JOSITOBO Curates a Jazz Concert Experience in West Windsor

Jazz has distinct origins in blues and ragtime, but the genre’s ever-evolving melodies change shape across the continuum of music and exert a multidimensional pull unique to each performance.

Four regional jazz musicians will be finding their groove at West Windsor Arts, which presents “A Musical Journey in Space and Time,” a live concert experience featuring John Henry Goldman of StraightJazz Productions and his new band, JOSITOBO, on Friday, April 5, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the West Windsor Arts building, 952 Alexander Road, in West Windsor.

Overseen by Goldman, a jazz trumpeter and West Windsor resident, StraightJazz Productions has been combining musical performance and education in the tri-state area for more than 20 years. Its latest project is JOSITOBO, a quartet composed of Goldman and three other Mercer County musicians, including Sim Cain of Princeton on percussion, Tom Tallitsch of Hopewell on tenor saxophone, and Wilbo Wright of West Windsor on upright bass.

The recently formed group—whose name is an eight-letter acronym of its members’ first names with the “Jo” from John Henry, “Si” from Sim, “To” from Tom, and “Bo” from Wilbo — plans to record and produce an album together in the future, but has decided to start with a trio of live performances.

The upcoming WWA show is the second of three JOSITOBO concerts scheduled for this spring, which debuted on March 16 at Live@Lew’s in Princeton and will wrap up on Saturday, May 11, at Salon 33 in West Windsor, both of which home concert venues.

Tickets for the April 5 show are $10 for WWA members and $12 for the public. Goldman said that he intentionally arranged the show with WWA so that once the musicians received “modest” compensation, all proceeds from sponsorship and attendance will support the nonprofit arts council. To register in advance, see the page for the event on the WWA website, westwindsorarts.org.

The program features both original compositions and handpicked pieces from the libraries of legendary composers, Goldman said.

Jazz icons Thelonious Monk (“Brilliant Corners”) and Ornette Coleman (“Congeniality”), for example, are recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, while Wayne Shorter (“Witch Hunt”) earned the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, according to the concert materials. Others like Herbie Hancock (“Dolphin Dance”), he continued, have won 14 Grammy Awards, while Cedar Walton (“I’m Not So Sure”) was honored as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

These figures, Goldman explained, are those whose creative contributions to the craft have catapulted them to stardom with a program “rooted in the genius of the great composers of music.”

To hear the group rehearse “Swaziland” by Jamaican composer and ska pioneer Ernest Ranglin, stay tuned until the end of Goldman’s YouTube video highlighting two decades of StraightJazz Productions performances on his channel, youtube.com/@johnhenrygoldman1851.

Ranglin notably played guitar in many of the genre’s earliest recordings, and like all the other artists featured in the JOSITOBO concert lineup, these musical contributions earned him considerable acclaim, including an Order of Distinction from the Jamaican government.

JOSITOBO has intentionally included works by masters of the genre that can be “very challenging” to perform, Goldman added, but encourages the audience to “relate” to the quartet during the show, establishing a dialogue unique to the concert experience.

This warm environment is fostered by the back-and-forth interaction between the performers and the audience, as Goldman says in a statement on the WWA website, where the two forces share an experience of sonic expression that transcends the physical boundaries between stage and crowd.

“We’ll joke amongst ourselves or make little comments or witticisms, before or after, with the audience,” he said. “It’s relaxed, and it’s playful, and we like to laugh, and we like when the people who are there laugh, and so that type of repartee is typical.”

Audiences can also expect the program’s unorthodox, free-flowing framework to encompass short stories, prose, and poetry. According to Goldman, this could mean sharing an anecdote about an original song’s name or inspiration, as well as providing context for another work by quoting its famous creator.

As a writer himself, Goldman admitted that he is prone to launching into what he described as “prose-try,” or prose-poetry, which communicates a theme of the concert to introduce the piece.

The band members will also get to showcase their individual talents through improvisational solo stages towards the end of the concert, where the audience “can just concentrate and see one person playing their instrument,” Goldman explained, in a very “intimate” and “direct” experience.

While the section itself is planned as part of the program, Goldman says the performances are always spontaneous, with the artists able to riff off of an existing song or create something new.

The JOSITOBO members’ featured original compositions are Tallitsch’s “Slippery Rock,” “Rain,” “Rust Belt,” and “La Tortuga,” Goldman’s “The Wind River Mountains of Wyoming,” and Wright’s “Scrawl.” For more information and the full set list, visit the StraightJazz Productions website at straightjazz.com.

Goldman, who has lived in West Windsor for nearly 50 years, has taken on many roles in the community in addition to being a longtime jazz trumpeter, such as music teacher, basketball coach, and even a Pilates instructor, according to his biography on the WWA website.

Described as a “veteran organizer and producer of concerts,” Goldman says his decision to form a quartet with the members of JOSITOBO, all of whom have ties to Central New Jersey, came from a growing desire to explore new musical territory.

Just as he had worked with these local musicians in various configurations over the course of their careers, Goldman considered how a performance might change without the use of typical chord instruments like the piano or guitar, which, according to his biography on the WWA website, “produce a density of sound by playing many notes at the same time.”

In the absence of other instruments, Goldman could create a project “founded in the art of listening and the creative impulses found in space and time.”

With that openness in mind, Goldman envisioned a concert in which he could actively listen and hear the juxtaposition of instruments on stage, especially the saxophone — and fortunately, having first played with Tallitsch last year in Hopewell bandleader James Popik’s “festival jazz” project, Supernova, Goldman had just the person for the role.

Goldman explained that jazz often uses show tunes and popular music as its foundation, and JOSITOBO plans to embrace that while emphasizing the importance of sharing the members’ original compositions with the crowd.

“Jazz improvisation, to me, represents the highest form of musical application and composition,” Goldman said. “That’s for me, personally, as a musician. But even if I’m just playing something that I’ve played 100 times, every time I’ve played it, it’s as if I’m playing it for the first time. I’m never just letting it roll off unconsciously or automatically; I’m investing everything I have into it. Whether I’m playing somebody else’s music composition note-for-note or making something up on the spot, that’s entirely my own. The way it feels inside is the same. It’s a complete immersion, and sharing, and opening up of something that comes from the inside. It’s always in the present moment.”

Compositions like the ones featured in the program have “beautiful” melodies and harmonies, Goldman said. “They’re great material to play and to share, and then also to use as a springboard for improvisation — which by definition is spontaneous composition — and the improvisation can and should at times let the listener remember what melodies gave birth to it, and the harmonies in and of themselves will give birth to new melodies,” he added.

Relationships between the group vary — some, like Wright and Cain, have played together for 40 years, while others previously crossed paths or ran in similar circles. Yet to achieve this vision of harmonious horns, “the interweaving pulse of bass and drums, gospel, funk, blues, reggae, the cutting edge of jazz, the enchantment of ballads,” according to the program, JOSITOBO members rely on one another to forge these connections in rhythm.

Named one of the state’s 12 “greatest drummers” by the Asbury Park Press in 2016, Cain most notably toured with former Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins as a member of the now-defunct hard rock group the Rollins Band from 1987 to 1997.

The London-born percussionist grew up in Princeton from the age of three, where he and bassist Andrew Weiss attended Princeton High School and first formed the instrumental act “Regressive Aid” with the late guitarist William Tucker.

Later reborn as “Scornflakes,” the band regularly played at venues like the City Gardens, Trenton’s prime punk rock nightclub that closed in 2001. Regressive Aid paved the way for Weiss and Cain to team up with Black Flag founder Greg Ginn for the punk-jazz trio “Gone.”

After Black Flag broke up, Rollins recruited the two, as well as guitarist Chris Haskett, to complete the Rollins Band in 1987. The Grammy-nominated group fused alternative metal, jazz, punk, and funk influences with songs like “Liar” and “Low Self Opinion” before dissolving, then returning with several lineup changes.

The original members, including Cain, reunited briefly in 2006, but the group is now on an indefinite hiatus. Never wavering in his commitment to rhythm, Cain has continued to play and tour with musical acts such as Hubert Sumlin, the Billy Hector Band, Ween, Golden Smog, and others in the years since.

Tallitsch, a Cleveland native who lived in Hamilton Township for more than a decade before moving to Hopewell, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator. Although he has 11 albums to his name as a performing saxophonist, Tallitsch’s other tools of the trade include woodwinds like clarinet and flute, piano, guitar, and drums.

Tallitsch teaches music both privately and at a multitude of regional institutions, such as Mercer County Community College — where he hosts “The Modern Jazz Radio Show” on the WWFM station JazzOn2 — the Westminster Conservatory, and currently at both the Princeton Junior School and the Princeton Child Development Institute.

Described as a “genre-hopping bass player” with skills on both the upright and electric versions of the instrument, Willard “Wilbo” Wright is a bandleader, composer, and teacher who grew up on his family’s tree farm in Dutch Neck, West Windsor, which he continues to operate today.

After attending Princeton High School for one year, Wright transferred to what is now known as West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South and was named the class president of the institution’s first graduating class in 1976, according to a U.S. 1 feature story by Richard Skelly in November 2012.

Wright went on to graduate from the Berklee College of Music and moved to Trenton, where he helped organize the Trenton Avant Garde Festival for the experimental arts scene. Wilbo Wright joined the post-rock, funk, and electronica band Ui (pronounced “ooo-ee”) in 1993, and although the group officially disbanded, they recently reunited for a performance at their record label, the Numero Group’s, 20th Anniversary Music Festival in Los Angeles last year.

Wright is also a DJ at WPRB Princeton 103.3 FM, where he has hosted the weekly freeform radio station program “The Clothesline,” which plays on Tuesdays at noon, since 1988.

In the program materials, Goldman reiterates that JOSITOBO “aspires to spin gold out of straw, to make something new and spontaneous, to stand on the unmatchable creativity and lifetimes of work of our predecessors and fill the air with the spirit of sound and beat, consonance and struggle, teamwork and individuality, unbridled originality and exploration.”

But the jazz quartet, no matter the metal spun or mettle used, will take the West Windsor Arts audience on a melodic voyage through the steady beats of bass, horns, and drums bonded in space and time.

A Musical Journey in Space and Time, West Windsor Arts Council, 952 Alexander Road, West Windsor. Friday, April 5, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. $12; $10 members. 609-716-1931 or www.westwindsorarts.org.