Blues & Jazz Festival 2005

Erie Art Museum’s 13th Annual Blues & Jazz Festival

Saturday, August 6 & Sunday August 7

Frontier Park

The Erie Art Museum Blues & Jazz Festival has become one of the community's best-loved events. A free event in a beautiful city park, the Festival is a part of the Mayor's Signature Series and offers a high quality artistic experience to the whole community. Bring a lawn chair or a blanket and enjoy Festival food, wonderful people, and glorious music in a beautiful outdoor setting, rain or shine.

This year, we are particularly excited about working with the Nego Gato ensemble.The spectacular acrobatics which characterize Nego Gato performances have to be seen to be believed. With the support of Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour and the Arts Endowment of Erie, the Museum is hosting Nego Gato in residence in Erie during the week preceding the Festival. Kids in the Martin Luther King Center Summer Dance Program are working with the troupe all week and then participating in the public performance on Saturday.

We have lined up a number of Meet The Artist workshops to enable our visitors to meet and speak firsthand with these remarkable performers. Workshops take place on Saturday afternoon with Nego Gato at 3:30 p.m. and Deborah Coleman at 5:30 p.m., and on Sunday afternoon with Rebecca Coupe Franks at 3:30 p.m. and Issa Bagayogo at 5:30 p.m. Meet The Artist workshops take place at the Gazebo in Lake Erie Arboretum at Frontier Park on the west side of Cascade Creek. Fans can also meet Rory Block at the CD tent after her performance on Saturday. Other artists will also be on hand to meet the public and sign CDs following their performances.

Click here for 2005 sponsors

Thanks to all the sponsors and volunteers who make this event possible.

Nego Gato

The spirit of Bahia, Brazil comes to the Festival stage with Nego Gato, a ten-member company which presents the spectacularly acrobatic and musical martial art, capoeira, plus oriza dance, and Brazilian music ranging from samba to merengue to pagode. Mestre Jose Sena (known as Nego Gato) is a master folklorist, dancer, and teacher of capoeira—a combination of music, fighting, dance, theater and philosophy. A native of Salvador, Bahia in Brazil, Nego Gato was influenced by the sounds of the Condomble religion, street music, and Carnival. His compositions are a blend of the traditional rhythms of the drum cults, chants to the Orixa and current styles of popular music. Nego Gato has performed widely, including appearances at the Kennedy Center in Washington and Lincoln Center in New York. With the support of the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour program and the Erie Arts Endowment, Nego Gato will be in Erie the week prior to the Festival, working with students in the Martin Luther King Center’s Bayfront Dance program. The Erie students will appear on stage as part of the Nego Gato performance.

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Duke Sherman Blues Band

The Duke Sherman Blues Band plays high energy Chicago blues. The band, comprised of veteran local blues musicians, performs blues gems by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter and their own originals in the same vein. Duke Sherman, on guitar and vocals, is joined by Mark Murphy on bass, Rick Cass, drums, and Otis James on harmonica and saxophone. The band, which formerly featured the late blues vocalist Bobby Grant, has been performing throughout the region, from Cleveland to Buffalo.

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Rory Block

Since she recorded her first album almost 25 years ago, Rory Block has become one of the most highly acclaimed performers of traditional country blues. A four-time W.C. Handy Award winner, she is described by Blues Revue as “one of the greatest living acoustic blues artists…she can hold her own with the legends who inspired her." The New York Times says, "Her playing is perfect, her singing otherworldly as she wrestles with ghosts, shadows and legends."

When Aurora Block’s family moved from rural New Jersey to the West Village in New York City, her love affair with the blues began. She was raised by Bohemian parents who preached the good word of art and music. Surrounded by the folk culture of the 1960s, she often played at Washington Square Park with John Sebastian and Stefan Grossman. It was there that she learned of bluegrass, soul and the southern blues, styles otherwise unheard of in the North. When asked why a white girl from New York City would be so interested in the styles of Southern Blacks, she responded “Inspiration is born in the deepest part of the soul, where boundaries don't exist.” At the tender age of 15, she and Stefan traveled to the West Coast in search of a musical purpose. She has returned to the music scene in recent years after a hiatus to raise her children. In addition to receiving a WC Handy award, she has performed with the likes of Mark Knopfler, Stevie Wonder and Bonnie Raitt.

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W. C. Clark

Playing a mix of modern Texas blues, with a searing guitar and heartfelt, Memphis-style soul vocals, W.C. Clark has earned the title The Godfather of Austin Blues, an honorific which reflects his role as mentor to numerous young blues stars, including Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Angela Strehli, and Marcia Ball. Wesley Curley Clark was born into a musical family in Austin in 1939, and has been playing guitar since he was a child. At age 16, Clark played his first gig at the Victory Grill, where he was introduced to blues legend T.D. Bell. Clark soon began playing bass and joined Bell’s band, The Cadillacs. In the 1960s he played for six years with Blues Boy Hubbard and the Jets, finally leaving to tour the chitlin’ circuit as the guitarist with the great Joe Tex. He formed his own band, Southern Feeling, in the early 1970s and toured with Stevie Ray in the Triple Threat Revue (and co-wrote the hit Cold Shot) before forming the W.C. Clark Blues Revue in the late 70s. A series of critically praised CDs on Black Top and Alligator have finally brought him well-deserved international acclaim. Blues Revue says “Clark conjures the vocal power of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett and the guitar of Steve Cropper and Albert King,” and Living Blues calls him “a first-rate and funky, passionate and powerful performer…a singularly skilled leader among modern blues artists.”

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Deborah Coleman

Deborah Coleman is unquestionably, as USA Today notes, “one of blues music’s most exciting young talents”. Though she has released five acclaimed studio cds, it is her knockout live performances that have established her reputation as “a fiery guitarist who makes the spine tingle with her unbridled raw energy.” Coleman combines fresh songwriting, soulful vocals, and inspired guitarwork to create a unique blend of blues, R&B, and soul. Raised in a family of musicians, Coleman began playing the guitar at age eight. Her latest CD release, "What About Love?" explores the ups and downs of matters of the heart, in a way that only a highly accomplished blues singer and songwriter like Coleman can. According to Blues Revue, “These days she’s also one of the most watched performers on the American blues scene, and she’s gained this status on her own terms and without sacrificing her musical integrity. Coleman plays sophisticated, hard-hitting blues with gritty, deep vocals melding a diverse set of influences with an awesome emotional range.”

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Bay City Brass & Reeds Big Band

Founded by high school students in 1997, Bay City Brass & Reeds Big Band has matured along with its members into a first class swing band. Leader (and lead trumpeter) Galen McKinney says they have selected a distinctive repertoire that distinguishes them from other big bands in this region. In addition to the basics, like Ellington and Basie, the band performs works by West Coast school writers, as well as standards by Johnny Mercer and Richard Rogers and swing classics by Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. Although the group has added a couple “older” members, its average age is still about 21. This performance will feature two outstanding young instrumentalists: Boston-based trombonist Chris Dempsey (a Central High grad), who has been praised as one to watch by Downbeat, and Becky Wunch, a recent Duquesne University grad who will be playing baritone, tenor and soprano saxophones.

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Jim Madden and Friends

Veterans of the Erie jazz scene, pianist Jim Madden, bassist Dave Blaetz, drummer Matt Ferguson and saxophonist Alan Zurcher perform a varied repertoire which ranges from swing to bop and post-bop. The band, a regular feature at papermoon restaurant, describes its music as “inside outside”. Standards by Ellington, Monk, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Freddie Hubbard form the basis for free improvisations. The band also features guest instrumentalists and the occasional blues vocal.

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Rebecca Coupe Franks

Rebecca Coupe Franks is among the elite group of female jazz instrumentalists—she is also a composer, arranger and bandleader. “Coupe” grew up in a family of trumpet players and began playing trumpet at age 10. (She still plays the same Schilke M2 she began with.) As a young player in the San Francisco Bay area she had the good fortune to meet Joe Henderson, who became her mentor. He is honored in her latest CD, Exhibition: Tribute to Joe Henderson. After a spell in South America and a stint in a traveling circus band Coupe moved to New York, where she quickly became a regular on the jazz club circuit. She recorded a couple of cds for the Justice label, working with Ben Riley, Buster Williams, Leni Stern, Kenny Barron and Joe Henderson, before relocating to her current home in upstate New York, where she has concentrated on writing music. In addition to her own recordings, her compositions have appeared in several movies and on television shows (Melrose Place, Law and Order and Beverly Hills 90210). For her Erie appearance she will be accompanied by Leni Stern, guitar, Kim Clark, bass, Jamie Leonhart, vocals, and Mark Dalio on drums.

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Issa Bagayogo

Known worldwide for his unique blend of Malian roots music and Western dance technology, Issa Bagayogo has found a way to honor his country’s great musical traditions while creating a truly global, modern sound. “Techno Issa”, as he is known in his homeland of Mali, sings about social issues, concerns of ethnic and cultural heritage, AIDS, and drugs. Playing the kamalé ngoni (a 6-string bass harp similar to the kora), and backed by the balafon, flute, and electric guitar, Bagayogo creates a sound that is contemporary and dance-oriented. It is a sound both ancient and modern, satisfying international audiences with its sense of timelessness. Raised in the Wassoulou region in southwestern Mali, Issa moved to Bamako in the early 1990s, and began recording a series of CDs which have received worldwide acclaim. His most recent effort, Tassoumakan, which has topped the charts, is described by Philadelphia Weekly as “…one of the best world music albums of the year…it’s like a clubby mashup of John Lee Hooker and Zuco 103.” Billboard says, “a classic of modern Malian music…a collection of tunes that feel supremely minimalistic, yet are anything but.”

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Guitar Raffle -- autographed by Jonny Lang

Don’t miss your chance to win an autographed guitar signed by Jonny Lang! Tickets can be purchased at the T-Shirt tent for $2 each, or 3 for $5. The winner of the guitar will be announced at 8 o’clock Sunday night. At the tender age of 16, Jonny Lang swept the category for Best New Guitarist in Guitar magazine’s reader’s poll and made a cameo in the film Blues Brothers 2000. Jonny has since toured with Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, B.B. King, and Blues Traveler, as well as headlining around the world. Jonny is also a talented song writer, and has co-produced his newest album, Long Time Comin.

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