Ray Funk

Eti­enne Charles, trum­pet great and mu­sic pro­fes­sor at Michi­gan State, has a sab­bat­i­cal this year and this has him go­ing non-stop lit­er­al­ly all over the globe. The praise he gets as he trav­els the world keeps com­ing. In March, the New York Times called him a jazz “com­pos­er to be reck­oned with” and more re­cent­ly the jazz mag­a­zine Down­beat said he “de­liv­ers his ebul­lient im­pro­vi­sa­tions with the el­e­gance of a world class bal­let dancer.”

Af­ter gigs in Eu­rope this sum­mer, he took his Brass Mas for the first time to Carib­ana in Toron­to in ear­ly Au­gust, then he was down in the Caribbean for the Bigu­ine Jazz Fes­ti­val in Mar­tinique and Car­ifes­ta XIV in T&T. At Car­ifes­ta, he was fea­tured on the Jazzed Off evening, he and his band con­duct­ed mas­ter class­es as part of the sym­po­sium at UWI and showed films he and Maria Nunes cre­at­ed as part of his Car­ni­val al­bum re­search at the Film Fes­ti­val. Then he was off to Lon­don for Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val and on to Ghana as he is tour­ing Eu­rope do­ing sev­er­al weeks re­search in Africa for his next al­bum. But in the midst of that, he flew back to New York City for a week­end of con­certs.

His lat­est New York gigs were with his own 18-piece big band. They per­formed at Dizzy’s the night­club at Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter for four sold-out shows on Sep­tem­ber 7 and 8. In fact, the Sun­day shows were al­so live streamed to thou­sands of view­ers.

Big band, BIG sound

The Eti­enne Charles big band went through a set of both well-known jazz pieces, a lit­tle known Hen­ry Manci­ni and some of his own com­po­si­tions Charles’ own Doe­uns from his Folk­lore al­bum went over very well with so­los by fine Chica­go vibes vir­tu­oso Joel Ross. The first set end­ed with a fun ver­sion of Spar­row’s Ten to One is Mur­der with the band and au­di­ence ex­u­ber­ant­ly singing the cho­rus. His ap­proach is to fea­ture var­i­ous mem­bers in ex­tend­ed so­los that got the crowd ex­cit­ed.

There has been an evo­lu­tion over the past decade of big band for Eti­enne Charles. Go­ing to col­lege jazz stud­ies pro­grammes in the US al­most al­ways means be­ing part of a big band. And so it was for Charles who was part of big bands at both Flori­da State and Jul­liard and he took class­es in ar­rang­ing for big band.

Ever since he start­ed teach­ing at Michi­gan State a decade ago he has di­rect­ed one of the big bands in the jazz pro­gramme and he al­so has been teach­ing jazz ar­rang­ing. Ini­tial­ly he was work­ing from charts from the uni­ver­si­ty’s col­lec­tion but as time went on he start­ed writ­ing arrange­ments of both his com­po­si­tions and oth­er jazz pieces.

Eti­enne cred­its Dana Hall who was then lead­ing the Chica­go Jazz En­sem­ble who re­al­ly upped his in­volve­ment with writ­ing big band charts. Hall com­mis­sioned Eti­enne to do sev­er­al charts for a con­cert Eti­enne per­formed with the Chica­go Jazz En­sem­ble in 2011. Then he got a com­mis­sion to do all the charts for a full big band con­cert in 2012 with the Charleston Jazz Or­ches­tra in South Car­oli­na.

These op­por­tu­ni­ties fur­ther spurred Eti­enne’s in­ter­est in big band ar­rang­ing. He start­ed to close­ly ex­am­ine the arrange­ments for Count Basie, Frank Sina­tra and oth­ers as he worked to cre­ate his own style of ar­rang­ing. Now when he leads the Michi­gan State stu­dent big band he works pri­mar­i­ly with arrange­ments he has writ­ten.

Re­cent­ly, he has ex­per­i­ment­ed with do­ing some­thing that has nev­er been done with a jazz big band, tak­ing a tech­nique used for Panora­ma. He calls out notes and the big band has to learn one new com­po­si­tion each con­cert by rote with no writ­ten mu­sic!

Mean­while he has evolved a work­ing big band of lead­ing mu­si­cians that he con­venes in New York City for con­certs. He has fea­tured them at con­certs at the Jazz Stan­dard in the last few years be­fore these nights at Dizzy’s and in 2020, he will is­sue his first big band al­bum.

Busy as a bee

Charles’ re­la­tion­ship with Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter has been long stand­ing. He first ap­peared as a stu­dent there in 2005 with the Flori­da State Jazz Band and lat­er with the Jul­liard Jazz En­sem­ble. Since 2007, he has re­peat­ed­ly ap­peared with his own band first as part of their Late Night gigs, then the Mon­day Night Up­starts se­ries, and now promi­nent­ly fea­tured on their con­cert sched­ule.

In­deed, this year, a pho­to of Eti­enne Charles is used on print ad­ver­tise­ments for Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter sea­son where he has been a reg­u­lar. He pre­miered a Lin­coln Cen­ter com­mis­sion in a sold out Jan­u­ary 2019 con­cert at the David Ruben­stein Atri­um with his six-piece tour­ing band. He will re­turn for a sec­ond pre­sen­ta­tion at Dizzy’s of his Cre­ole Christ­mas con­cert on De­cem­ber 17 this year. Then, on June 5 and 6, 2020, Eti­enne Charles will of­fer the New York pre­miere of his Car­ni­val: The Sound of a Peo­ple in the Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter’s spec­tac­u­lar Ap­pel Room with its mag­nif­i­cent view of Cen­tral Park.

The rest of the year Eti­enne Charles will con­tin­ue to be on the road, for this pe­ri­od large­ly around the Unit­ed States go­ing from Cal­i­for­nia to Col­orado, Flori­da to Boston, Michi­gan to Wash­ing­ton, DC. He will per­form both with his own group and as part of the SF Jazz Col­lec­tive.

He re­turns to Trinidad for a con­cert at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day, De­cem­ber 5, and is al­ready work­ing on his Trinidad Car­ni­val Mon­day band for 2020.