A new project celebrates the legacy of jazz oracle Charlie Banacos
The late jazz educator's own music is finally being heard, thanks to “Keep Swingin',” a joyful and wide-ranging 10-track album and book featuring Banacos’s compositions, photographs, and reminiscences from his students. A new project, "Keep Swingin'," celebrates jazz legend Charlie Banacos, a renowned jazz legend who taught generations of musicians who would go on to achieve success. The 10-track album/book includes Banacons’s compositions, photographs, and reminiscences from his students. The project was conceived when pianist Garry Dial was looking at a course called “Funky Blues” and was inspired by his own creation. The album includes ten cuts of various genres and reimagions of Banac's original funky blues exercise. The co-producer and arranger Rich DeRosa reimagined the music to reflect the stellar musicians on the record, and also retitled the pieces. The book also features a quintet led by saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi, who still performs widely.
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But Banacos became a bona fide jazz legend in a different way: by educating generations of musicians who would go on to make their own mark. Banacos, a lifelong Massachusetts resident, taught at Harvard, MIT, Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, and Longy before his 2009 death. Those looking to study with him privately often spent up to five years on a waiting list. Guitarist Mike Stern, keyboardists Danilo Perez and John Medeski, and violinist Regina Carter were just four of his students who went on to renown. Perez dedicated his composition “The Oracle” to Banacos.
Even devoted Boston jazz fans might not know the name Charlie Banacos. He never released an album under his own name and was rarely found on club or festival stages.
Now his own music is finally being heard thanks to “Keep Swingin’,” a joyful and wide-ranging 10-track album/book featuring Banacos’s compositions, photographs, and reminiscences from his students.
Co-producer Garry Dial is a pianist and longtime Banacos student who has continued teaching Banacos’s lessons since his passing. The project was conceived when Dial was looking at a Banacos course called “Funky Blues” that was a series of 17 pieces. He marveled that “the student was told to learn it in 12 keys for their weekly lesson, which is not so easy.”
Dial and co-producer and arranger Rich DeRosa start the album with a title track that is close to Banacos’s original funky blues exercise. For the next eight cuts, Dial, DeRosa, and their cohorts reimagined the music to reflect the dozens of stellar musicians who appear on the record (and also retitled the pieces). On “Bernie Burnola,” Banacos’s blues becomes a 16-bar samba for a band anchored by the great Brazilian pianist Helio Alves. “Pluto Language” has a Caribbean tinge in the hands of steel pannist Victor Provost. “Pine Needles” is a showcase for Stern. Electric bassist Joe Hubbard and guitarist Wayne Krantz show how Banacos taught jazz fusion players in “The Great Awakening.”
While different rhythm players and soloists performed on the project, Dial and DeRosa kept a five-piece horn section as a “glue” that is heard on most of the recordings, which were made remotely during the COVID-19 lockdown. “Each track sounds completely different. The common source was Charlie Banacos,” says DeRosa. “As an educator, he wasn’t trying to make clones. He was trying to say you need to find your own artistry, and that’s what Gary and I are trying to do.”
“The Mummy’s Curse” features the quintet led by another revered Massachusetts educator, saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi. Bergonzi still performs widely and plays the Lilypad in Cambridge each Monday. In the project’s liner notes he writes that Banacos, his friend of many decades, “knew more about music than any person I ever met.”
Bergonzi is also featured in a part of the book that shows Banacos’s sense of humor. Dial’s partner, Terre Roche, of the Roches folk music group, was one of the many musicians who studied with Banacos via cassettes sent in the mail in the pre-Zoom era. Banacos would draw silly cartoons imagining Bergonzi as a weightlifter or politician, and Roche would draw her own cartoons and send them back with her lesson. Neither of them ever told Bergonzi.
“The night Charlie died, I stayed at Jerry’s home, and I brought him the book, and he was like, ‘Oh my God, you guys are out of your mind,’ ” laughs Dial.
Banacos always shied away from the limelight. His widow, Margaret, says he gigged frequently in his 20s — “he and Bergonzi would go to Canada for a $25 gig” — but got burned out by club owners who refused to pay musicians. “But he really loved to teach. He loved the craft of it, and I think he really loved seeing other people being able to meet their goals.”
There were plenty of students who didn’t go on to high-profile jazz careers, but who made great strides in their music making thanks to Banacos. “He was inspired by each person that walked in the door. He had an uncanny ability to listen to somebody play, no matter what level they were at, and he would know just what they needed in that moment,” says Margaret Banacos.
“People always say that when they studied with my dad, he helped them to find their own voice and their own style,” says his daughter, Barbara Banacos, who, like her mother, continues the family legacy through her work as a pianist and teacher.
The last track on the album shows Banacos’s classical side through a duet by Margaret and Barbara on “Pelaghia.” The complex but contemplative piece was composed for Banacos student Bruce Wolosoff’s recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.
Characteristically, Charlie Banacos skipped the Carnegie Hall concert. “He said, ‘Oh, I’ll have to put a tux on and stand up.’ He just wasn’t about that,” says Margaret Banacos. “He just wanted to write a nice piece of music for his friend.”
For more information on “Keep Swingin’,” go to garrydial.com/keepswingin.
Noah Schaffer can be reached at [email protected].