Dave Chisholm straddles a number of arts. He is an accomplished trumpet player, composer, and educator who lives and gigs in several genres around Rochester (well, pre-pandemic, that is...), where he received his doctorate in jazz trumpet from the Eastman School of Music in 2013. He is also a talented cartoonist who uses that art, combined with music, to tell stories that can draw you in and teach you something about something few outside the world of music or jazz could reach on their own. In 2017, I wrote here about his graphic novel Instrumental that followed jazz trumpeter Tom as he seeks to reach the next level in his art ... at a dear cost. This month, Chisholm is publishing a new graphic novel Chasin’ the Bird: Charlie Parker in Californi, 144 pages commissioned by the Charlie Parker estate with Instrumental’s publisher Z2 Comics in celebration of the Centennial of Bird’s birth. It explores the period beginning in 1945 during which Parker traveled to California with a band put together by his friend Dizzy Gillespie for a residence at a well-known club in LA.

Through recollections of those who crossed his path during this time on the West Coast, interviews with Bird, biographies, and other real and imagined situations and conversations, Chisholm builds a story that tries to capture this time in Bird’s life, the effect of his obsessions and the drugs, and sources of Bird’s musical genius. As Chisholm recounted in a recent interview with Publisher’s Weekly:

A huge part of the Charlie Parker story is the myth-building, legends, the impossible tall tales that could not be true, but could be true, and all the different versions of the same story—like a Rashomon kind of storytelling…. So there’s the legend side of Charlie Parker, versus the reality of Charlie Parker. So that angle led me to the storytelling method used in the book, where there’s a series of vignettes; each one from the point of view of someone whose life intersected with Charlie’s during that time.

As with Instrumental, I sat down and consumed a PDF of Chasin' the Bird in one sitting with a soundtrack of Bird playing on the stereo to accompany the images (Chisholm had written and performed a soundtrack for Instrumental). Again, I was lost in the story and images. A hour or so (and a few LP sides…) later I had learned so much about Parker's short life and felt like I had peeked behind a curtain to get some understanding of his compositions and playing. Each vignette is drawn in a different style and through these changes in style, Chisholm explores Bird’s life and his music and through this approach tries to fulfill the reason that the Parker estate had commissioned him, again as told to Publisher’s Weekly: "to reach people who wouldn't otherwise find Charlie Parker’s music” through a medium that he thought would help to synchronize the "temporal aspect of music, versus the temporal aspect of a still drawing.”

Chasin the Bird will be published in mid-October and I encourage you to get a copy of Chasin' the Bird, slap a Parker LP or disk (or stream) on your ears and dive in. It’s worth the ride. Here’s a link on Chisholm’s site for more info and links or you can pre-order direct from Z2 Comics or your favorite online content provider.

Marc Iacona and John Nugent, producers of the CGI Rochester International Jazz Festival, announced today that the RIJF's nine-day 19th edition, first rescheduled from June 19-27 to October 2–10 because of thepandemic, will now be postponed to June 18–26, 2021. As the coronavirus rages throughout the U.S., most who I've talked with thought this decision would come, although some hoped for some vestige of the festival to remain.    

"This is the decision we didn’t want to make,” said Iacona and Nugent. “We held out hope for as long as possible even as most major festivals and concert events around the world were postponing. But as we have now arrived at a critical junction, needing to finalize artists and logistic arrangements, reality has prevailed."

There is much more about why in the festival's announcement on their website and details for next steps for those who already have tickets to the Eastman Theatre shows and Club Passes.

JazzRochester, the blog at least, has been on "radio silence" for over 2 months.  Of course, I don't need to tell you why.  I've been sharing global live streams from AllAboutJazz on a tab above, and other global and local content on Facebook and Twitter (if you haven't "liked" or followed, there are links at the top of the right panel), but with everything else that was going on in the world I just didn't see the point? But today I would have started recovering from the nine days of live music, friends, street food, beer, crowds, lines and more live music that is the Rochester International Jazz Festival, which would have ended yesterday had the pandemic not caused its cancellation.  I couldn't let that pass without comment here.  

For Rochester jazz fans of all stripes the RIJF is a chance to discover new sounds, to meet new friends and reconnect with our old "jazz fest" friends, and to soak up the scene of thousands of other fans from all over the world experiencing these things together.  I sorely missed Jazz in June and expect many of you did, too. I'm wondering what is coming?  Will RIJF happen in October as it is currently scheduled?  Should it?  If it does come in October how will it be different in these times? How are you getting your jazz fix?  As live jazz in the other 356 days of the year starts up, will you be getting out to hear any?  

What do you think? Leave a comment to this post and let us know ... I hope to see you on Jazz Street again! 

Marc Iacona and John Nugent, producers of the CGI Rochester International Jazz Festival, released an updated statement on April 27th on the status of their plan for a rescheduled event as previously announced.

Greetings from our RIJF team. This is a message of HOPE. We hope this finds you healthy and safe as we all do our part to social distance. And we are hopeful for a better tomorrow, with a full "flattening of the curve" allowing us to return to some form of normal.

Music is the soul of all humanity and we all crave the spirit of creative improvised music now more than ever. This has been a trying time for festivals and live events including RIJF as we have been forced to make painful decisions to either cancel or postpone our events and see a domino effect of financial and emotional burdens and in some cases devastation.

Rather than giving up during this time of uncertainty, we are continuing to take a hopeful course and are forging ahead to the best of our ability to reschedule our 19th edition festival for October 2-10. These plans are fully predicated on being able to gather safely according to recommendations of our health and government officials. If we are able to proceed with our plans, we will follow all guidelines as specified by our health and government officials. We will also take additional precautions to provide our patrons with masks and hand sanitizer.

As we mentioned in our last email, we have been diligently communicating with venues and all artists to reschedule the festival. Many artists we had expected to present to you in June want you to know they are ecstatic about the opportunity to be part of a rescheduled festival!

As one might expect, the revised program will feature changes. To make an analogy, over several months, our team had completed a beautiful several thousand-piece puzzle for June 19-27. Then a massive unexpected windstorm came along, blowing all the pieces into the air.

We have, however, begun the process of putting this huge puzzle back together and reshaping it to be as brilliant as we had originally intended.

Read the full statement and updated FAQs with answers to more of your questions about refunds for tickets for those artists who will not be appearing and other issues.  

While early October may in the end be too optimistic, we should keep an open mind as there is still room for the festival to adjust its scope and format as required to keep us and the artists safe.  In the end, it is likely to be very different than what it has been in the past, but we may still hear some live RIJF jazz this year!  

The jazz website AllAboutJazz.com  has create a Project Livestream Jazz, including a global jazz livestream calendar to help you jazz cats get your fill of live jazz while maintaining social distance, but more importantly to help support jazz artists in this crazy new world that COVID-19 has brought upon us. I'm adding it to JazzRochester in a new page for which you will find a "Livestreams" link at the top of this site at the right.  

Check out the calendar and support AAJ if you can. The Live From Our Living Rooms Festival and fundraiser starts tonight (including Chick Corea and other major artists). Some of the livestream concerts are free, others request donations, others will require you pay for your virtual "seat". 

You'll notice that some local artists have already added upcoming events to the calendar.  Hope to see more.  There's a link at the bottom to submit to new events to Jazz Near You.  I'll still share local events separately on JazzRochester and its channels so let me know about them.