Reach DCP freelance writer Benjamin Smith at BenjaminSmith@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Live jazz performances are electric – even illuminating. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that energy giant Vectren has sponsored the Dayton Art Institute’s annual Jazz & Beyond concert series since 2003. This June, the Ron Jones Quartet – presented in partnership with Cityfolk – will galvanize the series with its Louisville-flavored style. Saxophonist Ron Jones recently spoke with the Dayton City Paper about his particular sound and vision.

“Jazz” can mean different things to different people. Exactly what kind of music should Daytonians expect from the Ron Jones Quartet?

We’re a very straight-ahead, traditional, swing group. We always strive for a 1950’s “Blue Note Records” sound, although with some modern jazz influences. –Ron Jones

Your individual sound is often compared to that of Julian Edwin “Cannonball” Adderley: bluesy, but optimistic. Do you feel this comparison is close to the mark?

I do feel it is close to the mark, because sounding like Cannonball was what I strove for in my younger years, and I still strive to sound like him. I’m a very bluesy, soulful saxophone player. I have studied Cannonball’s music and style extensively. Growing up, he and Charlie Parker were my heroes. -RJ

You gained critical acclaim in 1997 with your debut album, A Vision of Beauty. What was recording that album like?

It was a phenomenal experience. James Williams, the pianist on that album, had played with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, Dizzy Gillespie … a plethora of musicians. He played with everybody. James and I became friends years ago at a jazz camp, when I was a student and he was one of the instructors. Later, I asked him to perform on A Vision of Beauty, and he said he would love to. James is the guy who made the album a success. We all played well, but his experience was great. It was stressful at times for me and James was a very steadying influence. -RJ

Like many jazz albums, A Vision of Beauty consists of both covers and originals. In contrast, many rock or pop albums consist of either all covers or all originals. Why the difference?

Part of this has to do with the fact that there are so many classic standards in jazz. But it’s also because jazz is a hard sell. It’s tough to sell jazz records. So if you want people to buy your record, they need to see that you have included at least a few songs they recognize. When I had my CD release party for A Vision of Beauty in Louisville, I sold about 100 records. Now, part of that was because the album was “home cooking.” However, it helped that people knew some songs, like [Billy Strayhorn ‘s] “Lush Life,” on the album. -RJ

Any plans for a new album?

Yes. The thing is, I am busier now that when I recorded A Vision of Beauty. Right now I teach saxophone to over 50 students. It’s hard to record an album with the time that you don’t have! It’s also an expensive proposition … but I will definitely record one, and I will include a few original songs on it. -RJ

What kind of set list do you have in mind for the show at the Dayton Art Institute?

I don’t want to say too much about it just yet (laughs), but I can say that we will definitely play some songs from A Vision of Beauty. -RJ

Speaking of concerts: what is the one jazz standard you play that gets the biggest audience reaction?

“Summertime,” by George Gershwin. Everybody knows it. Everybody loves it. Sometimes we play it straight-ahead, sometimes in a bossa nova style, sometimes even in the style of a slow New Orleans dirge. -RJ

Finally, you mentioned that you teach the saxophone. What is one of the first things you teach students about understanding or appreciating jazz?

It’s funny you should ask that. I actually don’t teach a lot of jazz; I mostly teach classical saxophone. However, I have been teaching more jazz recently. The first thing I tell anyone interested in jazz is that it’s a lot of work! You can know all the chords and scales in the world, but you’ll sound like crap unless you use them. You have to work at it. And when you want to improvise, you have to listen and learn the language of jazz. You have to hear the little phrases from the language of bebop, the language of swing. It’s like when a child learns how to talk: they listen to their parents talk and they pick up things. In jazz, you have to listen. -RJ

The Ron Jones Quartet performs at the Dayton Art Institute on Thursday, June 13, from 5:30-8 p.m. in the Shaw Gothic Cloister. Admission is free for museum members, $8 for non-members. Cash bar available for beverages and hors d’oeuvres. For more information, call 937.223.5277 or visit daytonartinstitute.org.

There is a place where many talented artists live within a close proximity to one another. This small spot on the map has grown into an amazing community where one can feed off another’s creative energy and people genuinely support each other’s projects. This is a free place where something ordinary and plain would stand out against the blossoms of creativity and playful invention.

On any typical day, you may walk through Yellow Springs and find a variety of exceptional artworks for sale by local vendors. You may also notice the time restraint due to limited hours of these stores. Well, for Yellow Springs Art Stroll you will not only find extra special artwork, some of which is made just for the occasion, but these stores will be open until 9 p.m., providing more time to shop.

Yellow Springs Art Stroll takes place Friday, June 14 from 6-9 p.m. This event will feature “would you, could you” In a Frame Miniature Show at 113 Corry St. Noodle Factory, a throwback rock band, will perform outdoors in the Art Park at 100 Corry St. at 6 p.m. Yellow Springs Arts Council will have a gallery opening reception from 6-9 p.m. at 111 Corry St. for Voices: Sculpture by Alice Robrish. In addition to all that, the Yellow Springs Pride Weekend Celebration, which will continue on Saturday and Sunday, kicks off with a Cocktail Party at The Winds Café 11 p.m.-2 a.m on Friday evening.

If you look at a calendar of Yellow Springs events or just happen to frequent the area, you may notice that this event falls one week after the Yellow Springs Street Fair – that is no coincidence.

“It’s always on the first Friday after Street Fair,” explained Karen Wintrow, Executive Director of the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce. “A couple of the shop owners got together and decided that because Street Fair had gotten so big that they wanted an event that focused a little bit more on the downtown shops. Street Fair is big – it has outside vendors. They wanted an event that was just for local businesses, so that’s when Art Stroll started.”

Art Stroll has been going on for 20 years, according to Wintrow. It happens every June and October, always following Street Fair. Each event offers something different as the artists produce different works, release different gallery shows and different musicians play every time.

There has been much excitement for the “would you could you” In a Frame Miniature Show. “Everything is really small and constricted to being within a frame,” explained Wintrow. “Everything is really wonderful and really affordable.”

Sherryl Kostic is the proprietor of the “would you could you” show. She is a local who owns a gallery and framing shop.

“It started as sort of a fun thing. I wanted to see what artists could do and how many artists I could pull in,” Kostic explained. “I started out with 5-by-7 inches and then said, ‘Well that’s not really a miniature. We’re going to go for a bigger challenge,’ which came to 2-by-3 inches and ever since then that’s what I’ve been doing. Now it’s a way for me to meet new artists. It’s a way for artists to be challenged.”

There are decent odds that you have encountered Kostic’s work before. However, chances to see the miniature show are a bit more rare.

“I do the Art Stroll twice a year in June and October,” Kostic said. “I’m part of the Art Stroll, but the miniature show I do every other year. So every odd year, I do a call out for artists to do something on 2-by-3 inches.”

With a town full of artists, of course there will be more than one cool show running this weekend. “The other big art opening is at the Yellow Springs Art Council Gallery. They will have a new show and a reception opening that night,” Wintrow said.

Voices: Sculpture by Alice Robrish is the show selected for this Art Stroll event. Alice Robrish makes sculptures in ceramic and papier-mâché. For some works, she uses the addition of found objects and integrates them into her creations. According to the Yellow Springs Art Council website (ysartscouncil.org), “Her work gives voice to important, timeless issues. She is currently focusing on the lives of the unsung with an emphasis on minorities and women. Alice Robrish taught ceramics and clay sculpture at her studios in Bethesda, Md., and Washington, D.C. for 25 years. She has exhibited her sculpture in numerous shows in the D.C. area, Chicago and Ohio. She moved to Yellow Springs in 2004 and maintains an active studio practice.”

Yellow Springs has always had fantastic artists. They have always had gallery events and artwork for sale. This event, however, has some special occasion creations and extended opportunities to enjoy them.

“The point is that the shops stay open until 9 p.m.,” said Wintrow. “It’s late-night shopping and entertainment. There will be live music at Peaches that always starts at 10 p.m. There will be live music and wine tasting at the Emporium and that’s from 7 to 10 p.m.”

Music and Art into the night, the Yellow Springs Art Stoll promises to be a cool evening. You can safely expect smaller crowds than the Street Fair while a few faces are sure to be familiar. This is an event with its spotlight focused on some well-deserved locals.

The Yellow Springs Art Stroll takes place Friday, June 14, from 6-9 p.m. For more information, please visit ysartscouncil.org. 

Learn more about Kate E Lore and see her web-comics and blog at KateELore.com. Kate can be reached at KateLore@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s polish has acquired heirloom patina over the years. The dancers are ϋber-fit, and in performance they make artistic choices that are readily encouraged by lively audience response. DCDC concerts are known for the noise-making on the house side of the footlights – gasps, claps, shout-outs – heard over blaring music in response to dancers who ignite the stage.

Urban Impulse, its two-performance concert takes place Saturday June 8 at 3 and 8 p.m., at Stivers’ Centennial Hall. The program features a hip-hop dance by renowned choreographer Rennie Harris and a new work by choreographer Kiesha Lalama. Both choreographers’ urban impulses are well-fed. Harris’ long-time base is Philadelphia – a diverse metropolis filled with East Coast, big city stimuli – and Lalama is an associate professor at Point Park University in downtown Pittsburgh. When DCDC performs, these urban influences will give Dayton audiences an evening of concert dance that traverses the skyline and traipses the asphalt of an imagined, choreographed urbanscape.

Convincing Dayton audiences to go to the theater to see an art form that New Yorkers cut their teeth on is a challenge. While contemporary dance is a fixture on the stages of St. Marks, the Joyce Theatre and City Center in Manhattan – where there are hundreds of choreographers and dancers with long slates of artistic credibility influenced by an urban zenith – the Midwest and Dayton, Ohio have proven to be the hinterlands for contemporary dance craft and performance, DCDC’s specialties. To address the challenge of providing the public with a taste of high-quality dance flavored with uniqueness, Debbie Blunden-Diggs – artistic director of DCDC – asked choreographer Kiesha Lalama to create “a work that would truly impact and touch our youth from ages 18-35.”

Over the years Blunden-Diggs has kept in touch with Lalama and watched her choreography develop. In addition to teaching at Point Park University, Lalama worked on the choreography for the 2012 coming-of-age film, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” featuring Emma Watson and Kate Walsh. Finally, Blunden-Diggs decided that the Urban Impulse program was the right time to tap into her talents.

“She has a reputation for being able to create works that speak to the intersection of the classical and contemporary,” said Blunden-Diggs. The result is a dance entitled “Shed” set to techno and percussive music. The movements range from fast to slow and blend sharp with curvaceous – a testament of Lalama’s agile vocabulary. “Shed” shows the dancers controlled in slow-motioned movement and strong in extended flexibility held in posé to show a clear picture of the dancers’ physiques. According to Blunden-Diggs, “Keisha addresses the crossing of boundaries in urban America right now, and that is a core idea of this concert.”

“Jacob’s Ladder,” another feature of the Urban Impulse concert, was created by Rennie Harris whose name and reputation is famously synonymous with urban movement in professional dance circles. As concert dance goes, Harris’ body of work is, arguably, the single, most influential among hipsters and urbanites. His trademark choreography has migrated from the streets of Philadelphia to formal stages in theaters around the world and inherited the unlikely path that he has wended: from street dancer in the late 1970s, to recipient of two honorary Ph.D.s, conferred on him by Bates College and Columbia College. He choreographed “Jacob’s Ladder” for DCDC in 2007. Its smooth moves crescendo into something increasingly fast and ultimately exciting against a backdrop of city scenes projected onto the stage. “There’s a point near the end of Rennie’s piece when projections are rapidly firing and the entire cast is on stage. Four dancers slide into the floor and pedal their legs as if they were being chased on their sides. That has always been my favorite moment in the piece,” said Blunden-Diggs. “Jacob’s Ladder” is choreographed to the kind of house music that might be heard in the wee, sweaty hours at a dance club or in a rocking, just-before-dawn crowd at an underground party; however, audiences will see sophistication on stage – the result of urban provocation put on classically-trained artists.

DCDC’s feat is to convey a dance genre which, generally, does not depend on narrative to engross the viewer. Its beauty can be obtuse and subjective. The dancers and choreographers exploit tensions in music and movement, visual and aural, weight and levity, and hope that people in the audience find a place of satisfaction in the expertly crafted mixture. The dances featured in Urban Impulse add the dichotomy between street style and formalism.

Blunden-Diggs said, “Audiences may see movements that are sharp or twisted, because those movements mirror qualities in street forms, or urban in the way dancers use the ground. The cool attitudes of dancers, while they execute such difficult movements, create a tension that can be felt in their interactions with each other onstage.”

Another dance company in a different city might find the negotiation of such an artistic minefield daunting; however, DCDC knows contemporary entertainment. Over the years it has left the proof on stages around the world: dancers, choreographers and audiences always enjoy the show.

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s Urban Impulse concert will be held Saturday, June 8, 3 and 8 p.m. at Centennial Hall, Stivers School for the Arts, 1313 E. Fifth St. For ticket information call Ticket Center Stage at 937.228.3630 or 888.228.3630 or online at ticketcenterstage.com. For more information on DCDC, visit dcdc.org.

Reach DCP theatre critic Brian P. Sharp at Theatre@DaytonCityPaper.com

LAUGHS

Putting out a special invitation to young people, the Dayton Playhouse presents “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” directed by Jim Lockwood, who has been smitten with the musical since he saw it in London many years ago as a young man first falling in love with all things theater.

Both lyrics and music were written by Stephen Sondheim as a young man and first exploring the fun of creating theater in a new way with twisty, clever words and complex music. This cast was chosen to bring out the comedy, to move, maybe to mug a bit, putting their all into the songs. Ron Kindell is musical director and Sandra Hyde does choreography. He’s “very pleased” with the vocal achievements, and she has “made ‘em dance,” according to Lockwood.

It is witty, fast moving, non-technical fun; the final scene is pure farce, carefully choreographed to look totally spontaneous. The plot involves slave Pseudolus (Brad Mattingly) and his efforts to gain freedom back in Roman times when brain power ruled without machines. The fourth wall of theater doesn’t exist as the characters in low comedy style talk to the audience. We all have stories to share; they define our humanity. No matter what the medium, they are our entertainment.

The cast of “Forum” includes Brad Bishop as Hysterium, Saul Caplen as Senex, Claire Hurley as Domina, Mary Mykyka as Philia, Jamie McQuinn as Lycus, Jeff Sams as Miles and Richard Young as Erronius, with an ensemble of Proteans and Courtesans.

The show runs weekends Friday, May 31 through Sunday, June 16. For tickets, times and information go to daytonplayhouse.com or call 937.424.8477.

SHUDDERS

What makes some love to ride intricate plunging roller coasters or shiver their way through bloody fright movies with grotesque monsters? What makes a playwright create a tale guaranteed to affect the audience with horror or distress? The Theatre Guild has presented a palette of plays dark with the theme of “‘til death do us part” this season; dramas of death or loosely connected to death, on occasion in a comedy. Beginning Friday, May 17, however, the Guild presents a different kind of necrological show with “The Pillowman” by Martin McDonagh (“Beauty Queen of Leenane” and “The Cripple of Inishmaan”).

Ben Brantley, in the New York Times, said in 2005 “[…] for all its darkness of plot and imagery, ‘The Pillowman’ – which won the Olivier Award in London for best new play – dazzles with a brightness […] largely absent from Broadway. Mr. McDonagh’s true subject is not gruesome crime and unjust punishment, although that’s what a synopsis of the play, set largely in an interrogation room in an unnamed totalitarian state, might lead you to believe. ‘The Pillowman’ is storytelling and the thrilling narrative potential of theater itself […] Mr. McDonagh is not preaching the power of stories to redeem or cleanse or to find a core of solid truth hidden among life’s illusions […] ‘Pillowman’ is celebrating a raw, vital human instinct to invent fantasies, to lie for the fun of it. Stories are fun.”

The plot: a writer is being questioned about the gruesome content of his short stories that seem to be like a series of actual child murders.  Many twists and turns later it turns out … well that would take the thrill away, wouldn’t it?

Patrick Hayes, Michael Boyd, David Hallowren and Joseph Risner are the players, Natasha Randall directs. She said she’s been eager to do this for several years because of the playwright’s strong writing.  She also praised the skill of her cast.

“Pillowman” tells his story for three weekends Friday, May 17 through Sunday, June 2. Go to daytontheatreguild.org or call 937.278.5993 for times and tickets.

Leave the kids at home.

SUMMER PLAYWRITNG CLASS AT SINCLAIR

Sign up soon for a class running Friday, June 17 through Sunday, August 11 that combines three elements: attendance at the Dayton Playhouse’s Future Fest and The Human Race’s Musical Theatre Workshop and eight Thursday night classes at Sinclair. The course also will workshop a student-written piece slated to be produced in the fall at Sinclair. The instructor is Nelson Sheeley, New York writer and director who guest directed at Sinclair for several years before deciding to live and work in Dayton full time.

To earn three college credits go to sinclair.edu\services\registration for the online registration or call 800.315.3000. Registration and department permission is required. Tuition for the three-hour course is $287.10 for Montgomery County residents and $428 for other Ohioans. Those over 60 may audit for no credit through Sinclair’s College for Life Long Learning.

Future Fest features six new scripts selected from submissions by playwrights nationwide, half presented as fully staged productions and half as staged readings the entire weekend of July 26-28. The Festival of New Musicals will conclude two weeks of workshopping on two plays with staged readings the weekend of August 2-4.

The class size is being limited so that every student will have the opportunity to interact with the writers, directors and actors who are developing these new works. Future Fest always features a panel of adjudicators, professionals from the world of theatre in New York and Chicago and sometimes a well-regarded, knowledgeable local theatre professional. They analyze the plays and invite audience participation. Contact gina.neuerer@Sinclair.edu or 937.512.2455. Quick!