Robert Santelli
EMP Website
January 2002

"As a unique institution EMP encourages creativity and innovation and we like to be fearless in the way we create programs and try and do what hasn't been done before."

By Jason West

As CEO and deputy director of public programs, Robert Santelli leads the Experience Music Project museum's educational, curatorial, technology and exhibit program areas. Santelli joined EMP in 2000, after five years with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, where he served as vice president of education and public programs.

In 2001 EMP's inaugural Jazz in January program featured concerts by Ernestine Anderson, Bill Frisell, the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and others. This year's events includes live performances by Joey Baron, Joanne Brackeen, Buddy Catlett, Bill Frisell, Kenny Garrett, Roy Haynes, Wayne Horvitz, Dave Kikoski, Peggy Lee, Christian McBride, Ron Miles, Nicholas Payton, Floyd Standifer and Billy Tolles. In addition, Jazz in January 2002 includes premier jazz movies, educational classes, and oral histories with Brackeen and McCoy Tyner. For detailed information on Jazz in January 2002 programming, including a complete schedule of events, visit www.emplive.com or call 206.770.2702.

In December, I spoke with Santelli about EMP's second annual Jazz in January.

AAJ: What are some of the highlights of this year's Jazz in January?

BS: Well, I think the one thing that I'm most excited about is our Young Jazz Composers Series. I think this program is going to be a real lightening rod for our connection to not just Seattle school kids who are jazz players or want-to-be jazz players but also to young musicians throughout the country. We met last spring with a number of high school music directors in town, and we said to them that we have this thing called Jazz in January and that we wanted to make this connection with the high school jazz bands in town. All of them told me 'That's great. We'd love be in partnership with you, but instead of doing another jazz band competition, let's try something different.' So we at EMP took that advice and put on our thinking caps. As a unique institution EMP encourages creativity and innovation and we like to be fearless in the way we create programs and try and do what hasn't been done before. With that EMP created the Young Jazz Composers Series, where we are in essence challenging kids to do something that few other people challenge them to do. The designed the program to be very restrictive and almost exclusive because we really go after the kid who is very serious about a jazz career and who is interested in the creativity of composition. So we put the word out that we were looking for these kind of kids who, once accepted into the program, were put through a rather grueling six months working with professional jazz composers who mentored them through the summer and helped them to write their own composition. Then, once school started in the fall, each young composer shared his or her composition with their school's music director, and together they decided exactly how that composition should be presented at EMP during Jazz in January. We encouraged the kids to be as creative as they want-if they wanted to bring in hip hop elements and work with jazz-we opened it up and gave them every opportunity to be innovative and creative. We'll hear the results on January 26. But the bottom line is we hope to expand on this program as we move along. Hopefully within the next five years this will be a national program.

AAJ: You're scheduled to conduct oral history interviews with Joanne Brackeen and McCoy Tyner. Describe that process. What can people in attendance expect?

BS: Well, these are traditional oral histories that we would do with jazz people, rock people, blues people, hip hop people, etc. They are basically light histories designed to fill out our archives and to be used for educational and scholarly purposes for a long time. What's going to happen is, if you're a member, or if you want to come and watch this happen, you're going to be able to sit in on an oral history. It will be a work in process about me talking to McCoy about his legacy, about his musical accomplishments, about his ideas about jazz, etc. It will probably take anywhere from 90 minutes to two-and-a-half hours depending on how it goes. People in the audience will be asked to be quiet because we'll be filming and recording the interview. Once it's done, it will go into our archives so that next year, or five years from now, a kid who is doing a paper on McCoy Tyner or John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins or jazz in general will be able to access this oral history via EMP's Digital Lab. I've done a lot of oral histories; I did all of the oral histories for the Rock Hall; I've done oral histories for the Smithsonian, so it's kind of what I do. Oral histories typically develop chronologically. They, in essence, walk the artist through his or her life. Full-blown oral histories often are done over a couple days; sometimes they take 10, 12, 14 hours. We're not doing that with McCoy or Joanne who have generously agreed to give us their time to get this thing going. EMP has a few dozen oral histories already in our archives, but we don't have too many jazz people. So the hope is that each Jazz in January we are going to be able to pick a couple of artist that we think are interesting. We picked Joanne because she's a female, and we like to get a women's point of view in the jazz oral histories. And then over time we'll collect a very significant jazz oral history archive.

AAJ: What you learned from last year's inaugural Jazz In January event?

BS: I learned essentially that this is a great jazz town, particularly with high school jazz. Whenever I mention I'm from Seattle and I mention jazz in the same sentence, like I did with representatives of Jazz at Lincoln Center, they just gush with enthusiasm about the jazz programs that we have here. I also learned that of all the music forms represented at EMP, jazz is one of the hardest for people to connect with because its audience is not as large as rock or hip hop or some of the other music forms. So we felt that we wanted to make sure that we gave something jazz-wise to our members and to the EMP community so they can learn about this music, and hopefully over time we can convince them of the validity music form and that they would indeed become fans at some point and begin to have jazz as part of their weekly dose of music. And we feel that is very much a part of our responsibility-to turn people on to new music forms and new music. I also learned that when it comes to jazz here, Earshot is a very well and respected festival, Benaroya also stages some great jazz events-there are things in town that are already being done that in order for EMP to fit into that overall scheme of things we would have to come up with something that was a little different than what Earshot was doing, that was a little different than what Benaroya does. As a result, we come up with things that are very unique for the Seattle jazz community; they are going to be able do see and do things during Jazz in January that they may not be able to do with Earshot or Benaroya. And that makes us feel good because it elaborates the overall offerings in jazz that Seattle has going for it.

AAJ: I'm looking forward to some of the jazz movies, a few being Seattle premiers, that you're planning on showing. How did this idea come about?

BS: The movies are a part of the weekly Music and Film series that begins in September and ends in May each year. And we decided that each January we would dedicate that month to jazz, to fit in with Jazz in January. So the films are kind of interesting. I think the one that I'm most interested in seeing is the Sun Ra film, because Robert Mugge, or Bob Mugge is a very good friend of mine. He's a filmmaker, and I made a few films with him; his most recent films I've been involved in. But, I've never seen his Sun Ra film, and he's always chided me on it. So this is going to be an opportunity for me to see it in a great room with a great screen and great sound, so that's exciting for me to have that. Part of our educational process here is to show these films and to get people turned on. For the jazz fans, to make them more knowledgeable and sophisticated as listeners, and for the novice to begin to introduce them to some of the giants, you know, the thing that we're doing with Parker hopefully will inspire people to check out Charlie Parker's catalogue. The thing that we're doing with Sun Ra-he's very much out there on the fringe and avant-garde and he might not be someone that most people are conversant about or even know about-here's a great opportunity to introduce him. Mingus is such a huge person, in my opinion one of the most underrated and undiscovered of the true titans of jazz. Mingus was just an amazing person, and so this is an opportunity to introduce him or to inspire jazz fans to reignite their passion for Mingus.

AAJ: Jazz is a minority music, yet everyone seems to have a connection with it in some form or another. Can you tell me a story about jazz and Bob Santelli?

BS: Well, I have three milestones, when I look at jazz; I probably have three milestones, maybe four. I was never a jazz fan. I grew up with rock 'n' roll and blues, and those are my real forms. I got interested in jazz the way a lot of people my age did who came in through rock 'n' roll. We went from the 60s and listened to 60s music, got interested in progressive rock and that led us to jazz-rock fusion. I had a monumental concert-I still rank it in the top ten of my concerts-and I've seen lots as a journalist for 25 years. I saw Return to Forever in the mid-70s at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey and it's still one of the greatest concerts I've ever seen. I also was led to the music of John Coltrane, and the first time I heard A Love Supreme, it had the same kind of affect on me as it did when I heard Bob Marley, both of whom I consider to be two of the most spiritual persons in popular music that I've come across. They went deeper into me than anybody else.

AAJ: Were you working as a music journalist at that time?

BS: Yes I was. I never met John Coltrane, but in mid-seventies I got into jazz-rock fusion, and I learned about it from listening to Billy Cobham and John McLaughlin and also loved the Emotion Surrender record that Carlos Santana put out with John McLaughlin in the early-seventies, and I'd just found out about John Coltrane, and instantly connected with it. And the third thing was I became very good friends in New Jersey with Tal Farlow who had become a mentor to me and someone who taught me a whole lot about jazz, opened his record collection to me. I spent a lot of time over at his house. I was very sad when he passed a couple of years ago. We were very, very good friends. And then the last thing is that my most recent and most certainly my most inspiring jazz connections is Bill Frisell. The very first highlight coming to Seattle was the fact that I was going to live in the town that Bill Frisell lives in. I absolutely adore his music; I think it's the most creative thing going on in jazz bar none. And the fact that I was able to have him perform here at EMP a number of times makes me very proud. He's my favorite. When I have time to listen to jazz for pleasure I inevitably go with Bill Frisell.