C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y RECORD October 10, 2003 12

A Brush with the Blues: Bob O’Meally Plays Pivotal Role in a New Jazz ProjectBY CAROLINE LADHANI

It is not often that academicprofessors get a chance toplay a pivotal role in linking

two great artists of our times toproduce a new creation, one thatreflects and enhances the geniusof both. Yet Professor RobertO’Meally has done just that, link-ing jazz legend Branford Marsalisto the prolific and nationallyacclaimed painter Romare Bear-den. In the process a new CD“Romare Bearden: Revealed” hasbeen created.

The paintings of Bearden, whodied in 1988, tell a multitude ofstories about the golden age ofjazz. Bearden’s undying passionfor jazz even inspired him toenter the realm of musical com-position himself. The artist grewup in Harlem in the 1920s and30s, and his allusions to jazzunfold in many of his colorfulpaintings and collages.

A sampling of jazz referencesin his work have been interpretedinto music on a new CD by Bran-ford Marsalis and his quartet. TheCD project was born, in part, withthe musical sleuthing of BobO’Meally, who is director ofColumbia’s Center for Jazz Stud-ies.

The remarkable story of thecreation of this CD began with aphone call to the Romare Bear-den Foundation from Ruth Fine,curator of a major new exhibit ofBearden’s work on view at theNational Gallery in WashingtonD.C. Fine was seeking help incompiling a CD to accompanythe exhibit. It would be a collec-tion of jazz works that likelyinfluenced Bearden’s paintings.

Columbia’s O’Meally, who isalso on the board of the RomareBearden Foundation, met withFine and agreed to search formusic evocative of the canvasesand find a way to license it.

“The Romare Bearden CD andthe exhibit brings together jazzand art history,” said O’Meally,who also wrote the liner notes forthe CD. “It is a prime example ofthe kind of interdisciplinary

approach supported by the Centerfor Jazz Studies, which hopes toinclude a course on RomareBearden in the future.”

Creating the jazz CD took onlythree months. Drawing on hisknowledge of jazz and his per-sonal acquaintance with thepainter and his family, O’Meallybegan his investigation in May.He sifted through roughly 600Bearden paintings and compileda notebook of 50 that evokedprominent references to jazz. Hewrote notations for each painting,a chronology of Bearden’s life,and suggestions for music selec-tions for the CD. But O’Meallystill needed a company to releasethe record. He knew jazz musi-cian Branford Marsalis had start-ed a new record label.

O’Meally placed a call to BobBlumenthal, who works forMarsalis’ company, MarsalisMusic. Blumenthal quicklypassed the notebook along to themusician, and Marsalis,intrigued, joined wholeheartedlyin the process. He studied thematerials at length, and in theend, agreed not only to releasethe music on his record label, butto perform the music with hisquartet and to enlist his familymembers (father Ellis, and broth-ers Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason)as well as a few friends (HarryConnick Jr. and Doug Wamble).On the CD, Connick performs anumber called “Carolina Shout!”and Wamble performs his com-position “Autumn Lamp.” Alsoincluded is “J Mood” by WyntonMarsalis, a frequent visiting lec-turer at the Center for Jazz Stud-ies. Wynton’s album “J Mood”featured a Bearden painting forits cover.

Branford Marsalis drew on hisknowledge of Bearden’s life tohelp extract from the paintingstheir musical references. Forinstance, one of Bearden’s paint-ings, a piece called “B’s ParisBlues,” depicts the faces of two

Above, “Paris Blues” (1961) by Romare Bearden, Left, “Slappin’Seventh Avenue with the Sole of My Shoe” (1981).

jazz musicians Louis Armstrongand Duke Ellington, who were ofgreat importance to SidneyBechet, a New Orleans jazz clar-inetist and soprano saxophonistwho spent time in Paris.

Even though the painting ParisBlues also prominently featuresthe gigantic black and white keysof a piano, Marsalis chose to usethe very Bechet-like saxophonepresence instead, to build onBearden’s allusion to Bechet.Marsalis is quoted in O’Meally’sliner notes: “I was thinking about

Bearden’s Paris years, and aboutSidney Bechet, who made greatrecords in Paris…”

O’Meally and Marsalis met forthe first time at one of the record-ing sessions for the CD.

Writes O’Meally: “This record-ing can be considered part of a jamsession in which Romare Bear-den’s paintings play a vibrant part:the musician playing the paintingsof a visual artist who had a mightybrush with the blues.”

To hear excepts from the CD,visit www.columbia.edu/cu/news

“...the musicianplaying the paintingsof a visual artist whohad a mighty brushwith the blues.”

Robert O’Meally

The venue for the formal affair last Friday was the Waldorf Astoria, the very same place where morethan a century earlier the nation’s engineering professional organization first celebrated GuglielmoMarconi for his unprecedented feat of sending a wireless signal across the Atlantic. This time, approxi-mately 260 guests gathered to not only salute the “Father of Wireless Communications,” but to inductthe newest members of the Marconi Fellowship, an organization consisting of the world’s leading com-munications pioneers who are the inventor’s intellectual heirs. Robert Gallager, left, a noted MIT infor-mation theorist, and Robert Metcalfe, right, an engineer and entrepreneur best know for developing theubiquitous Ethernet high-speed communications standard, were congratulated by Marconi Foundationboard member Dean Zvi Galil of Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Marconi Fellowship Foundation Inducts Newest Fellows at Waldorf,Where the “Father of Wireless” was First Celebrated by Peers

PHOTOS COURTESY ROMARE BEARDEN FOUNDATION, LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK

PHOTO BY MATHEW MAURO