Spreading the gospel of jazz in country’s home

Nashville Jazz Workshop back after an untimely intermission

Friday, October 20, 2023, Vol. 47, No. 43
By Colleen Creamer

The Nashville Jazz Workshop, a foundry for all things jazz in Middle Tennessee, has been an ambitious undertaking since co-founders married couple Lori Mechem and Roger Spencer opened the NJW back in 1998.

For the last three years, the organization’s yearly fundraiser, Jazzmania, has been held virtually, but it’s back live and in person Oct. 21 with a notable lineup performing at Liberty Hall in the Factory at Franklin.

When Spencer and Mecham arrived in Nashville, a jazz show could barely qualify as an anomaly. Now jazz is celebrated across the city, accommodating an amassing population not only from throughout the country but across the globe.

Mechem is the workshop’s director of education and founder, and Spencer is the artistic director and founder. The two forerunners of the city’s jazz scene have slowly watched Music City finally live up to its moniker.

But it’s been a long haul.

“When we first started this 25 years ago, there really wasn’t anything but us and F Scott’s (F. Scott’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar, which closed in 2014),” says Mecham. “What we are seeing in the past five to seven years is a lot of musicians moving here. It’s heading into a new direction where more restaurants and clubs are featuring jazz, and that is great because it’s been fragmented for so long.

“We are probably in the best era that we have ever been in. I mean, we have been here 35 years, and so we have seen a lot.”

Both have had prominent careers as musicians and teachers. Mechem, a pianist and educator, has performed with a long list of artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Red Holloway and Houston Person. She also taught commercial piano and several classes at Belmont University for nine years.

Spencer, a bassist, has toured and recorded with such artists as Les Brown, Rosemary Clooney and Bill Holman and taught at Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University for 21 years.

They opened the NJW in 1998 as the Nashville Jazz Institute, a democratic approach to jazz education for students and/or enthusiasts of all ages and at all levels of musicianship.

The Workshop is a nonprofit organization, so its yearly fundraiser has been critical in keeping the lights on and creating new programs. This year’s Jazzmania will feature the Nashville Youth Jazz Ensemble, Pat Coil Trio with special guest Bob Shepard and vocalist Wendy Moten.

And though the pandemic shelved in-person classes, Mechem says, it widened the workshop’s reach for potential students.

“We had to start teaching online and that brought us wonderful vocalists and instrumentalists from all over,” Mechem says. “We were getting pretty major cabaret singers from New York, from Miami and from Los Angeles. They were coming for these intensive weekends we schedule now. We have now taught students in 14 countries and 35 states.”

The NJW reopened their doors for in-person classes and performances in July 2021 in their new location on Buchanan Street. Since then, they continue to offer instrumental ensemble classes, vocal technique, vocal literature and improvisation. Recently they added weekend intensives (Jazz Set) for vocalists that have attracted students from all over the country.

“We are hitting on all cylinders right now,” Mechem says. “One thing that we were missing was programming for small children. Jazz AM, a series of free Saturday morning programs, offers an interactive jazz concert for young people featuring music, puppets, improvisation, rhythm and movement.”

The program, facilitated by trained professionals and jazz musicians, will engage students, encourage creativity, promote collaboration, and build musical awareness for children ages 2-10 and their families.

The Workshop offers listening courses, ensemble studies, master classes in voice and instrument, though the curriculum is generally developing. There also are programs aimed at youth such as Jazz on the Move. In 2022, the NJW moved to a larger facility at 1012 Buchanan Street in the ever-growing Buchanan Arts District after two decades in Germantown.

The heart of the new facility is its venue, The Jazz Cave, where NJW students play along with local and touring musicians and vocalists.

“NJW started off as a school,” Spencer says. “But when we built the performance stage for the students, the local pros who’d been teaching with us saw the stage and said why aren’t we also playing here? So we started doing some live jazz around 2003.

“Currently, we tend to book local jazz artists, and encourage them to frame their concerts as something that you would not ordinarily see in other jazz clubs. A lot of the folks who play at the workshop play the other venues, too. When they come in here, they realize they are doing a 90-minute concert, so they put together a concept like the music of a particular artist.”

And, like the Bluebird Cafe and other music rooms in Nashville where talking is frowned upon, the Jazz Cave has a similar policy. Still, a night of music at the venue is usually lively; imbibing alcohol is not frowned upon.

“A lot of people love bringing a really good bottle of wine, and we also suggest that they can bring their own snacks. For the price, you get a lot,” Mechem says. “Unlike most places where you hear blenders and constant chatter, we are a listening room with a hush policy. We want to give our customers the best possible experience of hearing great jazz.”

Spencer and Mechem’s genesis story has them meeting in 1987 in Los Angeles, where Mechem had moved after college. Spencer had been ready to leave for a while, so the coupling dovetailed into an asset for Nashville.

“She disliked the place immediately, and I was about done with it. I just found myself playing club gigs and going on the road to make money and doing an occasional TV, record or movie date,” says Spencer. “We did our research and settled on Nashville.”

Renowned music critic Ron Wynn, who has written about jazz, blues and roots music for decades, has witnessed the duo’s contributions to jazz in Nashville across time.

“They have been mentors on and off the bandstand to dozens of artists,” Wynn says. “No one has done more locally to create performance opportunities and space for jazz artists, provide resources for their academic training and professional growth and act as passionate advocates for the music than Roger Spencer and Lori Mechem.”

They are, of course, the first people players and vocalists reach out to when they get to Nashville, says Spencer. Often, he adds, sometimes they forget that the NJW is a working school.

“A lot of people see us on the internet and they see ‘jazz venue’ but we are teaching three or four nights a week, and I get a lot of major artists contacting me wanting to play,” Spencer says. “Someone will say to me ‘I’ve got a Tuesday night in November on my way through town. Can we book a concert’? I have to tell them no because we’re teaching that night.”

The nonprofit offers three-week classes, six-week classes, as well as one-day and three-day intensives. They also offer a certificate program for vocalists and instrumentalists.

“It’s easier for people to commit to three weeks during the summer, and then when we get into the fall, we do six weeks,” she says. “We are primarily doing instrumental, ensemble and improvisational classes. We have an extensive vocal department, the only one in the country doing the complete Great American Songbook Series year-round,” referring to the significant 20th-century American jazz standards, popular songs, and show tunes.

The NJW’s three-week listening classes, says Spencer, are for jazz enthusiasts who want a quick and condensed dive into an era or genre.

“Sometimes I will focus on a genre. I’ll do big band and in six three-hour classes, I’ll go all the way from the beginning of big bands to right up to today,” he adds.

Mechem says she is most proud of the NJW’s partnerships with varying organizations in the community such as the Frist Art Museum, Nashville Public Library, Music for Seniors and Cheekwood Estate & Gardens. The Workshop also partners with Metro Nashville schools.

“We also have a summer camp for middle school and high school students,” Mechem says. “We partner with the Nashville Youth Jazz Ensemble during the school year providing them space every Sunday afternoon where they rehearse with a big band. We also get students taking classes from local colleges and universities.”

Wanting no jazz lover left behind, regardless of age, the organization gives the city’s senior citizen cohort an easy way to listen to jazz by accommodating their schedules. Recently, the NJW added a monthly Saturday afternoon matinee for those who don’t like to drive at night.

Spencer and Mechem get a lot done, which begs the question: How is all this accomplished? Mechem deflects a bit: “We also have a very good executive director in Mary Grissim. She has been an incredible leader for us and bringing great things to the Workshop.”

Then she gets to the root of her answer. “Perseverance,” Mechem says.