Mr. Ruzow's opus
Whatever he means by improvisation, it makes no difference to the kids. They're just psyched to bang on the drums and xylophones he's set up around the music-room trailer. But to Roger Ruzow, trumpeter for the Gold Sparkle Band, Atlanta's most notable contribution to the world of free jazz -- the guy who birthed this weekend's Jump to the Eyedrum improvisational music festival -- it's a term of immense relevance.
Improvisation is more than just the modus operandi of his Gold Sparkle music, or his work in other groups, including the Nu South Creative Ensemble and Ensemble Elastique. And it's more than just his most beloved pet lesson -- the one where he puts on Sun Ra's "Outer Spaceways Incorporated" and instructs his first-graders to "move how you think this sounds."
Improvisation is the dynamic that has steered Ruzow's life since 1998 (if not earlier), the year his fellow core Gold Sparkle members, Charles Waters and Andrew Barker, left Atlanta for the more fertile out-jazz terrain of New York. It's also the year Ruzow learned that his vision problems were actually the early stages of Multiple Sclerosis.
Tied to Atlanta -- first by a relationship that has since faded into history, then out of a need to keep his health insurance, and now, out of a refusal to write off his adopted city as the wasteland of avant-garde music it may well be -- Ruzow became the Gold Sparkle bandmate who stayed behind. But in a crafty bit of improvisation, he's made the most of the unexpected direction his life has taken, and in the process established himself as one of the few veterans of Atlanta's fringe music scene still active in furthering the city's creative life. Citing a familiar bit of folksy advice -- which he pointedly attributes to blind free-jazzer Rahsaan Roland Kirk -- Ruzow says, "When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade."
Between the second-grade improv session and a meeting with a group of fourth-graders, Ruzow discusses the two projects he's most enthusiastic about these days. First, there's the band program he's reintroducing at Hendrix. The school has been without one for about two decades, due to the same sort of budget cuts that have scaled back arts education throughout the country. To pay for instruments, Ruzow researched grants and found a donor in country star Chely Wright's Reading, Writing & Rhythm Foundation. With a crop of horns and woodwinds secured, he recruited seven fourth-graders to charter the Hendrix Drive Band.
His second major undertaking is the Jump to the Eyedrum festival, this weekend's two-day cavalcade featuring more than a dozen improvisational music groups -- local and regional acts (including the Flakes, Konx and Chattanooga's Shakin' Ray Levis) as well as those affiliated with Brooklyn's Jump Arts collective (Daniel Carter, Tom Abbs, Sabir Mateen and poet Steve Dalachinsky). Of course, the Gold Sparkle Band also will perform, with Ruzow and his three New York-based bandmates: Waters, Barker and bassist Adam Roberts.
When Ruzow came up with the idea of an improvisational music festival, he made two key calls: to Eyedrum, the downtown arts space where he often debuts his "comprovisations" (mixing composing and improvisation), and to Waters, his bandmate and close friend. In the four years since leaving Atlanta, Waters has become deeply entrenched in New York's out-jazz scene, both as a musician (with William Parker's Little Huey Orchestra, Butch Morris Orchestra and Assif Tsahar), and as a curator for various arts groups and festivals. Waters, who is affiliated with Jump Arts, contacted Jump head Tom Abbs, who used the Southern invitation as a chance to plan the organization's first-ever road tour.
In essence, Jump to the Eyedrum unifies the fractured worlds of the Gold Sparkle Band, a group that continues to exist despite its members having lived hundreds of miles apart for four years now, with no end -- for the group or the separation -- in sight. Like any long- distance relationship, sustaining momentum and communication is tough, but group members have struck a balance that works best for them as individuals.
Asked whether Ruzow's absence is a source of frustration, Waters says, "Bluntly, yes. The real missing part is his voice and understanding of how the group works. He is very responsible for the Gold Sparkle Band aesthetic -- and that's what Barker and I miss most."
Waters expresses admiration for the "beautifully stubborn" personality that keeps Ruzow doing things his own way. He also appreciates the fact that his bandmate has the opportunity to do the things most people in their 30s do -- like buy a house, something Waters and Barker could never afford in New York. But staying in Atlanta was not an option for either. "There's only such a level you can get to," Waters says of creative life in this city, "because you need other players, older players, to inspire you."
Ruzow, on the other hand, relishes each chance he gets to go to New York, play with his bandmates, and sit in with other great musicians Waters and Barker deal with regularly. But, he says, "New York is tough, and I'm not sure I'm in love with it enough to live there. Plus, there's so much in New York. One of the things I love about Atlanta is that you can make whatever you want of it. It's Promethian. You plunge your hands in the mud and come out with clay, and you shape something out of it and see if it walks. If it doesn't, then you just do something else."
When Ruzow followed Waters, his roommate at Boone, N.C.'s Appalachian State University, to Atlanta in 1994, they carved a niche where one hadn't existed. With Atlanta native Barker and a series of bassists, they formed the Gold Sparkle Band and began playing gigs almost immediately. While ostensibly a jazz group, Gold Sparkle had little contact with the city's mainstream jazz scene. And with no local free jazz scene in town (to their knowledge), they aligned themselves from the start with experimental, left-of-center rock-oriented acts such as Smoke, Flap, the Jody Grind and Seely.
By the time Waters and Barker left Atlanta four years later, Gold Sparkle had put out a handful of releases, amassed a respectable local following and done enough touring to cultivate a national reputation. Ruzow, meanwhile, had immersed himself in volunteer work at the Southern Center for Human Rights and decided that, with his bandmates leaving town, he'd go to law school and become a death-penalty lawyer.
But pre-law courses and SCHR work kept his playing to a minimum, and Ruzow saw how this change in direction would eventually require cutting off music entirely.
"One day I was sitting there, playing some music on the CD player, and it occurred to me that if I go do [law], the only music I'll be playing is when I put CDs in and press 'play,'" he recalls. "I realized that, as much as I love [working with the SCHR], all the people there work 50-60 hours a week -- that's the kind of incredible work they do. I realized it was A or B, and I knew I had to stay with music."
At a loss for a way to keep playing while supplementing the "hundreds of pennies a week" he was making as a free-jazz trumpeter in Atlanta, Ruzow chanced upon a job fair at Perimeter College. That, in turn, led to an interview for the job at Hendrix Drive Elementary, a school attended primarily by low-income families and children of recent Latin American and Asian immigrants. While memories of his own music teachers turned him off initially, he decided to give the job a shot.
Now Ruzow is about to complete his second school year at Hendrix. And he speaks with the assurance of someone who's found his calling.
"I love teaching," he says. "Going up and playing with [GSB] is amazing too, and I want to do that. But this is a totally different kind of satisfaction. You don't do it for the money, or the prestige or fame. You do it because you love it, or because you have to."
In Atlanta, Ruzow appears regularly at Eyedrum and other local venues. His Ensemble Elastique -- which has no set lineup -- allows him to write music for a variety of musical aggregations. His occasional Nu South Creative Ensemble is also fluid; a recent performance featured noted local jazzers Woody Williams and Kebbi Williams. Ruzow's M.S. hasn't turned debilitating, though he experiences stretches of partial blindness and undergoes treatment to control the disease.
As for the Gold Sparkle Band, it continues its second life as a permeable unit of musicians and friends -- with Ruzow and without him (as New York's Gold Sparkle Duo and Trio). With the school year soon ending, Ruzow plans on spending part of his summer in New York, playing with the group in support of its just-released fifth album, Fugues & Flowers.
But he'll be back. The kindergarten improvisers and the fledgling Hendrix Drive Band are counting on it -- not to mention the always-struggling experimental music community in this city.
"He really believes in continuing to grow a scene that he's been involved with for years, and seeing what else comes of it," Waters says. "He's really wanting to plant his roots somewhere, and I totally admire him for it. I think he made a really good call for himself."
The Jump to the Eyedrum Improv Festival is held Fri.-Sat., May 3-4, at Eyedrum, 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. The Gold Sparkle Band plays Saturday at 10 p.m. $13 per day; $24 both days. Tickets available at Eyedrum and Wax N Facts Records, 432 Moreland Ave. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.
