Milt Hinton Instiute - Oberlin College

[paul secor]

http://clevelandclassical.com/milt-hinton-institute-convenes-at-oberlin-milt-hinton-day-scheduled-for-june-16/

[Justin V]

I was at the concert that they put on two years ago and posted these thoughts in the 'Live Music' thread:

'Last night, I caught a celebration of Milt Hinton at Oberlin. Oberlin has acquired four of Hinton's basses and his pictures and other documents. The performance featured all of the donated basses, which will be available for Oberlin students to play. The concert featured bassists Richard Davis, Rufus Reid, John Clayton, Gerald Cannon, Jerry Jemmott and Peter Dominguez, among many other bassists, as well as Oberlin faculty members Gary Bartz and Billy Hart. Three weeks ago, I never thought that I'd get a chance to see Richard Davis perform. Now I've seen him at two special events celebrating the lives of other artists (Hinton and Eric Dolphy), and I found out about both events just in the nick of time. Coincidentally, although this was my first time seeing Rufus Reid perform, he was in attendance at the Dolphy festival.

Some of the many highlights included: Richard Davis's challenging solo piece that he bowed exclusively; a bass/drums blues on which many of the bassists on hand passed the bass to the next man up in a round robin of solos (with Richard Davis dancing his way across the stage) and Billy Hart playing only Papa Jo Jones's snare drum; Rufus Reid's solo takes on Paul Chambers's 'Visitation' and Tadd Dameron's 'If You Could See Me Now'; a Bartz/Dominguez/Hart workout on 'The Shadow of Your Smile'; a Jemmott/Hart duo on Horace Silver's 'Filthy McNasty'; a John Clayton solo improvisation that morphed into 'It Don't Mean a Thing'; a solo version of 'Lately' that showed of Dominguez's dark tone on Hinton's bass; and, a finale featuring the Milt Institute students (all 25-30 of them!) in an all-bass orchestra for two songs and with Hart, Clayton, Cannon and Bartz joining them for the last song, which was a Ray Brown blues. While the highlights that I've mentioned were the jazz-oriented ones, it was a celebration of the bass and its role in jazz as well as classical (in particular, classical bassist Diana Gannett stood out).

The jovial, celebratory atmosphere, peerless lineup of musicians and excellent acoustics of Oberlin's Warner Concert Hall made it a special evening that I won't soon forget. I hope that Oberlin continues celebrating Hinton's legacy with many more concerts in the future.'