Token Creek Chamber Music

Program IX


TCF 2020 Virtual Season · Music from the Barn

Jazz at Token Creek 2003-2019

2020 Virtual Season · Program IX · Jazz 2003-2019

Program

Sweet Pretty Baby (La douce dame jolie, 14th century) Gil Macho (Guillaume de Machaut)
  • John Harbison, piano
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2003 Token Creek Festival
Stormy Weather (1933) Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler
  • Annette Sanders, vocals
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2004 Token Creek Festival
Stardust (1927) Hoagy Carmichael & Mitchell Parrish
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2005 Token Creek Festival
It Never Entered My Mind (1940) Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart
  • Annette Sanders, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2006 Token Creek Festival
The Very Thought of You (1934) Ray Noble
  • Annette Sanders, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2007 Token Creek Festival
Willow Weep for Me (1932) Ann Ronnell
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2008 Token Creek Festival
I Thought About You (1939) Jimmy Van Heusen & Johnny Mercer
  • Annette Sanders, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2009 Token Creek Festival
In the Land of Oo Bla Dee (1945) Mary Lou Williams
  • Nicole Pasternak, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2010 Token Creek Festival
Moments Like This (1937) Burton Lane & Frank Loesser
  • Nicole Pasternak, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2011 Token Creek Festival
Who Cares (1931) George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin
  • Ricky Richardson, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2012 Token Creek Festival
There Will Never Be Another You (1942) Harry Warren & Mack Gordon
  • Emily Wean, vocalist (MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble)
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Todd Steward, drums
  • from the 2013 Token Creek Festival
If You Think It’s Time to Go (2018) John Harbison & Evan Ziporyn
  • Ricky Richardson, vocals
  • Tom Artin, trombone
  • Rose Mary Harbison, violin
  • John Harbison, piano
  • John Schaffer, bass
  • Jim Huwe, drums
  • from the 2019 Token Creek Festival

Program Notes

The original plans for the Token Creek Festival, when it began in 1989, never included a jazz component. But, like so many things, it evolved organically, naturally from what we were doing —music we were playing, guests artists on our series.

We’d already had a few late-night sessions after formal concerts at Token Creek when, in 2000, the Boston Museum Trio played a program of French and German Baroque music. Ben Stepner, the then 11-year old son of gambist Laura Jeppesen and baroque violinist Dan Stepner, tagged along. He was already a formidable jazz pianist, and the “late-night” after their early music concert included Ben taking most of the solos on the Steinway, John Harbison comping on the electric keyboard, Rose Mary Harbison turning in her Stuff Smith stylings, and John Schaffer, bass. Board members Bob and Linda Graebner, elegant dancers, spun across the empty barn floor. It was a remarkable evening that ignited an idea.

The 2000 season was also the year we inaugurated a series of irregular “Forums.” These grew out of our interest in sharing the collaborative research between physicist Jack Fry and violinist Rose Mary Harbison into the acoustical properties of violin sound (research that was the topic of a PBS Nova segment, and presentations at the Smithsonian, Boston Museum of Science, and MIT), and also our interest in exploring the relationship between text and musical setting in poems and songs. The forums eventually expanded to include sessions on aesthetic parallels in science and art, connections with Georgia O’Keeffe, Shakespeare scenes and songs, several iterations on poetry and music, and also many session on ecological restoration, tracking updates to ambitious projects then taking place on the farm, including the restoration of a trout stream.

It was in this spirit that Token Creek offered its first jazz event, the 2003 Forum “Jazz: Playing the Changes – Blues, Standards, Passacaglia, Ground Bass, and Chaconne.” The first half was a lecture that traced the history, from earliest times to the present, of variations procedures in music, the basis of all improvisation. A live jazz band – John Harbison, piano, Rose Mary Harbison, jazz violin, John Schaffer, bass, and Todd Steward, drums – offered musical examples in the second half of the program.

Following that initial experiment, with its enthusiastic reception, the idea of adding a jazz café to the regular lineup of Festival events took hold, and it became an annual event that ran for the ensuing decade, 2004-2013. For those evenings, the concert barn was transformed into a club: small tables, candles, intimate seating, low light, refreshments during the sets. The concerts – at that time one of the few places in our area where one could hear jazz in a club-like setting, with a quiet listening audience, rather than as background music in bars – became so popular that we began doubling up, offering matinee and evening performances, sometimes presenting up to four performances of each program.

The original house band – the quartet of John Harbison, piano; Rose Mary Harbison, violin; John Schaffer, bass; and Todd Steward, drums — persisted over the entire run. Gradually we added players. Integral to the group was trombonist Tom Artin, who joined the house band in 2005. He and John Harbison were young lads in Princeton, NJ when they formed their first jazz band together at age 11: the Harbison Heptet. They continued to play together in The Edgehill Five, a Dixieland band that performed for high school events and private parties.

Our first vocalist was the incomparable Annette Sanders (2004-2009); when she had to lay out one year, we were fortunate to be introduced to Nicole Pasternak (2008 & 2010-2011). By then, John Harbison had shifted his teaching load at MIT to incorporate some jazz: he founded the Vocal Jazz Ensemble, arranging, coaching and sometimes playing with them. Those years brought us Ricky Richardson in 2012 and then, in 2013, members from the VJE for the finale of our jazz decade.

From the start, the repertoire of TCF Jazz was located firmly in the Great American Songbook. Most years focused on a single composer/lyricist or two:
2004: Harold Arlen (Annette Sanders)
2005: Count Basie & Hoagie Carmichael (Annette Sanders)
2006: Rodgers & Hart (Annette Sanders)
2007: Performers’ Choice (Annette Sanders)
2008: One-Hit Wonders (Nicole Pasternak)
2009: Jimmy Van Heusen (Annette Sanders)
2010: Mary Lou Williams & Johnny Mercer (Nicole Pasternak)
2011: Burton Lane & Jule Styne (Nicole Pasternak)
2012: Gershwin: No Sad Songs (Ricky Richardson)
2013: Harry Warren (MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble)

Jazz, it turned out, was an ambitious undertaking for our small festival. Fun and rewarding as it was, it challenged our physical infrastructure, staff, volunteers, and artists (who were often doublers — rehearsing concert music in the afternoon, playing jazz at night). Its increasing popularity, welcome as it was, became difficult to manage. In the words of John Harbison, Jazz at Token Creek had become “the tail that wagged the dog.” And so we took a break, for five years.

Our 30th anniversary in 2019, last season, offered the opportunity to restore our jazz concert, but now restructured as a standalone event that expanded our season by placing it on the weekend before our normal opening rather than in the midst of our usual concert schedule. The model worked well, and it seemed something we could sustain going forward. But our 2020 plans were, of course, like everyone else’s, disrupted by the corona pandemic, the quarantine which occasioned our virtual season.

In our heyday, we issued a CD compilation of each year of jazz 2005-2013. Perhaps listening to these records will bring back fond memories of the jazz club at Token Creek, intense and ferociously interesting, in our small country barn.

Available on CD

These Jazz at Token Creek live recordings from 2005 to 2013 are each represented by one song on this program.

These timeless, limited-edition recordings remain available at our online store while supplies last.