Shawn Vestal: Return of the jazz orchestra’s spring concert marks the end of a long pandemic winter

Two years ago, almost to the day, the Spokane Jazz Orchestra was set to perform the first of its two annual spring concerts.

You know what happened next. The concert was scratched, one of the seemingly endless falling dominos as one cultural event after another was canceled due to the pandemic. The orchestra got word the night before the show.

“It was going to be the next night,” said Jody Graves, the pianist and Eastern Washington University professor. “I got a call at 10 o’clock that night.”

Don Goodwin, the orchestra director and a fellow Eastern faculty member, said the initial plan – in that first flush of optimism that the pandemic would be short-lived – was to reschedule the show for two months later. Then there was a plan to livestream a show, which didn’t happen. Then March 2021 came and went without a spring concert, and plans for a show that autumn were also never realized.

Time and again, the show could not go on.

Now, though, the orchestra – which bills itself as “the longest continuously performing volunteer-led jazz orchestra in the U.S.” – is bringing back those spring shows, with the same guest performers. The first one is Saturday night at the Bing Crosby Theater, with Graves as the honored guest for a night of big-band arrangements of Gershwin songs.

“We went through all the rehearsals to prepare for this concert two years ago and then set it aside,” Goodwin said. “It’s sort of like picking up a book you’ve read again.”

The hunger for live, cultural events – for performers and audiences both – has been intense and emotional. The spring shows are not the first performances by the orchestra since the emergency orders – that was the holiday show in December, and Goodwin said he was surprised by how choked up he became when he turned to address the audience at that show.

“I didn’t realize how emotional I would be,” he said. “It’s been amazing to be back and be playing again.”

For Graves and Goodwin, the show also punctuates the positive end of another difficult period. Both are faculty members in EWU’s music program, and as EWU went through a period of examining programs to make budget cuts last year, music and many other programs were facing an uncertain future.

Meanwhile, the music faculty were trying to teach virtually – a particular challenge for what they do.

“Certainly the performing arts did not work well with online modes of teaching,” Goodwin said. “It was the biggest challenge of my career, and all of our careers in the department.”

In the end, several music majors were cut, and the graduate program in performance was eliminated, but much of the program was spared. And Graves and Goodwin both see Saturday night’s show – as well as the Spokane Symphony Chorale’s performance of “Carmina Burana,” also on Saturday – as a reinforcement of the important role that the university’s music program has played in Spokane’s cultural life.

Of the 19 members of the jazz orchestra, 13 are members of Eastern’s faculty, students or alumni. Several faculty members and alums are a part of the symphony, as well.

Graves said it makes her proud of “our little Eastern program.”

“These things are vital to our community,” she said. “I totally believe that music is not an extracurricular activity. It is a catalyst for our culture, a place where human beings come for comfort and memory and solace and joy, and all the things that make us human.”

Saturday’s show will include a variety of arrangements of Gershwin songs, including some from the Miles Davis album of “Porgy and Bess” that have a particular connection to the Spokane Jazz Orchestra. Gunther Schuller, the renowned composer and conductor whose imprint on Spokane music was monumental, actually transcribed songs from that album for use by the SJO when he was serving as the orchestra’s interim director.

“That’s in our library, in Gunther Schuller’s own handwriting,” Goodwin said.

It feels as if we are all exiting a long, long winter. The return of the SJO’s spring concert is just one of the signs of a potential renewal.

“I think I value it more deeply,” Goodwin said, “because it was taken away from us.”