Tag Archives: Curt Hanrahan

Jack Grassel lives again, in our spirits. Just listen to the guitar

Posted on by
Reply

Singer Jill Jensen, the longtime spouse of the late guitarist Jack Grassel, remembers him in eloquent and tender words Sunday at a memorial event. Grassel’s three-necked guitar is on display at right. Photo by Kevin Lynch

Some people rise from the dead in their own unique way. That’s what the late guitarist Jack Grassel did Sunday. Several hundred people were there to witness it. So don’t tell me I’m talking through my hat.

Okay, he didn’t get up and walk among us. But the emotional and spiritual weight of the event held Jack aloft as a quivering presence across the room and in the hearts of these people, even more than the quiet resonance of his recorded guitar music that filtered through the hall as the guests filed in for condolences to Grassel’s wife and artistic partner, singer Jill Jensen, and her daughter Beth.

The potency of the event had to do with the mementoes, including photos and videos of Grassel, that put his presence virtually there, right there.

But more than anything what brought Jack to poignant life was the extraordinarily eloquent and moving extended tribute given to him by Jill Jensen.

She resurrected the brilliance of this kind, sweet and gloriously virtuosic and adventurous musician and educator. For all his musical mastery, Grassel retained an ever-boyish way about him. One can vividly imagine, as Jensen related, toddler Jack reaching up to play piano keys each up to the piano keys to copy the music on the radio, and his mother, quickly realizing his musicality, soon buying and placing an accordion in his arms. The instrument virtually swallowed up the small boy, as a delightful photo on display showed. Jack would go on to become a state champion accordionist.

Jill Jensen commented that their stage name was really “too corny.” But it was also charmed, by the way Jack first wooed her, many years ago. It came about this way.  A friend had alerted Jack to her presence and he was immediately smitten. When he first walked up to her, his first words to her were “Hi, I’m Jack and you’re Jill. Let’s go find a hill.”

“What a line,” Jill said to the crowd, still in slightly amazed bemusement after the couple’s 40 years together. Tempering Jack’s bold stroke, you also can picture his slightly shy, crinkly-eyed smile, there in the moment.

Corny or not, Jack and Jill’s duo name was inevitable from that point, and they ultimately lent great musical heft to the nursery rhyme moniker, a musical match of two attractive and gifted people, now assuredly “made in heaven.”

Singer Jill Jensen and guitarist Jack Grassel at their last concert at Villa Terrace 10 days before Grassel’s death. Photo by Stuart Hoffman 

They recorded a handful of albums, the last of which, It’s About the Music, was ambitiously realized and featured nearly 30 musicians, including Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra principal players. Grassel, arguably the region’s most accomplished guitarist, had a long-time working relationship with the orchestra, playing in scores that called for a guitar.

From his obit: “His first paid concert was at age 6. His extraordinary musical abilities, especially on guitar, and perfect pitch, enabled him to forge new paths as a genre-bending multi-instrumentalist, mastering seven instruments. In 1983, as Chairman, he designed the Music Occupations Department at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) spawning a legion of successful students through his passion, humor and example. He’s known for his 21 CDs (including a duet album with jazz guitar giant Tal Farlow), 70 compositions, 12 Industry awards, and 23 Instruction books. After 20 years and a major illness in 2004, he retired from MATC but never retired from music.”

Yet, let us not dwell too much on nostalgia, or past glories. It’s worth recalling Jill’s tender announcement of his passing:

“My shining star, light of my life, is extinguished. My beloved husband and partner in music and life, Jack Grassel died on August 26, 2026. His closest family were there to say their loving goodbyes. I held him, stroked his hair, and whispered “I love you Jack” as he took his last breath. My wonderful, strong, daughter Beth was beside me.”

His death still pangs our heavy hearts, and walking into the hall with the photographic “biography” of his musical life, and Jack’s triple-necked, self-invented “Super Axe” bass/ guitar/mandolin on silent display was a deep, long breath, a load to absorb. One sat and waited for the owner to arise and start playing the instrument.

There at Four Acres Restaurant in Racine, the beautifully organized event teemed with celebrants of Jack’s 77-year life. It was the largest gathering for a memorial for a musician that I’ve attended, testifying to the man’s importance to this music community. Among the great musicians gracing the event: Kaye Berigan, Hal Miller and Tom McGirr, Jack’s former bandmates in the sui generis Milwaukee avant-jazz band What On Earth. Other musicians present included Warren Weigratz (of Streetlife, the Milwaukee Bucks band, Sweetbottom, Oceans, VIVO), Curt Hanrahan and Steve Lewandowski (of Opus and The Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra), Kim Zick and Connie Grauer (of Mrs. Fun), Sam Belton, Neal Davis, Jerry Grillo, Steve Nelson-Raney, Rick Ollman, Steve Peplin, Carol Trout, John Zaffiro.

Those were just people I saw or spoke with. My apologies to those unmentioned musicians, honored guests and family, as I didn’t go around taking notes.

The theme and spirit of this event is summed up best by the wondrous quote from Wendell Berry’s poem “The Loved Ones,” which adorns the Jack Grassel remembrance cards:

“The loved ones we call the dead depart from us and for a while are absent. And then as if called back by our love, they come near us again. They enter our dreams. We feel they have been near us when we have not thought of them. They are simply here, simply waiting while we are distracted among our obligations. At last it comes to us: They live now in the permanent world. We are the absent ones.”

“We are the absent ones.” Whew.

_________

I wrote my own memorial article on Jack Grassel for The Shepherd Express and my blog Culture Currents (Vernaculars Speak), here: https://kevernacular.com/?p=17486

 

Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra: Something New in a Grand Old Tradition

Posted on by
Reply

Saxophonist-bandleader Curt Hanrahan ( standing, far right) conducts the Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra. Photo by Leiko Napoli

The Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra will perform an album-release concert for Take it All at 6 p.m. Sunday Aug. 21 at the Racine Theater Guild, 2519 Northwestern Ave., Racine. For advance tickets, visit: MJO tickets

Is the jazz big band a relic of the swing era? Well, there’s still power in numbers, and wider musical vistas to explore. Despite inherent costliness, the art form has remained vital and evolving with such distinctive ensembles as The Maria Schneider Orchestra, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, The Mingus Big Band, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, John Beasley’s MONK’estra and The Vanguard Orchestra. The Brian Lynch Big Band won a Grammy award in 2020, led by the Milwaukee-raised trumpeter-composer-band leader.

Add the Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra to that list, with their auspicious second album, Take it All. It reveals a full plumbing of orchestral resources with both advanced contemporary aesthetics and catchy grooves aplenty. The MJO hardly emerged out of the blue. For 12 years, orchestra leader Curt Hanrahan led the UW-Milwaukee Jazz Ensemble, and the annual Woody Herman Jazz Festival, before retiring in 2017.

At the core of the new orchestra’s personnel is the synchronistic 30-plus-year-old jazz fusion band OPUS (which will open the Racine concert for the MJO). Between Hanrahan and his brother, drummer/co-bandleader Warren Hanrahan, they’ve performed with numerous big bands of the past, including Arturo Sandoval, Glenn Miller, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra Jr., Harry Connick Jr., Lawrence Welk and Woody Herman’s band led by Frank Tiberi.

“I love all big bands and have observed, listened and learned from many of them but my main influence has always been the benevolent Woody Herman,” Hanrahan says. “The Milwaukee native was on the road for close to 50 years with various bands and ‘Herds’ and produced some of the most iconic and legendary jazz musicians, composers/arrangers that this American art form has to offer. Our jazz festivals are modeled after his Woody Herman/Sister Fabian scholarship and educational programs that began in the mid to late sixties.”

Milwaukee-born clarinetist-saxophonist Woody Herman. Courtesy Jazz Journal

Perhaps there’s hometown bias in Hanrahan’s affection for Herman’s “Thundering Herds,” but that big-band leader always forged bridges between swing orchestras and modern jazz. Jazz historian Ted Gioia writes, “Herman’s evolution from sweet music to traditional jazz to modern jazz is almost unprecedented in the history of music. For Woody Herman is best understood…as a catalyst. His talent lay in enabling – spurring those around him to their deepest creative currents, inspiring them, letting them ‘loose’.” Herman’s second Herd debuted the “Four Brothers” band, with a section of three tenor saxophones and one baritone, which provided a template for what would soon be called cool jazz.

Album cover courtesy Spotify 

Accordingly, The MJO projects through a forward-looking lense, with arrangements that facilitate rather than burden soloists and ensemble flair. The title tune “Take It All” opens with short phrases building suspense, then layers into dissonant yet alluring harmonies with a complex series of snapping ensemble accents. Tenor saxophonist Kyle Seifert delivers a measured solo rumination until the second chorus’s rising intensity driven by the big ensemble. Trumpeter David Katz provides deft, warm counterpoint, a la Thad Jones, to a sumptuous climax.

The second tune, “We All Love Eddie Harris,” reflects saxophonist Harris’s penchant for a cool but funky vamp that allows sassy rhythmic licks from Seifert, and quotes liberally from Harris’s swaggering, interval-skipping jazz classic “Freedom Jazz Dance.”

Ensuing material ranges from a tricky Oscar Peterson adaptation of the vintage finger-snapper “Sweet Georgia Brown” to “Covidity,” a Hanrahan piece reflecting the “angst of the pandemic era,” yet inspired by Elvin Jones’s Live at the Lighthouse album, a blazing hallmark of post-Coltrane jazz.

“Souljourner” closes the album with a transporting swirl of woodwinds detouring into a gritty jazz-fusion guitar solo from Steve Lewandowski. The MJO demonstrates how bigger is better when the outcome embraces a panoply of compelling moods and stylistic effects, allowing the listener to “take it all” in.

For information on the MJO, visit: https://www.mjojazz.com/

________________

This article was previously published in The Shepherd Express: MJO article