Under Electric Stars

Shaunda Holloway Photo.

On a recent Tuesday night, Café 9 was a musician’s beehive. The place buzzed with jazz artists and music lovers. Dim lights, low ceilings, small square tables, and band stickers mounted from top to bottom of the stage door set the tone. Seats wove from the stage all the way to the rear. It was a path from the ear to the heart.

If you are a lifelong New Haven resident, you know this spot; maybe you’ve attended so many times it's a second home. Listening to music within its walls is to be transported with tone and base into the future and into the past. And this specific Tuesday night, we in the audience were led into a sacred thread of melody as Haneef Nelson took the stage, and began to alternate between flugelhorn and trumpet using three keys on each. 

Throughout, it was impossible to deny his skill, the band's synchronicity, and musicians’ individual talents. Fellow band members included percussionist Ryan Sands, bassist Conway Campbell Jr., and Andrew Wilcox.

“I was tricked into playing the horn in the seventh grade,” Nelson joked in an interview with the Arts Paper during a break in the performance. “A music teacher told me I had mastered percussion and suggested the trumpet — I never mastered percussion.  She knew I would be able to do it. “ 

And he was, taught by instructors including Jackie McLean. Not only did Nelson become a sought-after musician, but also an educator. Tuesday, he and fellow band members conjured magic and gave a master class from Café 9’s intimate stage, transporting the audience in a language of bass notes, smooth trumpet solos, rumbling percussion and improvised riffs deep enought to cut right to the heart.

To look upon the stage and watch the performers in motion, it was hard not to notice how young each one was—and how seasoned, having performed from childhood into adulthood and been nurtured by legends.

“Everyone is competitive because we all want to get better,” Sands said. It was clear that the band was in sync while each solo moment was perfectly delivered, proving that each musician could stand alone.

When Wilcox sat in front of his keyboard, his fingers became tarantulas, skillfully dancing across the keys. While his understated demeanor suggested a milder performance, the melodies declared otherwise. As the tempo increased just before intermission, Wilcox played with an accelerated intensity.

While he’s a busy soul— teaching in one city and performing in six others—he seemed focused solely on the performance, cool and collected but also fiery at the keys. 

Around him, Sands’ cymbals echoed as drumsticks struck with a thunderous boom!  Rhythms were ignited and so too the audience’s imagination. How could hands and feet coordinate in such a seamless way?  

As they listened intently, fellow musicians sprinkled throughout the audience waited patiently for their opportunity to share their talents. All Tuesday jazz nights, a project of the New Haven Jazz Underground, include a jammy, open mic portion of the evening.  

For Sands, the performance was part of a bigger life’s mission to mentor, which he does from both the stage and in the classroom. After some of New Haven’s greats guided him through—he nodded to the Buster Family, Jeff Fuller, Rex Cadwalder, and Jesse Hameen among others—he sees it as part of his duty to do the same.  

“I make time to mentor.  I was one of them. Someone else showed me the way.  I make time. I’m never going to be too busy to do that,” he said. 

As the night wore on, each  instrument had a sound of its own, and each player had a way of grabbing the audience’s attention. Framed by soft, twinkling white lights, the stage looked like a  starlit sky under the roof of Café 9. Beneath it, Campbell played the upright bass as if it were a percussion instrument.  As he played, his fingers knew every inch of the instrument by memory, making it sound drum-like for a bit before he returned to the strings. 

Jazz, he later said, is at the center of his life. The Harlem-based musician is earning his master’s degree from Manhattan School of Music, and performs in multiple venues in New York City alongside his brother. He lives and breathes the form, drawing inspiration from the fact that “Duke Ellington’s house is right up the street from me,“ he said. 

“My approach to playing is trying to challenge my bandmates and supporting them at the same time,” he said. 

The words echoed as the group continued to play. The future seemed like it was there, at Café 9 on Tuesday evening.  Future legends were in the building. History was happening.  The sign on the far-right wall read: Music For The People. That much was certainly true.

Learn more about upcoming events at Café 9 here. For more information on the work of the New Haven Jazz Underground, visit their Facebook page.