New to the Midwest: Trumpet Mafia picks up some regional splendor at Jazz Kitchen

Trumpet Mafia in full cry, with leader Ashlin Parker second from left.

An open weekend date on the Jazz Kitchen schedule is not easy to find, especialliy on short notice, but John Raymond was grateful to have nailed one Friday night while Trumpet Mafia, an ensemble from New Orleans, was nearby and open to a further opportunity for its high-powered blare.

Raymond, professor of jazz trumpet  on the faculty of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, spoke proudly of his impresario role in securing the gig, in which the mafiosi included some of his students plus young Indianapolis trumpeters of professional stature Sam Butler and Kent Hickey, plus a well-established jazz educator and trumpet guru,  Scott Belck of Cincinnati. 

Anchoring the front line  were New Orleans trumpeters Ashlin Parker and Bijon Watson. All told, there were 11 trumpeters ranked along the front of the Jazz Kitchen bandstand. It became a decent dozen at the end, when Indianapolis native Pharez Whitted was invited to come center stage and take the main solo in the set-ending "Caravan." 

Ashlin Parker was the genial master of ceremonies and chief cheerleader for his colleagues, encouraging maximum audience response to the solos. After a fanfare composed by modern trumpet saint Roy Hargrove, Trumpet Mafia charged fully ahead with Eddie Harris' "Freedom Jazz Dance," powered to the left and right behind them by pianist Chris Pitts and drummer Dorian Phelps, two locals who were at their most exuberant throughout the first set.

There was a wealth of thunder and scatteration in the solos, but some welcome discipline in the ensemble passages. Considerable relief was afforded by the sensitive arrangement of "Flamenco Sketches," which is known mainly from the landmark 1959 Miles Davis recording, "Kind of Blue." Thus the appearance contributed to the Davis centennial celebrations.

Some of Parker's formative years as a musician were recalled in a rendition of "Swinging at the Haven," a well-known piece by Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the New Orleans jazz family  and influential educator, a victim of the pandemic in  2020.  The performance included an exciting episode that was the set's closest thing to a "cutting contest," a competitive joust of alternating solos by Parker and Raymond. There was something similar later in Freddie Hubbard's "Povo, "when Jeff Parker (no relation, perhaps) tilted lances during a series of high-flying exchanges with  Bijon Watson.

Way back in the early 1970s, I endured the loudest jazz concert I've ever attended. It was by a short-lived jazz-rock group called Chase, whose distinctive feature was four trumpets in the front line, led by recent Woody Herman sideman Bill Chase. The leader was unfortunately one among several of his colleagues who died in a plane crash in 1974, not long after the ensemble set my ears back in Flint, Michigan. Now, mind you: Chase deserved to find its way in the jazz-rock trend a little longer than it did, so I'm not remotely suggesting there was some poetic justice in the band's untimely demise.

And I hasten to add that there was more nuance in the Jazz Kitchen amplification of Trumpet Mafia than the out-to-prove-a-point, deafening loudness of Chase, the bells of four horns plunged into the microphones.  Still, it was hard to escape the.reminder that Friday's bravura stint here by Trumpet Mafia provided of the auditory assault long ago. My memory'e ears are still ringing a half-century later.