Downtown | International Festival of Arts & Ideas | Jazz | Music | Arts & Culture | Yale-China Association
Al Larriva-Latt Photos.
Finn Wiggins-Henry scat-sang to the jazz standard “Take All of Me.” Sa-ba-da-boo, they enunciated. Sa-la-ba-duh.
Beside them, Cliff Schloss ran his fingers along the neck of his electric guitar, which gleamed under the hot midday sun. The drummer hadn’t yet arrived, so it was just the two of them, slinging sounds across the humid air. A crowd of approximately 30 New Haveners stood on the sidewalk in front of College Street Music Hall, listening. When Wiggins-Henry and Schloss finished, members erupted into applause.
Last Sunday, Hong Kong-based arts organizer and researcher Waillis Lee and a group of three musicians tested out Jazz Orbit, the first ever e-bike-powered jazz platform to hit the streets of New Haven. The structure itself came from Ryan Paxton, executive director of the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop, who designed and fabricated the apparatus with support from the Yale-China Association and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
The platform temporarily met its end when it crashed into a flower pot late Sunday afternoon.
Outfitted with a small piano and drum kit, the platform can bear the weight of about two people. In stylized block text, the words “Jazz Orbit” trail down the side of the piano. Painted on the platform’s surface is a multi-colored geometric design that takes inspiration from a collection of jazz-adjacent paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) collection (Al Held, Jackson Pollack, and Stuart Davis are just a few of the artists Lee mentioned). It’s just about small enough to move down a city sidewalk, so long as there aren’t café tables or newspaper boxes blocking its way.
“I wanted to try out a way to do community engagement,” Lee said. “I believe community is a place for everyone.”
Lee’s idea for the project began to percolate in Hong Kong, while working as a curator at the West Kowloon Cultural District. She came into contact with Kevin Cheung, an designer, upcycler, and avid cyclist, and commissioned him to make a work that drew on his skills in all three arenas. Cheung designed it, and Lee helped out with the administration and executive planning of the project. The result was the “Cycling Piano,” a 60-year-old piano towed by a hand-made tricycle.
Top: Waillis Lee and a fan on Sunday. Bottom: Cyclist Paul Proulx pulls the orbit. Al Larriva-Latt Photos.
When the Yale-China Association brought Lee to New Haven this past January, she took inspiration from her experience with Kevin Cheung to launch her own project. She gathered a constellation of stakeholders, including Paxton, who worked on the Jazz Orbit with a team of two others at the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop. Another partner was YUAG, who she collaborated with to stage a jazz performance during its Sidewalk Studio program earlier this month.
Her goals for the project are three-fold, she said: to activate public space, connect with a variety of community members, and engage with multiple arts disciplines. The single platform encompasses design, engineering, jazz, poetry, and visual art.
Karl Green, a second year graduate student from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, stepped up to the Jazz Orbit sidewalk stage. Attached to his plastic clipboard was the Sonia Sanchez poem “Catch the Fire.” Schloss led him into the performance with a loose guitar rhythm.
“Catch the fire…and live,” Green read, gaining volume and force as he reached the end of the poem.
Top: Karl Green. Bottom: Elias Estabrook, a member of New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation, with Wally, a 10-month-old puppy who_s training to become an emotional support dog.
Green’s voice wove in and out of the guitar notes, the two in conversation. The poet and guitarist were making their own jazz.
“live. / livelivelive,” Green exclaimed. At the poem’s final lines, he thrust his arms into the sky, embodying the power the poem encourages the listener to access.
The inherent musicality of the “Catch the Fire” inspired Green to perform, he said. There’s a jazz-like quality in the way Sanchez extends her words, elongating the sounds like music.
His friend Matthew Elijah Webb, a playwright from the School of Drama, stood beneath the awning of the music hall in support of Green.
New Haveners Judy Holcomb and Laura Burrone, members of the cycling group Outspoken and longtime friends, were thrilled to be in attendance. Burrone, who also is a board member of Elm City Cyclists, was wearing a vintage Arts and Ideas t-shirt from 2019, the last in-person iteration of the festival before the Covid-19 pandemic. She was grateful for the festival’s full in-person return and the ability to share the moment with her cycling community, she said.
Top: Paul Proulx launches the orbit. Bottom: David Joyner. Al Larriva-Latt Photos.
It was time for the Jazz Orbit launch. A team member from the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop took the device off its metal legs, which hold the platform in place when it’s not moving. Paul Proulx, a board member of Elm City Cycling, swung a leg over his e-bike and revved its engine. Then the Jazz Orbit took off, puttering down Chapel St. and then turning down the Chapel St. sidewalk. It was headed down to the YUAG patio for one final performance.
Offstage, New Havener David Joyner leaned against his bike, content. He’s a member of Elm City Cycling and appreciated being out on his bike and in the sunny weather.His black helmet was covered in stickers repping various causes and fandoms, from Black Lives Matter to the Detroit Tigers.
‘This arts thing,” Joyner said. “I think it should go on for a long time. Every year it gets better.”