Arts & Entertainment
Angel City Jazz Expands to Echoplex
In an interview, co-producer Jeff Gauthier talks about how the innovative festival is taking on the world including Echo Park.
The Angel City Jazz Festival keeps getting bigger and better. Now in its fourth year, the festival will stretch out to two weeks and venues in mid-Wilshire, Downtown and Echo Park.
The festival is also stretching the definition of jazz--both acoustically and geographically--and helping redefine the music for a new generation.
A key part of the team behind this is Jeff Gauthier, co-producer. Esteemed in L.A.'s experimental music community for decades, Gauthier has believed in our city's taste for avant offerings since the festival's launch.
Find out what's happening in Echo Park-Silver Lakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Patch asked Gauthier if he'd answer a few questions for us. He more than obliged as you'll see below.
Patch: What's different--better--about the festival this year?
Jeff Gauthier: Angel City has always been about expanding the boundaries of jazz by incorporating many kinds of sounds and musical genres. This year we've literally crossed boundaries by presenting artists from nine different countries at seven concerts throughout the L.A. area.
Find out what's happening in Echo Park-Silver Lakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Our Global Jam explores the connections between world music and cutting-edge creative jazz. This year we've grown to two weeks with events at The Ford Amphitheatre, REDCAT, LACMA, The Echoplex, The Blue Whale and Zipper Hall.
Patch: Your offerings are very eclectic-- wide-ranging sounds and venues. What's the unifier?
Jeff Gauthier: The countries represented in the festival include Australia, Armenia (by way of Paris), Burkina Faso, Colombia, France, Germany and India (by way of N.Y.), Japan, and Venezuela. The unifier is that all of these artists not only incorporate music from their own cultures, they are on the cutting edge of jazz and out of the mainstream mold.
Patch: Why was it important for you to be in Echo Park?
Jeff Gauthier: Echo Park has a great vibe, and it expands our range while still being centrally located. We've got four shows downtown this year, one near the Westside at LACMA and one at the Ford Theatre in Hollywood, so moving to Echo Park stretches us out a bit.
Patch: Why is it the right place for the Burkina Electrica and DJ Spooky program?
Jeff Gauthier: When we started talking with Burkina Electric and DJ Spooky, The Echoplex was the first place that came to mind. It's a great venue where people can dance, which is a prerequisite since it's impossible to sit still for this music. The sound is very good, and they host a lot of world music and dance shows there. We're really pleased to be working with Liz [Garo] and the Echoplex, and hope we'll be able to continue next year.
Patch: If someone wanted to venture outside Echo Park to see another show exploring the relationship between electronic and jazz, what else would they see?
Jeff Gauthier: Our Global Jam event at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre October 1st will be amazing. We start with a tribute to LA's own Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra on their 50th anniversary. Then we have Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura, a great husband and wife piano/trumpet duo from Japan. For electronic effects and jazz, we have the Kandinsky Effect from France.
Then the great Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan's amazing quintet, followed by Indian alto saxophone player Rudresh Mahanthappa's Quartet, which mixes Indian music ideas with electronic sounds.
Patch: You also run a record label. How does this festival relate to what you are trying to do with the label?
Jeff Gauthier: Rocco Somazzi (co-producer of the festival) and I share a similar aesthetic and appreciation for the L.A. jazz community, and Cryptogramophone has documented some of L.A.'s most interesting musicians, so it's inevitable that some of them wind playing at festival events.
This year Todd Sickafoose's Tiny Resistors are playing at REDCAT on Sept. 24, and Alex Cline's re-envisioning of Roscoe Mitchell's "People in Sorrow" will be at REDCAT Oct. 2. Both Todd and Alex are Cryptogramophone artists.
Patch: Finally, is any of what your doing really a surprise given your early work with Quartet Music and other experimental music?
Jeff Gauthier: Everything is a surprise to me. If I look back 30 years to QuartetMusic, I couldn't possibly have imagined I'd be helping to put a creative jazz festival together. Music continues to be a huge part of my life, and presenting events continues to be a happy distraction. I think the whole thing arose from trying to find concerts for my musical colleagues and myself. It all just got a bit out of control.
Burkina Electric and DJ Spooky appear Saturday, September 24 at the Echoplex at 9 p.m.
Find out more about all the shows in the Angel City Jazz Festival.
And to listen to more of the artists featured in the festival:
Burkina Electric
http://www.angelcityjazz.com/artists/burkina-electric-special-guest-dj-spooky
MP3: https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/12+Ca+Va+Chauffer.mp3
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
http://www.angelcityjazz.com/artists/pan-afrikan-peoples-arkestra
MP3 https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/04+-+Clarrise.mp3
The Kandinsky Effect
http://www.angelcityjazz.com/artists/kandinsky-effect
MP3 https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/05+Girl_Boy+Song.mp3
Tigran Hamasyan
https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/02+What+The+Waves+Brought.mp3
MP3 https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/02+What+The+Waves+Brought.mp3
Rudresh Mahanthappa
http://www.angelcityjazz.com/artists/rudresh-mahanthappa-samdhi
https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/10+Killer.mp3
Todd Sickafoose:
http://www.angelcityjazz.com/artists/todd-sickafoose-and-tiny-resistors
MP3: https://s3.amazonaws.com/angelcity/MP3s/01+Future+Flora.mp3
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