Coles got to hang out with the latter musician through a mutual friend, and he and Brown played with Noel in his last gig in 2019 when Noel was 91, at Blu Jazz+ in Akron. He was inspired by two of the late greats of the Howard Street jazz era, Akron saxophonists Jim Noel and Waymon "Punchy" Atkinson. "Jazz, as far as I know in Akron, has always been a place where great minds gather and exchange ideas and hear what other people are doing all over the country." "Howard Street was the absolute beacon for Black culture and arts in Akron," said saxophonist Coles of Cuyahoga Falls. "The more I learn, OK, yes, I have to keep this jazz festival and pay tribute for the city to those people that had built this spirit already."īrown has been thinking about one day creating a place or an online home where people can learn about Akron's jazz history and see artifacts from the era. It makes our jazz festival more relevant" in Akron, where the jazz scene defined the Black community, Brown said. Jazz club: Akron musicians break in jazz club
But it's difficult to find much documentation on how the Howard Street jazz era had ended by the 1970s. Nine jazz clubs were on Howard Street, part of the Midwest jazz circuit, Brown said. That's what Howard Street represented and that's what we want to represent at the school, is that this is a safe place to learn music and to bring our ideas together." "This music, jazz, it comes from the Black community but it's for everybody. They owned it," Brown said of the Black community. "Even though it didn't look as glamorous as other parts of the city, it was theirs. that were actually just Black areas where there were businesses and people felt safe," Brown said of Howard Street. "There weren't many developments in the U.S. 'Jazz, as far as I know in Akron, has always been a place where great minds gather and exchange ideas'īrown, a founder and artistic director of the annual Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival in Akron, has been taking a deep dive into Akron's Howard Street jazz history over the last eight months, doing interviews and learning more through regional historians about the jazz district that was wiped out by the 1970s in the name of urban renewal. "I felt like the spirit (of Howard Street) lived on and helped me gravitate more toward doing more for the community," said Brown, 35, a Zanesville native who came to Akron in 2005 for his undergraduate jazz studies at the University of Akron. "It's extremely important because any history gives us relevance for what we're doing" as jazz artists, said pianist Brown of Akron.
The city's rich jazz history, which earned Howard Street the moniker "The Harlem of Akron," is a point of cultural importance to Akron's Black community.Īkron Jazz Fest: Akron Jazz Fest to take over former Innerbelt for a unique concert venue Black entertainers stayed at the Matthews Hotel, owned by influential Black hotel proprietor George Mathews. The university is working to rejuvenate the music school's jazz program in a town once known as the "Jazz Corridor of the Midwest," where jazz clubs on North Howard Street were a popular stop in the 1930s and '40s for musicians including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong to perform in while traveling between New York and Chicago. In a city steeped in jazz history, local jazz musicians Theron Brown and Chris Coles, both University of Akron alumni and active performing and teaching artists throughout Northeast Ohio, have been hired as full-time professors to revamp UA's jazz program.
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