For the convenience of concertgoers

the Cafe Provencal remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed, Please be sure that cell phones, 

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art 

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,561st Concert

Larry Eanet and Ensemble

Larry Eanet, piano, ensemble leader

Ericka Ovette, vocals

Ron Hockett, clarinet

Tommy Cecil, bass

Harold F. Summey Jr., drums

A Concert ofWorld War I-Era Jazz 

Presented in Honor of Dada

February 26, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Program

Larry Eanet will announce the selectionsfrom the stage.

The Musicians

LARRY EANET

Larry Eanet was bom in Washington, DC, and began his piano studies at 

age four. By the time he reached his early teens, he had performed in solo

recitals and as a concerto soloist with amateur orchestras, and had served 

as a jazz apprentice in small combos and dance bands. At Harvard College

he was the coleader and valve trombonist of a Chicago-style “trad” band,

the Crimson Stampers. Since then he has played jazz piano in and around

Washington, DC, with a great variety oflocally- and nationally-known jazz 

instrumentalists, including Harry Allen, Louie Bellson, Gary Burton, Al

Cohn, Bill Davison, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Urbie Green, Bobby Hackett, 

Scott Hamilton, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Jackson, J. J. Johnson, Lee Konitz,

Red Norvo, Pee Wee Russell, Zoot Sims, Slam Stewart, Sonny Stitt, Clark 

Terry, Joe Venuti, and Kai Winding, as well as singers Cab Calloway, Barbara 

Lea, Marlene VerPlanck, Eddie Vinson, and Jimmy Witherspoon. In 1989 

Eanet toured Indonesia with the Hot Mustard Band, playing in Sumatra,

Java, and Bali, and in 1991 he toured Belgium, The Netherlands, and

Germany with Brooks Tegler’s Hot Jazz. Since 1987 he has played regularly in a variety oflocal jazz venues and at special events. He has recorded

with Ron Hockett (a quartet recording on Arbors Records), Barbara Lea

(Do It Again on Audiophile), and Ericka Ovette, and recently released a twovolume solo CD set on the jump label.

ERICKA OVETTE

Born and raised in New York City, Ericka Ovette’s singing is evocative ofthe

many great women ofjazz who have graced the twentieth and twenty-first

centuries, yet she maintains a vocal personality that is clearly her own. She

is a strong believer in song as a story-telling medium and understands well

the vocalist’s role in marrying the lyrics to the music. An avid fan of all

kinds of music in her youth, she was most influenced by the artistry of Ella

Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Nancy Wilson. Ovette began her professional

career in Zimbabwe, with a group oflocal musicians. The popular band

called itself Body and Soul and performed a mix of jazz and African pop

tunes. Upon returning to the United States, Ovette worked with musicians

in the Washington area, such as saxophonist Herb Smith and big-band

leader Terrell Jones. Another overseas sojourn of several years’ length in

New Delhi, India, brought her together with pianist Mosin Menezes and

his Capital Swingers.

As a bandleader in her own right, Ovette is a favorite at special events

and has performed in various area restaurants and cafes, including Blues

Alley. She has participated in the prestigious Chautauqua Jazz Festival

in upstate New York and collaborated with the Larry Eanet Quartet on her

debut recording, Some Enchanted Evening. In 2003 she wrote and coproduced

Sassy Bessie alive At The Paradise Lounge, a musical retrospective ofthe

lives of Sarah Vaughan and Bessie Smith. The original cast recording of

the retrospective is scheduled for release in 2007 on the Patuxent Label.

RON HOCKETT

For the past seven years Ron Hockett has been the clarinetist in the worldrenowned Jim Cullum Jazz Band in San Antonio, Texas, which plays six

nights a week at the Landing Jazz Club on the Riverwalk in downtown San

Antonio. The band also appears weekly on the nationally syndicated public

radio show “Riverwalk: Live from the Landing.” Before joining the Cullum

ensemble, Hockett was the principal saxophonist in “The President’s Own”

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United States Marine Band. In a career that spanned twenty-nine years and 

the terms ofsix presidents, he participated in extensive nationwide concert

tours and regular performances at the White House. He has also played

with several local jazz groups, including the Larry Eanet Quartet, Brooks

Tegler's Hot Jazz, and the Federal Jazz Commission. Hockett has always

loved traditional jazz forms and is happy to be rejoining his Washington,

DC, friends for tonight’s concert.

TOMMY CECIL

Jazz bassist and composer Tommy Cecil taught himself how to play the

bass as a teenager in his hometown of Baltimore. In 1976 he moved to

Washington, DC, and since then has established himself as one ofthe 

most sought-after bassists in the area. As a freelance musician, he has

worked with such diverse jazz musicians as Mose Allison, Chet Baker,

Terence Blanchard, Charlie Byrd, Cab Calloway, Tommy Flanagan, Joe

Henderson, Keiko Matsui, Teddy Wilson, and Phil Woods. He has also

concertized with Grover Washington Jr. and Henry Butler in the former

Soviet Union, on a tour sponsored by the Chautauqua Institute, and

has played in the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra under the 

direction of Gunther Schuller.

HAROLD F. SUMMEY JR.

A native of Newport News, Virginia, Harold F. Summey Jr. studied percussion at Hampton University, the Eastman School of Music, and Howard 

University. Since completing his academic studies, he has performed with 

many great jazz artists, including Geri Allen, Patti Austin, Gary Bartz, Ray

Charles, Arlo Guthrie, Whitney Houston, James Ingram, Wynton Marsalis,

Aaron Neville, David “Fathead” Newman, Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra Jr.,

and Bobby Watson. Summey has also appeared with the Smithsonian Jazz

Masterworks Orchestra, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra,

the symphony orchestras of Annapolis and Richmond, and the Virginia

Symphony Orchestra. He participated in the premier performance of

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Arnold Saltzman’s Israel Symphony and two performances of David

Fanshawe’s African Sanctus. From 1989 to 1993 Summey was a percussionist in the United States Navy Band. In 1992 he won first prize in the 

Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. His first recording as

a bandleader, Sambafor Felix, released by Slider Music, features pianist

Tommy Flanagan, saxophonist Gary Bartz, guitarist Paul Bollenback,

drummer Billy Hart, and percussionist Cyro Baptista.

Summey is currently a member ofthe United States Army Band (“Pershing’s Own”), performing with the concert band, the Army Blues Jazz

Ensemble, the Army Ceremonial Band, the Army Orchestra, and various

small groups. An adjunct percussion teacher at George Mason University,

he previously taught at the Mile High Jazz Camp at the University of

Colorado in Boulder and at Howard University. He has led clinics and

master classes on jazz and percussion at many schools in the Washington 

area, including Howard University and Suitland High School for the

Visual and Performing Arts in Suitland, Maryland.

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Program Notes

From 1916 to 1926 Dada art startled Europe and New York with its subversive and aggressive techniques. This was also the period in which jazz first

became popular outside of New Orleans, spreading first to New York and

then to other cities by way ofthe vaudeville circuit and bands touring from

one dance hall to another. The original New Dixieland Jass Band made its

first recordings in New York in 1917, contributing to the new musical phenomenon. It was not long before Europeans came into contact with the

infectious rhythms and earthy lyrics ofjazz, and its popularity spread rapidly

through Paris, London, Berlin, and other culturally progressive cities. Jazz

had an especially strong following among those artists and musicians who

considered themselves iconoclasts and rebels (including Dada artists), since 

it represented a challenge to the established music scene, it had emerged

out of a suppressed culture, and it was essentially improvisatory in nature.

European intellectuals saw the black American originators ofjazz as carefree, expressive, and easygoing people, who did not become obsessed with 

great causes, good or bad. Jazz became the entertainment of choice in many

Parisian cabarets in the 1920s, where Josephine Baker was the talk ofthe

town, and ensembles such as the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, Louis

Mitchell’s Jazz Kings, and Murray Piker’s Jazz Band were hired for longrunning engagements. The same period in New York saw some ofthe closest association between jazz and Dada. The tune That Da Da Strain, a standard in the repertoire of Mamie Smith and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings,

was recorded no fewer than six times in 1922.

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One ofthe composers most closely associated with Dada, George

Antheil (1900-1959), composed A Jazz Symphony in 1925. Its New York

premiere was performed by the W. C. Elandy Orchestra, one ofthe nation’s

first and finest all-black ensembles, which had been performing ragtime

and blues in concert since 1918. One ofthe members ofthe audience at the

premiere was Aaron Copland (1900-1990). He had already incorporated

jazz into some of his piano works and not long thereafter completed

Musicfor the Theatre (1925) and Sentimental Melody (1926), both heavily

influenced by jazz. When Erik Satie (1866-1925) discovered ragtime, late

in life, he was inspired to compose a number of works, including Rag-Time

Dada (1917) and some movements of his La belle excentrique ballet. A concert staged in Paris on the second night ofthe Dada exhibition Salon of

the Bearded Heart included jazz-influenced works by Georges Auric (1899-

1983), Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), and

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).

Jazz has continued to flourish long after the disappearance of Dada,

and in some ways it can be seen as a bearer ofthe movement’s legacy. Jazz

consistently pushes its own boundaries, to the extent that musicians ofthe

1920s, were they alive today, might not recognize the medium in its newer

manifestations. Like the performances ofthe Dada artists, jazz musicians

find new uses for unorthodox sounds, humorous wordplay, and even wordless vocalization (“scat” singing). As it blurs the distinction between what

is heard as “art music” and “popular music,” jazz continues the work begun

by the proponents ofthe Dada movement, as they broke down the barriers

between high and low art.