TRURO — First, Bart Weisman and his group played George Gershwin’s 1934 tune “Summertime” slow and easy — just like it was in the original production of the musical Porgy and Bess. But “the cool thing about jazz,” he told Truro Central School students last week, “is we can change the way things are written.”
So, Weisman, bass player Rich Hill, and pianist Fred Boyle upped the tempo, and some of the school’s 80 or so kindergartners through fifth-graders started nodding their heads to the beat. Next, the trio played it faster and grander to demonstrate the “big band” style of sound — and the kids followed right along, moving to the music.
Then Weisman told a story about drums and slaves, trumpeter and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie (assuring the students that “Dizzy” was actually a name), and Gillespie’s visit to Cuba in the 1940s. The trio began playing “Summertime” with the Afro-Cuban sound that Gillespie developed. The music was infectious, and the students jumped to their feet to dance, hop, and bop to the version that ended up being their favorite.
It was all part of Jazz in the Schools, a 45-minute tour through more than a century of American jazz history and its world of improvisation and syncopation. Weisman and his group will bring the program to Provincetown on May 17 capping off a year of visits to 30 schools all over Cape Cod.
The Orleans drummer is one of the Cape’s busiest musicians. He plays with his Jazz Group, the Klezmer Swing Group, the Smooth Jazz Group, and the Cape Cod Jazz Quartet & Trio; he performs regularly at restaurants, particularly the Grand Cru and West End in Hyannis, Bleu in Mashpee, and The Club in Provincetown; and he appears at weddings and other private events. He created the Summer Jazz with Bart Weisman concert series at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and has hosted Jazz Jam Cape Cod since 2006. He’s long taught private lessons and is the jazz band director, with two ensembles, at Sturgis Charter School in Hyannis.
He’s also been the founder and executive producer of the Provincetown Jazz Festival, which features nationally known musicians and promising newcomers. The festival returns this summer to Cotuit on July 31, South Yarmouth on Aug. 7, and Provincetown on Aug. 8.
Weisman started the Jazz in the Schools program nine years ago with help from a near-centenarian benefactor who asked what musical dream Weisman hadn’t yet fulfilled. It was to bring his love and knowledge of jazz directly to schools.
“Education has always been key to me,” Weisman says. “I love when I go out to play and there are young kids there. To me, that’s the best.”
Now, he estimates, 80 to 90 percent of Cape schoolchildren’s first experience hearing jazz played live happens through the Jazz in the Schools program.
“I teach the kids that this is our music,” Weisman says. “It was created here in America, and we really need to keep this alive. Hopefully it’s something they’re interested in and will go back and add to their listening in the future” — whether as fans or musicians.
“The more types of music that students listen to, the better,” says Truro Central School Principal Patrick Riley, a former music teacher who plays alto saxophone and saw Weisman’s program at other schools. “It’s good for students to have exposure to different genres and to hear live music versus recordings — and we have so many talented musicians in our own back yard.”
By working with student musicians, Weisman notes, he has also seen how improvisation, a key element of jazz, can foster creative thinking in other school subjects and areas of young lives.
Weisman says he hasn’t heard of another jazz program in the country like his, which uses money raised through the nonprofit Provincetown Jazz Festival, as well as grants, to bring the music to youngsters at no cost to schools.
Weisman says the trio has visited nearly every public elementary and middle school on the Cape.
Teachers have praised his way of adapting the program to different ages and engaging youngsters as they learn about New Orleans jazz from a century ago, the mid-20th-century big band era, Duke Ellington, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, bop, the Great American Songbook, the influence of rock and roll, and contemporary and smooth jazz.
Last week’s visit was the program’s third in Truro, and the upcoming gig will be the musicians’ fourth time in Provincetown. “We’ve tried to change the program a little bit as we go, as we’ve learned a little more,” Weisman says.
But because it’s improvisational jazz, he notes, “we really don’t prepare in advance. The program is pretty scripted — we know where we’re going, and the guys know what music they’re going to play in advance. But it’s different every time. We have a lot of fun.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on May 4, referred incorrectly to a visit by Dizzy Gillespie to Cuba in 1985. That visit took place in the 1940s.
