Redman set pushes jazz to limit at Opera House

Think of Stonington’s winding shoreline. It’s towering hill above Main Street. It’s snaggy roads and snaky lanes. The sounds of boats in the harbor and mammoth delivery trucks on those tiny thoroughfares. If you can’t be in a smoke-filled club buried deep in the urban caverns of the big city, then you have to admit Stonington is a perfectly natural setting for jazz, blues, honky-tonk and creaky-voiced music. It’s a lot less swelteringly hot than most places in the summer. And parking isn’t a problem.

Of course, all that is what the organizers at Opera House Arts were thinking when they scheduled the first North Atlantic Jazz Festival, which took place Friday and Saturday at the Stonington Opera House, and featured jazz sax player Dewey Redman and his quartet. Both nights, the Opera House, which is in its second high-spirited season after major renovations under the executive direction of Linda L. Nelson, swelled with jazz lovers who came from throughout the state to hear the mule-kicking music of Redman and his cool-man cohorts.

Friday night, the Bob Nieske Trio, a Boston-based group, opened for Redman. Saturday, Drummer Matt Wilson and guitarist David Tronzo wooed the audience with trouncing talent and intellectual game-playing, which included a who’da-thought inventiveness when it came to extracurricular implements of sound. For instance, Wilson danced a string of beads on a drum and Tronzo used a plastic cup as a slide on his guitar. Their bright-toned set happified improvisation to an impressively devilish level. “We started out tonight with …” said Wilson with mock glibness. “And we concluded with …” He was right; there was no way to finish the sentence, except to say what he finally did say: “What a great spirit there is in this area and in this room. We’re totally inspired.”

As was Redman, when he finally took the stage for more than an hour of that smooth sax clarity on which he has built a name. He was joined by Wilson, bassist John Menegon, and pianist Charles EuBanks for a hot set of tunes that ranged from the easily recognizable “The Very Thought of You” and “Take the A Train,” to more obscure, syncopated subtleties.

The audience tapped along and, in true Maine form, showed homegrown warmth and elongated appreciation, especially when Redman appeared with his Chinese flute, a quirky instrument that looks slightly like a cornet but sounds oddly similar to the bagpipe. Redman, however, took the horn’s twists and turns of sound straight to funk. It’s worth betting that the walls of the Opera House had never before hosted the likes of a Chinese flute, which also is called a musette.

“All our events are attempts to reach new audiences,” said Nelson. “The Opera House is the centerpiece of Stonington and should appeal to all of the communities here. The place is about tradition and about creating traditions. And the jazz festival is a chance to experience something you might not ordinarily expect to experience here.”

Some in the audience compared the fledgling festival to the legacy of the defunct Left Bank Cafe, the Blue Hill restaurant that was once a renowned stop on the national folk-music circuit.

Reviving the Left Bank is not part of the Opera House Arts’ mission, said Nelson, a businesswoman from New York and graduate of Bowdoin College. But clearly, the followers of the Left Bank could find a comfortable, if not somewhat familiar, atmosphere at the Opera House jazz festival.

“This kind of radical culture is refreshing, isn’t it?” said Judith Sloan, an actress who performed her one-woman shows regularly at Left Bank and did a gigs earlier this month at the Opera House. She also attended Saturday’s concert. “Selfishly, I have a new place to perform. But this is so exciting for everyone because there’s a huge range of performances here.”

Larry Blumenfeld, former editor at Jazziz magazine, missed the Left Bank era, but came to Maine five years ago on vacation and dreamed then of bringing jazz to Stonington. Last year, he met the Opera House Arts administrators and helped organize the festival along with Ron Watson, a jazz aficionado and owner of gWatson Gallery in Stonington.

“This festival brings some of the music I’ve loved for a long time to a place that I’ve just recently fallen in love with,” said Blumenfeld, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. “I have a sense this place is a very unusual creative space.”

Dewey Redman agreed.

“Sit back and relax,” he told the audience, which ranged in age from toddler to walker-assisted. “What else can you do in a place like this? This is relax city.”

While relaxation may be what many summer visitors seek in Stonington, the first North Atlantic Jazz Festival was far more exciting than calming. Far out on the town dock, the music coming from the Opera House slipped and slid through the air. Even a few fishermen stopped by the concert hall to listen. The hope, say festival supporters, is to have it be an annual event, one that grows and gains followers – local and far-afield – each year on the last weekend of July. That may mean more blues in Stonington, which, after all, can only be a good thing.

For information about upcoming events at the Stonington Opera House, call 367-2788, or visit the Web site at www.operahousearts.org.