The 70th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival had a distinctive Providence flavor in early August.
Musicians from the city’s Courtland Club joined star-studded headliners like André 3000 and Carlos Niño, Brittany Howard, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Laufey and Noname during the annual event. The Courtland Club musicians wanted to bring the essence of their Sunday Jazz jam sessions to the festival’s stage.
The Courtland Club is a performance venue, social club, restaurant and bar. Inside, musicians play before full houses of jazz lovers. Customers pack the venue on Courtland Street each week to take in an energetic performance session called “Sunday Jazz.”
For music lovers in Providence, the club is a spot for musicians and community members to come together. It is also a showcase for some of the area’s top jazz talent.
Through the decades, the Newport Jazz Festival has featured top stars like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.
The all-star Sunday Jazz team from the Courtland Club included Leland Baker, Dan Liparini, Noah Campbell, Marcus Grant, Kweku Aggrey, Alexandria DeWalt and Michael Carabello. They all have a history of playing at the Courtland Club, as well as playing as standalone artists across New England.
The group put together for the festival was fashioned in the tradition of an old school “all-star” band, said Jason Shechtman, owner, founder and director of the Courtland Club.
“We want(ed) to put together something dynamic that feels like a big sound,” he said. “Drums, bass, guitar, keys, two saxophones, flute, and vocals. And that’s the band we came up with.”
Individually, the musicians have been preparing for Newport for more than a year.
But they only had a few sessions together this summer to get ready.
Getting to the stage meant a lot for the musicians: not only to represent jazz, but also New England, the jazz culture within the region and the community they have brought to life throughout Providence.
“Jazz means community,” DeWalt said. “Jazz means empathy. Jazz means ‘I dare you.’ Like, for me, it challenges me to think beyond what I believe to be true.”
‘My Rhode Island family’
The Sunday Jazz musicians’ first rehearsal for the Newport festival was, naturally, on a Sunday morning at Courtland Club. They started playing promptly at 11 a.m.
They were just two weeks away from their big performance.
As they rehearsed, Courtland Club workers were prepping the restaurant quietly for the day.
The musicians formed a circle, immersed with one another, trying to figure out the different notes and placements of a tune.
With the way the group was seamlessly riffing, collaborating and improvising solos, you would have never guessed that this was their first festival practice.
“It’s like a family reunion,” Grant said.
“Yeah, it’s like family,” DeWalt said. “You feel seen, you feel heard, everyone’s listening intensely. You get to know each other by playing, like I’m getting to know Michael more by just hearing him play.”
“I feel like I become better friends every time we play together,” Carabello said. “It’s like playing in the park or playing on the playscape. Like we get to play and share smiles and food.”
“And we get a little deeper every time,” Grant added.
“Yeah and I always look forward to that,” Carabello continued. “Like this is my Rhode Island family.”
There was a lot of pressure as the musicians prepared for Newport. It was their first time playing on a main stage.
“It’s kind of so overwhelming that I haven’t even really thought about it,” Aggrey said. “There’s just so much history in the festival and I think that so much of the music that we play is about kind of celebrating history and thinking about it really carefully.”
DeWalt admitted she was nervous.
“My parents are coming!” she said. “They’re flying from Houston to come to the festival and be a part of it.”
A final sendoff
The night before the start of the jazz festival, the Courtland Club hosted a special last-minute Thursday Jazz Jam as a way to celebrate — and as sort of a sendoff for the musicians. It featured live music from the Sunday Jazz group, along with a DJ set.
The venue was packed. Tables were filled with longtime fans and new ones, too, as well as the musicians’ family members.
The Courtland Club is a reflection of the past, present and future of jazz. And it fills the gap left by the Acacia Club, a popular jazz social club that burned down in 2020.
After the fire, and as people emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns, the Courtland Club worked with Baker, a saxophonist, to launch regular weekly jazz sessions.
“It feels like Black church, not exclusive just to Black people, but Black meaning like a way of expressing something,” said DeMarcus Pruitt, a regular attendee and former DJ set performer.
The Courtland Club has attracted prominent hip-hop and rhythm-and-blues musicians like Large Professor and Ishmael Butler.
The band and audience feed off each other, creating a lot of energy in the venue, said Kayla Campbell, manager, server and bartender at the Courtland Club.
“There have been some really wonderful nights here where people will get up and start dancing, and I think it really spurs the band on,” she said. “People will look around and see one person kind of getting up and moving, and then more people will do it, and it gets more and more people out of their seats. And I think that’s really cool.”
At the sendoff event, members of the Sunday Jazz group performed songs they were going to play at the festival.
The audience included musicians’ family members — like DeWalt’s mother, father, aunt and uncle.
Liparini said he has been attending the Newport Jazz Festival since he was a teenager.
“It’s been something that has always been a huge, huge goal of mine and dream of mine to play,” he said.
And it’s especially meaningful because he’s going to Newport with this group of musicians, including Baker, who he has known since he was 13.
“Just honored to be a part of the history of the festival and honored to do it with this fine group of people,” Liparini said.
‘Ready to preach’
On Aug. 4, the Sunday Jazz musicians gathered on the festival grounds in Newport. They held a final rehearsal and fine-tuned their instruments.
Golf carts escorted the musicians to a trailer. Inside, they were giddy. Carabello said he was excited to be in sync with the other musicians.
“We should name our band NSYNC,” he said. “That’s a great band name!”
Baker said he was feeling inspired.
“Ready to fellowship as we always say,” he said. “Ready to preach. It’s what we do. We bring another thing into existence that’s not normally felt on a daily basis as humans. Music is a gift.”
It wasn’t until moments before the show that the mood started to change. The musicians got quiet. Campbell practiced his soprano saxophone outside the trailer, alone.
Then it was time to head to the stage.
Attendees began to pour in, snapping pictures. Family members approached a barricade to talk and send well-wishes.
With family in the front rows, and concertgoers wearing “Sunday Jazz” shirts scattered in an overflowing crowd, Sunday Jazz performed.
For 50 minutes, the musicians performed — all original music, filling the stage with passionate tunes. So much was said with each note, with each face scrunch, with each passing glance — moments for only the musicians to know.
Offstage, Shechtman, the owner of the Courtland club, was recording as if he were a proud father. In the crowd, various members of the Sunday Jazz family were doing the same
At the end of their performance, the crowd offered up a roar of applause and a standing ovation.
After the show, several of the musicians seemed to be in disbelief — a look of “What just happened?” seemed to flash across their faces.
Still on stage as he packed up his equipment, Grant let out a high-pitched “AHHHH!” when asked about how he felt playing the festival.
“I just blacked out for 50 minutes!” he said.
“I’m still buffering,” Aggrey said.
Musicians greeted loved ones and friends with hugs, taking in the moment.
“I am so proud!” Campbell’s mother, Araina, told him.
Campbell said it felt surreal to be part of the festival.
“Not only just the rich musical space, but the history, the dynamics that shape the music for as long as the festival has been running,” he said. “It does feel really powerful that we’re all able to represent not only just New England talent, but what the sound is of this community and the sound that we’ve all produced coming out of our various backgrounds.”
This story was originally published by Connecticut Public Radio. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
