KENT, Conn.—Jazz flutist Ali Ryerson has performed at important venues all over the world and now Kent will have a chance to hear her perform in person when her quartet appears at St. Andrew’s Church Sunday, Nov. 14, at 3 p.m. as part of the Music in the Nave series.
The afternoon of jazz and bossa nova varies from the norm for Music in the Nave, according to director Matt Harris. First, it will be the first performance by a jazz quartet in recent history, and second, the date for the performance is later than usually scheduled.
“We haven’t had a jazz performance since I have been on the board,” Harris said. “We have talked about it, but we never seemed to know someone.”
But Ryerson was, in fact, hiding in plain sight. Now a resident of Florida, she says she identifies with the Northeast, and most specifically with Kent and its environs.
“This is a homecoming,” she said in a phone interview. “I was born in New York and grew up in Armonk, but my parents bought a summer home on Candlewood Lake and later we moved to Sherman. I had my first two years of high school in New Milford.”
She attended WestConn, where she and her brothers studied music, and owned a home in Brookfield for 25 years. She has deep connections to Kent through family and friends that live there and one of the musicians in her quartet, Larry Ham, performs regularly at the Fife ‘n Drum.
So, it is perhaps a surprise that such an important and prolific artist as Ryerson flew under the radar for so many years before coming to the attention of the Music in the Nave committee. It is an oversight they have hastened to correct.
“She turns out to be an important flutist with five decades of performing under her belt,” Harris said. “She lives in Florida and tours extensively, but it turned out we could book her on Nov. 14 after she performs in Schenectady. We’re lucky she will breeze through town between gigs.”
Ryerson is coming to Kent buoyed by the success of her latest album, “The Ali Ryerson Quartet,” which has garnered four Grammy nominations and was a Downbeat Magazine’s Editor’s Pick. Jazz critics have been captivated by the music on the album, described by George W Harris of Jazz Weekly as “palpably hip … mixing sensuous and subtle bossas, finger popping boppers and sublime and mellow modals.”
It received a four-star review in Down Beat, reached Number 3 on the NACC Top 30 jazz charts and was in the top 10 on the U.S. Jazz Charts for multiple weeks.
She will be joined for the Kent concert by members of her quartet, pianist Larry Ham, bassist Lou Pappas and drummer Tom Melito. “The musical chemistry with the four of us is undeniable,” Ryerson said. “We’re a perfect combination. I’m really excited to be able to bring the music from this album and a couple of new things to Kent.”
Ryerson’s musical career started virtually in the cradle. “My father was Art Ryerson, a jazz guitarist who got his start in the 1940s and became a top studio musician playing for New York artists like Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Charlie Parker,” she said. “It was kind of a natural progression for all of us to study music.”
She and her older brothers “all started piano when we were very small,” but Ali went on to choose the flute when she was about 8 years old, receiving private lessons as she grew.
“It was kind of the perfect environment to become a musician,” she said. “We all studied classically and have a traditional background, but because my dad was a jazz player we had dual input.”
They formed a family band when she was still a child and played arrangements written by her father at the 1964 World’s Fair. Even as she played in school bands, she “had an inkling” that she wanted to be a professional flutist.
She studied at WestConn and while in college performed in a jazz rock band. “I would be out until 2 a.m., which made my eight o’clock classes a challenge,” she reported with a laugh. “So, I quit school [and went on the road] with the Billy Fellows Band for four years. We toured up and down the East Coast, and then would play in Vegas for months where we hooked up with popular singers. It was a good life. I was in my early 20s and loving life.”
Her talent shone through and her life flowed seamlessly from one opportunity to another. While performing with the musical duo Sandler & Young, she attended a master class with Julius Baker, who had a distinguished tenure as principal flute in the New York Philharmonic. “He was the most wonderful flutist I had ever heard, and I wanted to be Julius,” she said. It ignited a desire to be a classical musician and she enrolled in the Hartt School of Music in Hartford.
While in school she continued to work with her brother, Rich, who became her musical mentor. “I learned so much from him by listening to him and working beside him,” she said. “We had a little jazz band and I worked at night. The jazz gene was always in play but I was also playing chamber music gigs with my sister-in-law, Franz. So much of my life it’s been a family affair.”
There followed a period of international living, performing and recording in Britain and on the Continent. “I recorded quite extensively in Europe with European musicians,” she recalled. She was booked to tour with legendary jazz violinist Stephane Grapelli, playing with him at Carnegie Hall.
There followed one of those easy transitions in her life. Her performance was observed by Bob Thiele, a music producer who established Red Baron Records. The label was known for producing legendary acts like McCoy Tyner, Duke Ellington and even her father, Art. “He knew my father, so he called him and we arranged a conference call,” Ryerson recalled. “He wanted to sign me to his new label. One thing always led to another.”
Ryerson continued to tour extensively through the years until Covid struck, when she gave up her Brookfield home and move to Florida. During what she calls the “Grand Pause,” a riff on a musical term, she didn’t have to pack a suitcase and contemplated settling down.
She shifted her focus toward online classes with students from all over the world. To answer the challenge of keeping it interesting musically, she started composing jazz solos—contrafacts—which she says is a jazz tradition of creating a new musical composition by writing a fresh melody over the chord progression of a pre-existing song.
The new album includes some of these contrafacts. “At the first post-Covid gig I accepted in Santa Fe, I sent ahead some of the solos so my pianist could play them in unison with me,” she said. “It became a real thing. Last year, when I decided I wanted to record an album, I decided I wanted to do it with this band. I had played with Larry Ham many times over the years, and over the last four or five years it has jelled into my New England quartet. Larry, Lou and Tom became my rhythm section. Kent audiences know Larry very well from the Fife ‘n Drum.”
Ryerson said she is looking forward to appearing in Kent, where she feels at home.
St. Andrew’s Church is located at 1 Main Street. Tickets for the concert are $20 and are available here.
