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| Queens Jazz Trail Tour The history of jazz is associated with many cities, districts and streets: New Orleans, Basin Street, Memphis' Beale Street, the Southside of Chicago, Kansas City, Harlem, 52nd Street, Greenwich Village, and many others. One place, though, is conspicuously absent in most accounts of jazz history: New York City's borough of Queens. In 1999, Flushing Council on the Arts and Culture created and published the colorful Queens Jazz Trail map, documenting the important role Queens has played in jazz and telling the story of the legends that have made Queens their home. The Council operates monthly escorted Queens Jazz Trail tours, taking trolley trailers to the homes of legends such as Louis Armstrong, and to the archives and cultural institutions in Queens devoted to jazz. The next of these takes place May 5 at 1:00 P.M. The tour itinerary starts with Flushing Town Hall, a New York City Landmark (1862), now a cultural center with a regionally acclaimed jazz series. Visit its permanent exhibit of photographs and memorabilia related to Queens jazz legends including Louis Armstrong and bass player Milt Hinton. The tour's second stop is Corona, where legendary trumpet players Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie lived around the corner from each other. Visitors will see the Armstrong House and Museum, where Louis Armstrong and his wife Lorraine lived from 1943 until his death in 1971. On display is Armstrong's vast personal collection of recordings, reel-to-reel tapes, scrapbooks, photographs, trumpets, and awards. Also in Corona is the Dorrie Miller apartment complex, which was home to Cannonball and Nat Adderly and is still the residence of Jimmy Heath. The tour continues south to Addisleigh Park in St. Albans, which has the highest concentration of jazz greats' homes in the borough, including Count Basie's Tudor-style house, which has a yard as big as a city block. Guests then return to Flushing Town Hall, and each of them receives a complimentary Queens Jazz Trail map. The roots of what later became known as the Queens Jazz Trail go back to 1923, when the music publisher and entrepreneur, Clarence Williams, and his wife, singer Eva Taylor, purchased a home and eight adjoining lots along 108th Avenue in rural Jamaica. Williams consciously set out to develop a self-sufficient "jazz community." Born and raised in the Louisiana delta, he preferred the "countrified" life of Queens to the quintessentially urban alternative of Harlem. Similar views were held by other African American musicians (many of whom were also from the rural South) and soon the open spaces of Jamaica, Corona, St. Albans, Addisleigh Park and Hollis, and neighboring towns were home for musicians like piano player James Johnson, composer Perry Bradford, and bandleader Fess Williams. As jazz continued to grow in popularity in the 1930's and 1940's, more and more musicians were able to afford to purchase homes in Queens. A newly constructed network of bridges, tunnels, and highways made Queens a workable choice for jazz musicians, by connecting the rapidly growing Jazz Trail to the clubs and recording studios of 52nd Street and Harlem. In the 1950's and '60's, a new generation of musicians moved into Queens, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, and Benny Waters. Today, these artists are the borough's senior jazzmen; they are joined by a continuing influx of younger musicians, in the vibrant, creative tradition of the Queens Jazz Trail. The Queens Jazz Trail is perhaps the only one of the jazz world's great creative centers that can't be identified by any one special sound or distinctive style, because, at its core, the Trail is a community, rather than a movement—a social, rather than an aesthetic phenomenon. Consequently, the story is rich, multi-faceted and complex. Flushing Town Hall's/Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts' culturally and stylistically diverse Jazz Live! is among the country's leading jazz series, and, since 1993 has played a unique role in preserving the rich jazz tradition of Queens and building the genre's next generation of artists. FCCA's jazz program includes a Headliner series (featuring such artists as Jimmy Heath, Barry Harris and Freddie Hubbard); Intimate Jazz, spotlighting diverse young artists; an annual Jazz and Poetry Marathon; art exhibitions; and jazz education programs for students and families. In 1999, FCCA was awarded the British Travel Writers Award for its Queens Jazz Trail map. Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts was founded in 1979 to be a revitalizing force for its community and a creative catalyst for developing and promoting the arts throughout Queens, presenting everything from exhibitions of painting, sculpture and photography to award-winning performances of jazz and classical music, opera, theater and dance. The Council also provides educational opportunities for community residents of all ages, and an array of vital services to local artists and arts organizations. These activities take place in historic Flushing Town Hall. In 2004, the Flushing Council became an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Jazz News :: home page |