'I'm a lucky guy': Veteran jazz musician Greg Abate brings show of tunes, chat to cultural center

Greg Abate loves what he does for a living. It’s clear when speaking with the jazz musician that he can’t get enough of it. Not only does he perform all over the world, he is also an active teacher and is dedicated to spreading his knowledge and joy related to music.

“I’m a lucky guy to be able to play my music and make a living (doing it),” Abate says, decades into the game but still sounding young and full of wonder. “It’s unreal.”

But it is real, and Cape Codders can see that for themselves Saturday when Abate returns to the Cultural Center of Cape Cod to make up for a gig that had been planned for April 2020 but had to be canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abate, a 2016 inductee into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, is a jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, and international recording artist with a wealth of knowledge and stories. When he comes to the Cape, he will be joined by three other musicians – pianist Ben Cook, bassist Todd Baker, and drummer Gary Johnson — for a program titled “Greg Abate Jazz Quartet: Real Jazz in the Moment.”

Abate himself labels his playing as urgent, saying that, “It’s always with consequence. We play the music as the most important thing in the moment at that time.”

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Abate and his trio will perform songs Saturday from the Great American Songbook, bebop standards, and his own originals. Some chatting can be expected, as Abate says he likes to perform but also talk about the music. That comes as no real surprise from the native New Englander, who has made a career out of making the most of the music that surrounds him.

Music and chess with Ray Charles

Born in Fall River, Abate now lives in Rhode Island and once lived on the Cape for awhile. He says he fell in love with jazz at the age of 9 when he heard alto saxophonist Paul Desmond perform in the Dave Brubeck Quartet. His discovery of jazz would send him down a path that included studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston before heading to Hollywood in the ‘70s with four other musicians to play rhythm and blues around the west coast in a band called Mass Confusion. In 1973, he auditioned to play in the Ray Charles Orchestra and landed the gig as the band’s alto sax player and flutist.  

Abate describes the experience playing with Ray Charles as “great,” especially for a young musician — he was in his late 20s at the time. He traveled the world, visiting Japan, Russia and multiple European countries.

“I was surrounded by more seasoned musicians who took me under their wing and they were great to me,” he says. “They helped me along to nurture me not just in music, but about life on the street, as far as being aware of things that you might not if you live a sheltered life. I was surprised that I got the gig, but (Ray Charles) really liked my sound, they said.”

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It turns out Ray Charles liked himself a game of chess, too, according to Abate.

“On the planes, he would ride with us and spend a lot of time playing chess with some of the better chess players in the band,” Abate says. “He wouldn’t really hang out a lot with us after (gigs). He would be on his own, going to his hotel or something, but I got to talk to him musically and learn about him, being next to him in the band.”

Music ‘bonds us together’

Abate would eventually return to New England, and he formed the fusion group Channel One in 1978. He then joined the revived Artie Shaw Orchestra in the late ‘80s under the leadership of clarinetist and jazz staple Dick Johnson, whom Abate refers to as a “real mentor.”

With plenty of experience to his credit, Abate set out on his own in 1989 to do what he refers to as “the solo artist thing” and has been doing it ever since, making a name for himself in the worldwide jazz circuit. “The solo artist thing” consists of him playing in different cities and countries as a guest artist with local musicians joining him, similar to what he’ll be doing when he comes to the Cape.

The club owner or whoever is organizing the event will hire a trio to play alongside Abate, creating a type of nonstop musical chairs of different musicians to perform with at every show, which Abate says is fun.

“It’s a very cool thing to experience different people to work with and the music kind of bonds us together,” he says. “Everyone’s got a different vibe and spirit, different emotional content and technical content that goes into being an artist. No one is the same and that’s good. We’re all unique.”

However, Abate acknowledges it can get tricky when there’s a “wrong match.”

“Sometimes the clubs and the people that book the musicians, they don’t understand the music history and the concept of the genre,” Abate says. He gives an example of a musician who can play a flurry of notes and is a great technical player, but doesn’t know the “particular language” of the show Abate is playing. “Technical ability does not mean that you have the language to play a certain genre. My music is highly harmonic and melodic. You gotta have that feel to it. It’s gotta be there. It’s either there or it’s not.”

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Abate is a teacher himself, including Jazz Studies at Rhode Island College, and he takes the time to speak with students and musicians at various shows, such as a recent one at Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He knows the nuances of passing on knowledge and the importance of how it’s done. Hands-on teaching is preferable, Abate says, but being a brute about it never is, especially in an industry that is already filled with negative criticism.

“I go in with kid gloves,” he says, referencing any time things aren’t clicking with a musician he’s teamed up with at a show. “I don’t try to do a ‘cutting session’ as they say and make people feel inadequate or whatever. That stuff is true and happens. Some people go to schools and universities and (the teachers) berate the students. Instead of going there to help, they criticize very badly and it will deteriorate anybody’s attitude. People are cruel, just very cruel.”

Busy is good

Like many other musicians, Abate gets his kicks out of playing live. So, when COVID-19 shut everything down, Abate found himself in an unfamiliar position. Luckily, his performance schedule has since filled back up and he’s now back at it like he was before.

“One hundred-fold,” he says about his gigs coming back. “I’m on the road probably 250 days (a year) and then other days I’m locally around New England.”

Abate likes to come to the Cape “as much as he can” to perform, and last played here in 2020 at the North Falmouth Library.

“I like to play for the people and talk about the music,” he says. “It will be so good to get back to the cultural center.”

Seeing Greg Abate

What: “Greg Abate Jazz Quartet: Real Jazz in the Moment”

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Cultural Center of Cape Cod, 307 Old Main St., South Yarmouth

Tickets: $25

Reservations and information: www.cultural-center.org