More than 50 years ago in the staid city of Newport, Rhode Island, nightclub owner George Wein brought together a group of jazz musicians for what was to become the first in a venerable tradition of concert festivals. The weekend-long event brought a hip, new sound to a city known more for its yachts, upper-crust social scene and mansions lining the posh Cliff Walk.
This Friday, a little bit of Newport will find its way into McCarter Theatre as part of the Newport Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary Tour.
Wein still runs the show, now jointly based in Rhode Island and New York City, along with scores of others on both coasts, through his Festival Productions company.
"This year was a natural" for a tour, he said. "[There is] a hunger for jazz out there in the hinterlands."
The group he assembled includes both seasoned veterans and up-and-coming young players. Wein said he picked the band from "a family of musicians . . . they just discuss the key, the tune, they're off."
The players include saxophone all-star James Moody, guitarist Howard Alden, Randy Brecker on trumpet, and another sax player, James Carter, who Wein claimed "scares everybody — he can play like Ben Webster on soft ballads or tear the place apart."
The stellar rhythm section comprises Lewis Nash on drums, Cedar Walton on piano and Peter Washington on bass.
Wein talked about the importance of keeping the festival vital through more than five decades of music and in the face of steep competition from rock and pop. He said the key was staying abreast of contemporary shifts in the music and combining "commercialism with credibility."
The festival has been sponsored by JVC since the 1970s, and moved to New York for a decade after encountering crowd problems in Rhode Island in 1971.
A list of the musicians who have graced Newport's stages over the past half-century reads like a who's who of the form: Miles, Coltrane, Brubeck, Ella — just about every major player performed there, and many cut live records during the festival.
In 1956 the event sparked what may have been the first-ever instance of a modern crowd getting out of hand at a show: the audience went wild after a surging, 27-bar Paul Gonsalves solo featured in a Duke Ellington blues take. The police were called in; the Duke's career reignited.
If all goes well on Friday, audiences will be treated to a show rich with the melting-pot ethos at the heart of the Newport experience: "Anybody that goes there will learn a little bit of what jazz is," Wein said.
"This will reflect every movement, swing, bebop through modal. They all play what they call jazz."
The Jazz Festival Tour show starts at 8 p.m. Friday. Tickets range from $34-47, but student Tiger Tickets will be accepted.
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