Beyond Jazz Performs at Fuller Mountain Arts Festival

By Peter Lyons Hall

On Sunday, August 24, 2024, against a perfect background of weather and environment, thousands of visitors attended the annual Fuller Mountain Arts Festival held at Warwick’s Mountain Lake Park on Bowen Road, from 11AM -9PM that featured local talent and unique art experiences, including  workshops, belly dancing, circle singing, printing-making, live music performances across many genres, food trucks, a lakeside bar, and a curated maker market.

 At 5PM, guests assembled into the Lakeside Pavilion to hear a performance of music and dance, entitled “Beyond Jazz,” a collaborative ensemble featuring several notable jazz musicians and the choreography of Melissa Padham-Maass, Director of the Warwick Center for the Performing Arts and the Warwick Dance Collective. The musicians included Ian Smit playing a fretless and headless guitar, Ed Littman guitar, Jay Brunka on bass, Steve Rubin drums/percussion, Joe Vincent Tranchina keyboards and Rick Savage, on trumpet and flugal horn. After a brief introduction by Melissa, they began playing a free-flowing spontaneous improvised piece to her loosely structured choreography that the dance troupe themselves also contributed to, while the music continued, with one group seemingly reinforcing the other.

 Meanwhile dancers Jacob Taylor and Pam Sorensen engaged the crowd with an exciting pas de deux improv, while the musicians accompanied them with a smooth, interrupted sound that, at times, echoed the rhythms and creativity of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, with Tranchina comping just enough to Littman’s exciting guitar rifs. Brunka’s steadfast bass playing and Rubin’s artistry on percussion lent an incredible flavor to the overall performance that was challenging for the audience to remind themselves that this kind of performance was not rehearsed. Smit’s clever fingering on his guitar filled in the few inevitable gaps that occurred during an improvised concert. And leader, Rick Savage’s mellifluous horn playing was the icing on this group’s cake. It’s no wonder that Savage Rick has performed and/or recorded with Tania Maria, Gerry Mulligan, Jack McDuff, Mel Lewis, Nancy Wilson, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Toshiko Aikioshi, Warne Marsh, Randy Brecker, Michael Jackson, Daniel Ponce, Nestor Torres, Henry Mancini and many others.

 But the credentials of the other band members are just as impressive. Steve Rubin, for example, founded the Hudson Valley Jazz Festival; Joe Vincent Tranchina was voted Hudson Valley 2010 Jazz Musician of the Year in Times Herald-Record’s annual Best Of readers poll, and was recognized 25 times with the annual ASCAP Plus (Jazz Category) award for “creative contributions to American music;” Littman is a composer and master of music engineering; Brunka is an educator and in-demand player, from classical music to gypsy jazz, R&B and swing, and a co founder of the improv group “Beyond Jazz” and at home on electric and acoustic basses; and Smit has been touring and performing in Ireland, Scotland, UK and all over Europe, USA for the past 30 years, with three album-of-the-year nominations from Irish Music Magazine, and Trad Magazine, France, voted him in the top ten albums of the year alongside such artists as Neil Young.

 Later in the program, audience members were invited to take to the floor and participate in their own improvised dancing to the music that continued throughout the hours, with guests young and old enjoying the vibe.

 The Fuller Moon Arts Festival celebrates the convergence of performance, art and nature at the magical lakefront setting. The Town of Warwick acquired the 85 acres of land of the former Kutz Camp for $6.5 million under its Community Preservation Plan, which is funded through real estate transfer taxes. The property consists of a lake, two pools, tennis courts, outdoor and indoor event/art spaces, multiple cabins, a central waste water system, multiple wells and a trail system. In December 1961, at the suggestion of then retired Major League Baseball great Jackie Robinson’s, Chock Full O’ Nuts paid $300,000 to purchase the camp, which had been formerly known as Grossman’s Dude Ranch, for its employees. He renamed the facility “Camp Utopia,” which later became the site of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Kutz Camp. Warwick acquired the camp property in 2020. To learn more about Mountain Lake Park, click on https://mtlakepark.com/.

 Photo credits: Peter Lyons Hall