Hamiet Bluiett – the legendary baritone saxophone player and jazz composer – is turning himself into a one-man finishing school for local musicians.
From 3-6 p.m. this Saturday, March 26, Bluiett will introduce his new Big Orchestra Band, Youth Division at the Metropolitan Gallery, 2936 Locust St., as part of George Sams’ innovative Nu-Art Series.
Bluiett will lead some 40 youths, ranging in age from 12 years old to early college years, performing a wide range of music he has composed over the years, with space for improvisation.
He is the leader, though he has had help in finding talent from Stanley Coleman at University City High School, Marquetta Reef at Metro High School, Delano Redmond at East St. Louis High School and Mark Sarich at Orchestrating Diversity.
But he is teaching these youths things they can’t learn in their schools.
“Schools are all right. To go to school is one thing, but you’ve got to go out and play,” Bluiett said. “It’s not like the classroom.”
In St. Louis, Bluiett said, these youths have an enviable place to go out and play.
“There is all this great music that came from St. Louis. It has its own vibe, its own flavor,” he said, listing Miles Davis, Clark Terry and the World Saxophone Quartet, which he co-founded in 1977.
“These are people who really changed how music is dealt with,” Bluiett said. And the metropolitan area that produced them has things to teach young musicians, if they get out of the classroom and into some gigs.
“On the intellectual side, they got it, but they don’t know how to put flavor on different things,” Bluiett said of the young musicians. “The flavor that came out of here is what the whole world recognizes.”
Bluiett himself is from across the river in Lovejoy, Ill. But he is counting his Lovejoy and Miles’ East St. Louis in with the St. Louis flavor. He said, “I don’t see the river as separation.” In fact, when he thinks back to other educators who have done what he is trying to do, he thinks of Ron Carter, longtime bandleader in East St. Louis schools who now runs the Northern Illinois University jazz program.
After traveling the world from a New York City base since the late 1960s, Bluiett moved back home in 2002. “I didn’t want to come back, but since I’m here, I’ll deal with it,” he said. “I’ll play.”
He questions how much St. Louis institutions respect and value the artists they have produced, and at the same time he shrugs off such thoughts. He said, “People see negativity. Not me. Let’s roll. It’s like what we said with the black arts movement: Take it; let’s roll.”
This weekend, he will be rolling with a little bit of everything – “oboe, bassoon, flute, as well saxophone, violin, cello, bass, electronics (but not to the point where you ears are excruciating)” – playing a little bit of everything, with regards to his material: “some free, some highly written, some of spiritual nature – the whole gamut.”
It is, he said, “an enormous stretch.” Maybe, a risk. But Bluiett doesn’t care. “I’m not afraid of freedom,” he said.
He also is not afraid to fail. He knows how difficult it is to keep an ambitious project going, especially in a small market like St. Louis, but that isn’t stopping him from starting something new and ambitious here.
“It’s hard to keep things rolling here,” Bluiett said, “but do it? Nah. Just do it.”
Hamiet Bluiett’s Big Orchestra Band, Youth Division will perform 3-6 p.m. Saturday, March 26 at the Metropolitan Gallery, 2936 Locust St., as part of the Nu-Art Series. Tickets are $10 and available at the door.
