Ratliff The New York Times

Jazz at Lincoln Center opened its season on Wednesday at Alice Tully Hall with "On Commission: Terence Blanchard and Roy Hargrove," a set of commissions that were a good idea in principle but didn't quite succeed. Mr. Hargrove and Mr. Blanchard, both young trumpeters adept at arranging for small groups, lead two of the better bands working in jazz.

Jazz has traditionally depended on the ensemble for its finest moments, on the sort of precision and interplay that only musicians who work together regularly can achieve. The two commissions played on Wednesday were clearly assigned with the idea that these two working bands would be able to produce something out of the ordinary.

Mr. Hargrove opened the show with a few ballads rearranged for a septet. Then he and his band, with the additions of Jesse Davis on alto saxophone and Andre Hayward on trombone, went into the commission, "Love Suite in Mahogany." It started out well: melancholic harmonies, played by the horns, drifted over a tightly arranged rhythm section that jumped quickly from mood to mood.

Mr. Hargrove, spectacular in his first improvisations, let out broken figures, blues ideas, bursts of sound and cascading runs. Then the rhythm section accelerated smoothly, moving into swinging 4/4 time, and the band was off, trading solos between musicians and generally heating up the piece, at least as much as the sound system, which obscured the music for the whole show, allowed.

Then, suddenly, Mr. Hargrove's touch vanished. He lost control of the composition, letting a light melody go to waste on an overused Latin rhythm, a long ballad stretch out too long and a blues piece suffer through too much improvisation. Mr. Hargrove even scatted, a brave thing to do in the hallowed halls of art; the audience gave him a standing ovation.

Mr. Blanchard closed the show with his "Romantic Defiance." As with Mr. Hargrove's piece, the composition, full of bursts of melodies and winding ribbons of notes, was often overwhelmed by long improvisations. Mr. Blanchard's group is exceptionally aware of dynamics, and during the suite he and the band managed to impart, through long quiet sections, a real sense of tranquillity.

Mr. Blanchard's best moments, like Mr. Hargrove's, may have come during the opening ballad sections, when he performed "I Thought About You," followed by "Dear Old Stockholm." Mr. Blanchard milks notes of meaning, pushing and pinching them, sliding them up to pitch or down, and he loves to leave silence around his phrases, accentuating the drama of his virtuosity. He was all elegant lyricism enlisted in the fight against mediocrity.

- Peter Watrous New York Times Sept. 28, 1993

San Francisco Jazz Collective
Barbican, London EC2
Tuesday at the Barbican saw the last night of the SF Jazz Collective's tour, and when the concert was over the band ceased to exist. That's how they keep it fresh. They come together once a year, with some original members, a few new ones and a completely new repertoire. Each member must contribute a new composition and together they choose a classic jazz figure, some of whose work they also adapt. This year it was Herbie Hancock.

The group's leading spirit is saxophonist Joshua Redman, its elder statesman is vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and its newest member is trombonist Andre Hayward. There are not that many young trombonists around these days, which makes Hayward, 33, a welcome newcomer on the world jazz stage. He has a tone like warm butter and his quicksilver technique is remarkable, even by today's impossibly high standards.

Bassist Matt Penman is known for his work with singer Madeleine Peyroux, but it was his composition, Frosted Evil, by turns lyrical and ferocious, that made everyone in the hall hold their breath. In fact, it was the original compositions that made the whole show so surprising and stimulating. The biggest surprise was delivered by former youthful prodigy Nicholas Payton, also 33, best known as a typical, open and swinging modern New Orleans trumpet player. His composition, Sudoku (announced as a 'puzzle piece'), was very odd indeed, beginning with single notes and disjointed phrases which gradually came together into an angular pattern.

This fascinating concert raised some fairly basic issues about the direction in which jazz is moving at present. If Tuesday night was anything to go by, the days of improvisation on a single, self-contained theme seem to be numbered. Instead we heard long, open-ended pieces with constantly changing tempos and moods.

And maybe the whole concept of a band as a regularly constituted entity is on the way out. Certainly, younger jazz musicians nowadays are apt to talk more about temporary 'projects' than permanent bands. It would be hard to find a more well thought-out model than the SF Jazz Collective. It combines youth with experience, and the format allows for endless renewal.

- Dave Gelly: Observer Sunday April 16, 2006