SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Spyro Gyra to close Summer Arts Festival

Group doesn't apologize for its brand of soft jazz.

Just when you thought the civil war in jazz was over, you meet Arturo Sandoval — and realize some people will never be able to forgive those on the other end of a soprano sax.

I just happened to be backstage in 2004 when the Cuban trumpet great was between sets at the Summer Arts Festival.

AUDIO: Listen to Spyro Gyra perform "Spyro Time"

So were a couple of jocks from a Dayton "smooth jazz" station, whose presence in the green room was announced.

"I (expletive) hate smooth jazz," Sandoval openly declared.

On Saturday, when those guys from the smooth jazz station return to Veterans Park, they should find a much more welcoming environment.

Spyro Gyra, closing the annual festival at 8 p.m., helped create the easy, breezy genre.

But founding saxophonist Jay Beckenstein is aware that Spyro Gyra still sports the jazz world's scarlet letter.

It's something the 55-year-old from Brooklyn has made peace with — on his way to the bank with his cut of 11 million albums.

"There was a long period of time where we were the band that real traditional jazz critics loved to point at as the end of Western civilization," Beckenstein confessed by phone last week. "There came a point when I said, 'Well, so be it. If it's not jazz, it's not jazz.'

"It doesn't take away from the integrity and sincerity and artistry of the music."

So what's the big fuss, you ask?

Well, if you were to press a guy like Sandoval, he'd probably tell you smooth jazz is jazz in name only — the kind of glossy, poppy instrumental music you hear while getting your teeth cleaned.

And people can't get enough of it (the music, not the teeth cleaning). Spyro Gyra has one platinum and two gold LPs to its name, and even hit the Top 40 in 1979 with "Morning Dance."

That's an impressive track record for anybody in jazz whose name is not Kenny G.

But Beckenstein never intended to goad the jazz scene like the later Mr. G.

"I always saw, my own personal vision of it way back when, was that in every way, it was attached to the jazz world, that it came from the jazz tradition and was embedded in the jazz tradition and what we were doing was appropriate," he said.

But in 1978, when Spyro Gyra — flippantly named after the alga spirogyra by college biology major Beckenstein — officially debuted on record, jazz fusion still was relatively new.

True to the name, the great Miles Davis had been among the first to, well, fuse jazz with rock and R&B on the epic "Bitches Brew" in 1970.

Bands like Weather Report and Return to Forever then took their cues from Miles, and Spyro Gyra then took their cues from them. (By this point, Miles wouldn't have recognized his own creation.)

"I grew up with music that was always willing to change and embrace other styles," Beckenstein explained. "I grew up with Dizzy Gillespie playing Latin music and John Coltrane playing Broadway songs.

"So I was very disappointed when, somehow, as we came along, they said, 'Well, yes, that was what jazz was, but not anymore.' "

With nine Grammy nominations, Beckenstein and Spyro Gyra have been undeterred. With two dozen albums, the band released another new one, "Wrapped in a Dream," earlier this year.

"There's a cut on this record, 'Wrapped in a Dream,' that's five guys setting up, first take, what you hear is what you get," Beckenstein said. "Couldn't be more jazz."

»Spyro Gyra plays Veterans Park, rain or shine, at 8 p.m. Saturday to close the Summer Arts Festival. Admission is free. Call 324-2712 for more information.