George Wein Celebrates Jazz and Joyce

The Newport Jazz Festival founder reflects on his long relationship with Berklee.

October 4, 2007
By Danielle Dreilinger
Berklee.edu Correspondent

	George Wein on stage at Friday's concert.
	Photo by Phil Farnsworth
	"[Berklee] was always a good school. Now it's a great school." —George Wein

For most of the sold-out house, Friday's BeanTown Jazz Festival concert was a gathering of the greats. For festival impresario George Wein, it meant something more. He organized the concert—A Celebration of Jazz and Joyce—to honor his late wife, Joyce Alexander Wein, and start a Berklee scholarship in her name.

With Wein's roots in Boston, BeanTown was a natural home for the concert. "My wife was from Boston and I was from Boston, and my life is music. It's our home. You hope to keep your name alive in your home. But there's also the relationship with Berklee," he said.

Indeed, Wein's involvement with the college goes way back before his 1976 honorary doctorate—to 1950, when Wein opened jazz club Storyville in Copley Square, right near Berklee. The college had started five years before.

From the beginning, the two took advantage of proximity. "I was never involved in the planning of the school per se, [but] Berklee used a lot of musicians and I used a lot of musicians," Wein said. "Herb Pomeroy played with Charlie Parker at the club. Gary Burton ['62] . . . you have had so many musicians coming from Berklee."

Though he wasn't formally involved, Wein poked his head in over the years in ways both small and large. He remembered, "[Lawrence Berk] called me when he brought Toshiko [Akiyoshi] from Japan and asked me to meet them at the airport. We signed [1959 alumnus] Joey Zawinul's papers so he could get a scholarship to come to Berklee." As for making suggestions, "any ideas we had, they were ready to go along with."

Unfortunately, he didn't save much memorabilia. "When you're making history you don't always know it!" he said.

Berklee-affiliated musicians have also performed at Wein's Newport jazz and folk festivals over the decades—most recently Americana singer-songwriter Madi Diaz. Wein met Diaz at the 2007 folk festival and praised her performance.

The college missed out on an even closer connection to the Newport festivals, though. "One time Larry and I were [considering] buying the Doris Duke estate to establish a summer home for Berklee—establishing the school with Newport. I went with him and showed him the estate. It didn't happen. Now you can't afford it!"

Wein has high praise for the current president, Roger H. Brown. "He's a tremendous guy. He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met."

He also admires the college's effort to cover a wider range of musical genres. He explained, "It's broadened its approach. In the '50s it was mostly music of the '50s. It was always a good school. Now it's a great school."

So when Brown asked Wein to get involved in BeanTown, the time seemed perfect.

"I've always wanted to do something for Berklee. I had never had any concert in [Joyce's] memory. I figured it would let me establish the scholarship fund and at the same time do something for the school," Wein said.

The Joyce Alexander Wein Endowed Scholarship will support a talented minority student with financial need. Wein paid the expenses for the concert, he said, and all proceeds went to the scholarship fund. "The money is doing twice its job," he explained.

The day before the excitement started, Wein was full of anticipation. "It's going to be a fantastic concert." Thinking about his wife, he said, "She'd be very proud. All of her thinking is in this."

Performers cheered each other on during George Wein's concert-closing remarks. From left, Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, Michel Camilo, Claudia Acuña, Geri Allen, Jimmy Cobb, Lizz Wright, Roy Haynes, and Wein. Photo by Phil Farnsworth

Danielle Dreilinger is a writer/editor in Berklee's Office of Communications.