There’ll be good vibes in the Valley next week. Warren Wolf is this year’s Billy Taylor Artist-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts. He’ll perform at Bowker Auditorium at UMass on Thursday, February 5 at 7:30 with his quintet Wolfpack. Two days earlier, February 3 at 3 p.m., he’ll present a Master Class at the Community Music School of Springfield. His appearance at CMSS is open to the public free-of-charge. Click here for details. Wolf is lively and engaging in concert, and should be all of that in Springfield, too, where there’ll be plenty of young, aspiring masters from local high schools in the house.
The 36-year-old Baltimore native is one of the leading lights of his generation, a player who supports my view that jazz continues to inspire the highest standards of musicianship, and that it’s in good hands with Wolf. He studied classical music for four years in high school at the Baltimore Academy of the Arts, but as he relates in an interview segment that accompanies this 2013 concert, he was ready for something new when he decided to attend the Berklee School of Music in Boston in 1997.
Vibraphone legend Gary Burton was one of Berklee’s high profile faculty members for many years, but Wolf’s primary instruction there came from two other vibes masters, Dave Samuels and Ed Saindon. During his student years, he was also a denizen of Wally’s, the historic nightclub in Boston’s South End that’s been a home to jazz, and a second home to Berklee and New England Conservatory students, since the forties. Wolf’s debut release on Mack Avenue opened with a subtle dedication to Wally’s, a start-stop original named after its address, “427 Mass Ave.”
Warren remained in Boston for several years after his 2001 graduation from Berklee, then returned to Baltimore in 2005. But he maintains an affiliation with his alma mater, and that’s where the concert was filmed for NPR’s The Checkout. Enjoy it here, and set aside time to take in Warren Wolf in person next week!