Hartford Jazz Hero
With more than 150 recordings — often for renegade labels — to his credit, Joe Morris has been called “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” As critic Gary Giddins once wrote in the Village Voice: “If Ornette Coleman were Jim Hall, he would be Joe Morris.” But it’s Morris’s commitment to spreading the word about improvised music over the past three decades,to students as an educator/mentor and to the public as event organizer and concert producer/curator that has earned him Jazz Hero recognition.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1955, the self-taught and completely self-directed musician moved to Boston in 1975, working there as an organizer and producer/curator, starting the music program at Charlie’s Tap in Cambridge and organizing the Tufts University Jazz Now Festival. Forming his first trio in 1977 and later co-founding the Boston Improvisers Group (BIG), Morris began developing his own singular vocabulary on the guitar, deployed in New York City’s late ‘80s frre jazz scene, in Boston through 2001 (about when he started playing upright bass), then returning to his hometown to launch the Just Play Series, programs at Firehouse 12, then a series the State House. Currently running monthly Sunday afternoon Improvisations Now concerts at Real Art Ways (RAW) in Hartford, Morris encourages audiences to engage in “creative listening.”
“My idea is that this kind of music creates a kind of sonic puzzle, and that the pleasure comes from deciphering the puzzle,” he says. “I go on the idea that when things are new, they’re not understood except by the people who experience them. Nothing happens without people in the audience having an idea about what it is. So having an audience that’s invited to draw their own conclusions means the music can be new and different every time we make it. I’m lucky enough to get to play in it and be the center of attention for it, but it’s really a community thing.” Joe Morris, modest Jazz Hero!
By Bill Milkowski
