By LOREN SCHOENBERG

One of the best things about jazz is that it brings us face to face with issues and facts about our own history as Americans. This month the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra and Juilliard Jazz Ensembles are presenting events that throw the spotlight on the music's past, present, and future through the music of one of jazz's original masters, the late Benny Carter; a contemporary composer/performer of the highest caliber, Donald Brown; and a salute to a record label that remains eminently contemporary after 60-plus years of existence, Blue Note Records. Of course, the future comes into it through the very participation of Juilliard's jazz students, all of whom are already well-poised to carry the music deep into the 21st century.

Trombonists (left to right) Drew Pierson, Jennifer Krupa, and Willie Applewhite performing at a Jazz Ensembles concert last February. (Photo by Nan Melville)

Benny Carter died this past July, just weeks shy of his 96th birthday. He was truly an American pioneer, born in the Wild West—the Wild West of Manhattan, that is. The stately domain of Juilliard and indeed all of Lincoln Center rests upon territory that was once as wild and as dangerous as any section of New York City that you can think of. One hundred years ago, it was called San Juan Hill, to commemorate the black soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry, who in 1898 took the original San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War long before future President Teddy Roosevelt's far more vaunted Rough Riders showed up on the scene. And long before Benny Goodman had a swing band, or Quincy Jones demolished the race line in the Hollywood studios, or Jazz at the Philharmonic took jazz to Europe, or Dave Brubeck showed that meters other than 4/4 could swing, Benny Carter had already cleared the fields, planted the seeds, and reaped the first crop, and continued to till fruitfully, leaving more than enough for his descendants to cultivate—in a sense, you might say that Benny was a jazz Johnny Appleseed, a true American hero. I was more than proud to be his guest at the White House when President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts just three years ago. And just a few years before that, Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned the then 89-year-old Carter to write a suite. Carter named it Echoes of San Juan Hill, and it was one of his last and best big-band masterpieces. He knew better than anyone about the realities of the neighborhood and the background it gave him by witnessing first-hand a Dickensian range of human existence. After all, San Juan Hill was noted for its response to the overwhelming police brutality of the period. As the author Luc Sante has noted, in the deep of evening, neighborhood youths would extinguish the gas lamps that lit the street, take the covers off the sewers and manholes and then shout for the police to come. Serious injuries resulted when the policemen fell into the street. But then it was also the area where Carter first became aware of the beauty of the female form, and four score years later, put that nascent urge into "Bebe, the Belle of the Block." He introduced it this way: "I remember way back on 63rd Street, there was a lady. She was like the Girl from Ipanema, you know; when she walked by everybody said 'Ahhh.' And all the boys looked at her; they couldn't help but look at her, she was really lovely. She was really belle of the neighborhood, but she lived on our street, so I thought of her—or today I think of her—as the belle of the block." And in that short prologue we find the charm and the elegance that marked everything that Carter created. But this is not to imply that his art did not also reflect tremendous strength, it's just that Benny always kept his fist (which he was known to use in his earlier years on rare occasions when confronted with overt expressions of injustice) in a velvet glove. The sheer force of his melodic construction and the way in which he boldly helped create the mature language of the American analogue to the symphony orchestra—the Big Band—are testament to his lifelong dedication to this most American of fine art forms, jazz.

Juilliard Jazz Ensembles: The Blue Note Years Paul Hall Tuesday, Oct. 7, 8 p.m. Juilliard Jazz Orchestra: The Music of Benny Carter Alice Tully Hall Friday, Oct. 24, 8 p.m. Jazz Master Class with Donald Brown Morse Hall Friday, Oct. 31, 4 p.m. For time and ticket information, please see the calendar.

Pianist Donald Brown has for years been a leading light in jazz education, in addition to being a first-rate performer and composer. He first gained international attention with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the early 1980s (as did his band mate Wynton Marsalis), but had to leave the group due to arthritis. At that point, Brown began to delve more deeply into education, while maintaining a manageable performance schedule. Juilliard is affording its students a rare opportunity to take a master class with Professor Brown on Friday, October 31 at 4 p.m. in Morse Hall. The following Monday, November 3, will find the Juilliard Jazz Ensembles putting their stamp on Brown's already classic oeuvre (his "New York" is already something of a standard). This will not be the ensembles' first appearance, however; that will occur on Tuesday, October 7, with a look at The Blue Note Years. Founded in 1939 by a pair of German émigrés, Blue Note gained international status with classic recordings by Sidney Bechet, Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, and Miles Davis. By the 1950s, they had a stable of young artists that would define many of the paths that jazz would take for the next several decades. Ask any jazz fan about the "Blue Note Sound" and they will know just what that means—you can not say that about many other recording labels—or better yet, go to the concert and hear how Juilliard's young jazz ensembles refract that sound today. By virtue of this imaginative programming, Juilliard Jazz is putting into deeds what Benny Carter (on whom Juilliard had only two years) meant when he introduced "Other Times" from Echoes of San Juan Hill: "Other times were happy times, but the best of times is today." Amen.

Loren Schoenberg, who teaches jazz history, has been on the faculty since 2001.