By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Reporter
Next Saturday night the venerable St. Bede’s Chapel on Lake Avenue will be a pulsating “Jazz Club” as Bennie Wallace’s BackCountry Jazz group entertains guests sitting and sipping cabaret-style. Bennie is expecting a full house. “We’ve really built an audience in Greenwich,” he says, and they’re in for a surprise. Bennie promises, “This program will be a real departure for what we’ve done before.”
Bennie is doing his best to recreate the musical milieu he first experienced as a budding jazz artist in his native Chattanooga, Tenn. “There were these jazz clubs that opened at night at 11, completely illegally—when the drinking establishments closed, with traveling and local jazz musicians playing a certain kind of music with an organ that would simulate the sound of a big band, with tenor sax players leading these groups. I’m resurrecting that kind of atmosphere with some major jazz artists and rising jazz stars at the St. Bede’s ‘Jazz Club’ concert.”
Bennie will be playing his tenor saxophone alongside Dr. Lonnie Smith, an acknowledged master of the Hammond B3 organ whose tagline is “Everybody rocks when the Doctor is in the house.” Bennie had heard Dr. Lonnie at this year’s Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Harlem performing with singer Alicia Olatuja, “So I invited Alicia to play for us, too,” says Bennie. “And from California we’re bringing in guitarist Graham Dechter, a hot new talent.”
Bennie has succeeded in building his audience most importantly to support his passion for bringing jazz instruction and inspiration to the underprivileged youth of Bridgeport. His partnership with Greenwich Library, which has offered jazz concerts over the last three years, has led to further outreach. “Last year we had a Billie Holiday concert at the library that we took to the University of Bridgeport’s Mertens Theater concert hall with 1,500 kids attending,” he reports. He’s planning as well to export a Duke Ellington concert he gave last February at the library—this time to reach a possible 3,000 kids.
Bennie has been working with those Bridgeport public school kids every summer for the last five years at their July music camp, which he has helped shape. With support from his Greenwich concerts, which he gives two or three times a year at different venues, and thanks to ongoing grants from Newman’s Own Foundation (aided by his friendship with Melissa Newman, an accomplished jazz singer), he is able to offer more than 60 kids from fifth to nine grades either an introduction to jazz, advanced jazz, or classical music instruction.
When he talks of some of his standout students, he likens them to his “grandkids” (of which he has none, nor children). “With any determined kid, we try to give them their own instrument,” he says, “as most kids rent instruments at school then lose them at school’s end, the same with camp—they lose them in August.”
Sitting by Bennie’s front door is a big box holding a bass clarinet—on its way to talented eighth grade student David Fleurantin, who also plays alto saxophone. He also praises “this tiny Asian girl, Audrey Szymanski” who arrived at the music camp three years ago. “The teacher tells us what kids should have an instrument, but Audrey wasn’t recognized.”
Then Bennie heard her improvising on her violin. “I sent her to a string teacher—she was playing a pawn shop violin.” Szymanski was presented with a violin at last year’s Greenwich Library Billie Holiday concert. “She’s taking violin lessons, doing impressive improvising and composing music,” says Bennie. “She’s a real leader in her ninth grade group.”
The stories keep coming of talented students. “Last year we had a student singer at the camp who was a refugee from the Congo. We were teaching her a Charlie Parker piece. By the time we finished, she’d learned the whole Parker tune, so I told her to go write some lyrics for the piece. She did and we performed it.
“These kids are now beginning to perform in public,” he continues. “We did a live performance for an hour on WPKN Radio—giving them no music—they were all improvising. And this year they’ll be performing at schools for other kids. We’ll have some kids playing at our upcoming concert at St. Bede’s. It does kids a lot of good to perform.”
Bennie’s “grandkids” are becoming in demand. “I’ve been contacted by people wanting these kids to play at certain events.”
Bennie had started off with BackCountry Jazz just generating concerts. But things began to change in 2008, when he was recruited by Bridgeport Public Schools to do small concerts, then community concerts, and then a few workshops at the Bridgeport summer camp. When the news came in 2010 that the camp was closing, Bennie called his friend Melissa Newman and the rescue was made. Now, not only is there a thriving summer music camp, but the students’ diets have been upgraded.
“We noticed their terrible diet at school so we’ve been giving them organic food and that makes a difference in their concentration level,” says Bennie.
What of Bennie’s own performing career? Right now he can be heard even from the outside of his backcountry house playing his saxophone and working on his own music compositions, with one day a week spent jazz-grooming his “grandkids” in Bridgeport. Knowing that the immediate future of the music camp is assured, and grateful to wife Jeanette for serving as full time volunteer for the running of BackCountry Jazz, he’s thinking of making a performing tour of Europe in 2017.
“I made my living in Europe in the late 1970’s,” he says, “playing on radio, TV, and in major concert halls until I went to Los Angeles to write film music. Europe has been open to having American jazz musicians since the 1930’s. If it were not for Europe, there would not be a jazz business.”
But at present, Bennie is busily preparing for his “Jazz Club” concert next week, which he equates qualitatively with major jazz festivals in Europe. “I put as much energy in a concert that I would in a recording session making an album,” he says. “The most important thing for a jazz artist is to reach out to the audience, to entertain them without watering the music down. It’s a huge thrill to turn the Greenwich audience onto musicians they’ve never heard of, musicians that I have admired throughout my career.”
For information and tickets for the Nov. 21 St. Bede’s Jazz Club visit www.backcountryjazz.org, or call 203-869-9454, or email jeanette@backcountryjazz.org.
