The Saxophone in Orbit
A Chicago trumpet player sells out the early set at Le Duc des Lombards in Paris, inside a festival turning fifteen. Then five rooms, an Australian quartet launching its record in Melbourne, and the saxophone Ron McNair carried aboard Challenger.
LioraToday a Chicago trumpet player sells out the early set in a Paris cellar. Today's record launches tonight in Melbourne. Later, five rooms, and a saxophone in orbit. It's Monday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Monday, October 19th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Le Duc des Lombards gives Monday and Tuesday to the Marquis Hill Blacktet inside Festival
LioraTonight in Paris, a Chicago trumpet player works a cellar on the rue des Lombards, and the early show is already gone.
Le Duc des Lombards bills it the Marquis Hill Blacktet and tags it Chicago. Four dates, tonight and tomorrow, two sets a night. Half past seven and ten.
Tonight's half past seven is marked complet. The ten o'clock is open.
The band, as both pages list it. Hill on trumpet. Emmanuel Michael, guitar. Junius Paul, double bass. Jonathan Pinson, drums.
Doors thirty minutes before. Seventy five minutes of music.
Now the money, and two pages print it. The club's own rates run twenty nine to forty one euros. The Paris Jazz Club prints tonight three ways: forty one full, thirty eight for members, thirty four reduced. Under twenty five, a student, or out of work, take seven euros off.
LioraAll of it sits inside Festival Jazz sur Seine, which the Paris Jazz Club dates from the ninth of October to the twenty fourth. The festival turns fifteen this year.
And Hill is carrying a record. His own site calls it "(Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender," and it lists Junius Paul and Emmanuel Michael among the players.
Two. Listen to This: Asteroid Ekosystem's "Sounds Have Dreams" is out on Alister Spence Music, ASM017
LioraToday's record is "Sounds Have Dreams," by Asteroid Ekosystem. Alister Spence Music, ASM017, out in February.
Four players. Alister Spence, piano. Ed Kuepper, electric guitar. Lloyd Swanton, double bass. Toby Hall, drums.
Here is the tip. Spence's page counts this the group's third album, and the one before it is a live record, from 2023. Play the live one first, then this, and hear what a room does to them.
The band launches it in Melbourne tonight, and the half past six set is already exhausted.
One more date. Friday, Nonesuch and International Anthem put out "Animative," by Josh Johnson. He plays nearly all of it himself. One trumpet player comes in, on the last track. Marquis Hill. The man in Paris tonight.
LioraAnd one for tonight. NASA's own history page says the shuttle had no room for Ron McNair's tenor saxophone, so he learned the smaller soprano.
Now orbit, February 1984. A laser physicist named Ron McNair takes a saxophone aboard Challenger, and NASA photographs him playing it. Tonight on The Bridge: why he knew a picture wasn't the same as being heard. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: In 1984 NASA photographed an astronaut playing his saxophone aboard the space shuttle
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasIn orbit, February 1984, aboard the space shuttle Challenger. One of the crew is a laser physicist named Ron McNair, the second African American in space. On February 8th, by NASA's date, NASA photographs him playing his saxophone.
LioraAn astronaut with a saxophone. Who is he?
SilasBorn in 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina. At nine, he challenges segregation by trying to check out books from the Lake City library, and he wins borrowing privileges. In sixth grade he shares one clarinet with his older brother, Carl. By one account, the band director buys a worn saxophone held together with tape and rubber bands, and it becomes Ron's horn. Then physics, at North Carolina A&T. A guitarist there, Bill Sidberry, remembered decades later that McNair was doing "some of that John Coltrane, Charlie Parker stuff." Then a doctorate from MIT. NASA's own biography calls him a "5th degree black belt Karate instructor and a performing jazz saxophonist."
LioraSo how does a horn get onto the shuttle?
SilasBy one account, in August 1983 he phones Kurt Heisig, who runs a music shop in Saratoga, California, to rent a curved soprano saxophone for space. Heisig recalled, "I had to teach him four years of classical phrasing in four lessons." The flight launches February 3rd, 1984. And in some of his off-duty time, NASA says, he plays his saxophone.
LioraCould anyone down here hear him?
SilasNot that anyone has shown. What the record holds is a photograph. And McNair knew the difference. Oxford American quotes him: "Having a picture of a sax in space and having the world hear one being played from space are two entirely different events."
LioraThen what?
SilasThe chance would come on a later flight. The French composer Jean-Michel Jarre is planning a concert, Rendez-Vous Houston, for the city's 150th anniversary and NASA's 25th. Jarre said, "We had this idea that this astronaut could play live, in the weightlessness of space, during the concert." He builds the piece on a heartbeat. In Jarre's account to CNN, it's McNair's own. For the moment in orbit, by one account, McNair picks "What the World Needs Now Is Love." His wife, Cheryl, said, "It wasn't just to play the saxophone in outer space. It was to give a message, a universal message." The flight is Challenger, January 28th, 1986. Jarre remembered that on launch day McNair called him one last time and said, "this is D-day." Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, Challenger breaks apart. All seven aboard are killed. Jarre thought about canceling. NASA officials urged him to go on. By one account, it was Cheryl McNair who recommended Kirk Whalum, a Houston-born saxophonist and Ron's friend, to take his place. April 5th, 1986. More than 1.3 million people in Houston. From a cherry picker above the Le Meridien hotel, Whalum plays "Last Rendez-Vous (Ron's Piece)." He played it once more, in Lyon, France, for 800,000, and says he hasn't played it since. In his words, "It was sacred and remains sacred in my mind."
LioraHe knew a picture wasn't the same as the world hearing the horn. In Houston, more than a million people heard his piece, through a friend. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Five rooms tonight, from the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra's sold out Monday at the Village
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in New York.
The Village Vanguard gives Monday to the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the way it gives every Monday. Sixteen players, listed by chair. Ted Nash on lead alto. Brian Pareschi on lead trumpet. Dion Tucker on lead trombone.
Eight and ten, forty five dollars. General admission is gone at both sets. Twenty door seats left at each.
Now the sweep.
In Oakland, Yoshi's has Shoshana Bean. Half past seven and half past nine. Forty five to ninety nine early, a flat forty five late.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall runs Preservation Brass four times. Five, a quarter past six, half past seven, a quarter to nine. Led by the trumpeter Mark Braud. The hall prints no price at all.
LioraIn Nashville, Rudy's runs two. The Nashville Trio at six, thirteen dollars in advance. Then Giovanni Rodriguez and 12 Manos at nine, fifteen at the door.
And back in New York, Smalls runs three. The Adam Niewood Quartet at six and half past seven. The Mike Clark Quartet at nine and half past ten. Then a jam at a quarter to midnight.
Five. One More Note: Alphonse Picou was born in New Orleans on this date in 1878
LioraOn this date in 1878, Alphonse Picou was born in New Orleans. The national library of France keeps the record, and files the trade as jazz clarinetist.
It dates his death to the fourth of February, 1961, in the same city. The German national library prints the same birthday. So does the UC Santa Barbara archive.
And a gap worth naming. Not one National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master was born or died on this date. The honor roll brackets it. Anita O'Day on the eighteenth. Dizzy Gillespie on the twenty first.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Monday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.