Investigating the city’s venues, artists, and educators that have lit a flame under their jazz scene.
By: Bryson Rea
It’s no secret that jazz has long been an embodiment of American culture. Its status as a truly original American art form has helped it take that form. Beyond its roots, the developmental and transformative nature of jazz is what has carried it through generations of cultural evolution.
According to the National Museum of American History, New Orleans’ 19th century African American communities are the birthplace of jazz. However, some of jazz’s most crucial stylistic developments came from further north, including the Midwest.
Historians say that early 20th century traveling artists and territory bands (traveling bands that jumped across far distances to claim and maintain performing territories) pushed up and across the plains, into urban settings like Kansas City, Chicago, and Des Moines.
In Kansas City, jazz took on a new and unique blues-infused style, complemented by a looser form of swing. In Chicago, the local jazz scene developed a more energetic style focused on improvisation. In Des Moines, jazz also flourished, taking inspiration from surrounding cities and building its own defined community.
“At first glance, [Des Moines] wouldn’t seem to be a place that would have a proud jazz and blues tradition, but, in fact, it does have one that stretches way, way, way back,” Max Wellman, the current manager of Noce, a popular Des Moines jazz club, said.
Jazz was originally introduced to the city of Des Moines at around the same time as other Midwestern hubs like Chicago and Kansas City. As jazz’s popularity in America grew, the scenes in Des Moines and other cities followed suit.
After jazz’s peak in the early to mid-20th century, it took a backseat to the rise of rock and roll. This decline led many clubs across the Midwest and the country as a whole to close or shift away from jazz performances, according to an article in the Harvard Crimson. Those that survived were often forced to raise prices or drastically decrease their operational costs and capabilities.
For decades, the jazz scene survived in that dwindling state. Now, nearly a century since its original peak, Midwestern cities like Des Moines are curating a sudden resurgence in their jazz scenes.
How a Des Moines partnership is bringing jazz back to center stage
In Des Moines, one group has been a driving force within the jazz scene for over half a century: the Des Moines Big Band. Since its inception in 1959, at the back end of the big band jazz era, the Des Moines Big Band has consisted of countless local and nationally recognized artists, all of whom have worked to keep the local jazz scene thriving for decades.
“They’ve been kind of a home base in the music scene,” Wellman said. “It’s an esteemed group around the region and to really anyone in the big band world around the country.”
For some of the band’s ensemble, this sustained effort and presence in the local community made playing with the group a lifelong dream.
“I can remember going to hear the band when I was a student,” Dave Bohl, an alto saxophone player in the Des Moines Big Band, said. “It’s cool. A lot of us who are now members of the Big Band also used to go hear the band as students, so it’s really a legacy organization.”
In 2015, Jim Oates, the Des Moines Big Band’s previous director of 30 years, retired. Upon his retirement, Oates handed the keys over to Dave Rezek, a successful jazz performer and educator.
Soon after becoming director, Rezek re-established the group’s Des Moines residency through Noce, which opened later that same year. Since then, the partnership between the Des Moines Big Band and Noce has been a cornerstone of the resurging downtown Des Moines jazz scene.
When Maria Alverez and Bob Phillip opened Noce, the pair asked Wellman to manage the club. Wellman has since turned Noce into a unique jazz experience through his role, crediting designers like Tim Wisgerhof, a long-time theatrical designer, for their contributions. Noce features a dramatically lit stage, candle-lit tables, and instrument-inspired art pieces. It has become known for its intimate, stylistic atmosphere that screams innovation.
“It was definitely a pretty concentrated effort to blend the romanticism and the nostalgia of the history of the jazz club and all that it represents with a modern, sexy look,” Wellman said. “So trying to strike that balance between the two, we wanted it to seem historic and deep in that tradition, but not old and stuffy.”
The impressive atmosphere has pushed the club beyond Des Moines, earning recognition within the larger Midwestern jazz scene and garnering the admiration of renowned artists like Madison Ray.
“Noce has a vibe and atmosphere. You can feel that when you walk in, and it makes you feel like somebody when you’re there as a patron,” Ray told Urban Plains via email. “As a musician, my experience has always been electric and exciting in such an intimate space.”
The Des Moines Big Band, having been one of Noce’s first recurring ensembles, helped set the atmospheric tone within the club, combining traditional jazz pieces with innovative pieces in their sets.
The group plays at Noce every Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. from September until late spring, except for major holiday weeks. One of the draws of the group is their constantly evolving setlist.
“Our shows are different every single week,” Rezek said. “We don’t just have a 20-tune setlist that we go to every time.”
He went on to say that this freshness helps the band draw in new, consistent listeners, a demographic that the art of jazz desperately needs more of.
A typical setlist spans several decades and generational styles. They might start by waking up their audience with a piece like Buddy Rich’s 1967 version of “Love for Sale”, then later jump back to the 1940s bebop jazz era before finishing their set with a modern piece like Mike Conrad’s “Stretching Blues.”
On an individual level, artists like Rezek have been trying to rebuild Des Moines’ jazz scene for some time. Rezek explained that “boomerang artists,” players like him who left town, had successful careers, and then returned, came home to a lackluster scene. As a result, the boomerang artists of Des Moines attempted to kickstart a resurgence.
“It was good here, but I just felt like it needed a boost,” Rezek said. “…We all got together and just started making stuff happen, finding new places to play, creating new music, putting new groups together. We were just trying to put some fire under the whole thing, and it took off again and has been ever since.”
One unique aspect of Des Moines’ jazz scene is its inviting atmosphere, which often attracts artists from more rural Midwestern backgrounds.
“It always makes me happy to see jazz musicians show up from small-town backgrounds, like me from rural northern Iowa,” Tina Findley, the only living woman in Iowa who has been inducted into the state’s Jazz and Blues Halls of Fame, told Urban Plains via email. “Our opportunities are more limited in our childhoods, so when we get to show up and shine in a bigger city environment, it’s pretty magical.”
Findley also explained that the scene is seeing a steady increase in diversity that goes beyond geographical origins.
“[I’m] seeing more diversity in gender and ethnicity, more influence of other cultures and genres,” Findley wrote. “Being a bi-racial person, these things have made me happy even at the little bit of change, and I hope I have been a cog in those wheels along the way since these are huge personal values of mine.”
After being built from the ground up by artists of all sorts of backgrounds and styles looking to preserve and develop the art of jazz, Des Moines’ scene has become a melting pot of everything jazz.
“I also think the Des Moines jazz scene is underrated,” Bohl said. “I think a lot of times people think if you want to hear great music in the Midwest, you have to go to Chicago, or Minneapolis, or Kansas City. But there is a cool scene of really talented players right here in Des Moines.”
For Noce, the Des Moines Big Band, and other artists, continuing and strengthening the resurgence of this unique scene will likely rely on their ability to connect with a new age of listeners.
The collective effort that’s pushing jazz forward
Across the board, several of Des Moines’ jazz artists, venues, and groups are finding new ways to reach newer, younger audiences.
One focus of the Des Moines Big Band is reaching out to and assisting a new generation of jazz musicians and listeners. The band consistently invites local high school and college jazz groups to perform at venues alongside them.
“That’s another outreach thing that we do a lot of, which is bringing in high school bands to do our intermissions,” Rezek, a former high school band director, said. “That also attracts the younger kids, mostly players, but their friends also come out to support them.”
Beyond outreach, Bohl explained that the band invites students to play alongside them to get experience at an actual gig. Getting them on stage at a notable club in front of a live audience can sometimes be the switch that gets young musicians to pursue jazz professionally.
“I think that’s a cool way for students to be able to perform in a context that’s not a competition,” Bohl said. “It’s like a real gig at a real jazz club on the same stage we’re on.”
Additionally, the band strives to give younger professional musicians opportunities to play with them and build rapport. According to Bohl, those younger musicians tend to impress, showing that the future of jazz is in good hands.
“One of the drummers, a sub in the Des Moines Big Band, Zane Gettler, he’s, I mean, in his mid-20s and he sounds like he’s been drumming in a big band for decades,” Bohl said. “…I think it’s always really cool when you have younger players who can bring something new and a fresh idea to the jazz scene and can also slide into that tradition and sound like they’ve been doing it for decades.”
For venues like Noce, reaching new audiences is all about getting those unfamiliar with jazz to give the experience a shot.
“It’s a unique kind of experience. You know, if we can get them through the door, then the experience kind of delivers on that,” Wellman said. “I try to emphasize with people that they don’t have to be huge jazz fans to enjoy that experience.”
Ray, a renowned artist from Des Moines, believes the key to attracting younger audiences to the jazz scene simply hasn’t been found yet.
“A friend in opera once told me ‘The people decide who the stars are. My job is to perform consistently the best I can,’” Ray said. “…None of us have cracked the code to make jazz relevant to youth culture aside from high school & college jazz programs.”
According to Findley, some efforts stop at the drawing board.
“Not sure it’s really as much a priority as it should be,” Findley wrote. “I see the efforts on paper and I hear the lip service to this. But it does go beyond just throwing people in a room and saying you care about it.”
While those pursuing younger audiences continue experimenting and brainstorming new approaches, jazz educators like Rezek are focused on building the next generation of jazz artists.
Rezek is currently a co-director at Des Moines’ Creative Music Studio in addition to his role as the Des Moines Big Band’s director. He said the studio aims to take teaching one step further than common curriculums, allowing music students to explore the parts of music that traditional band classes just don’t have time for.
“In Creative Music, we dive not only into those inside pieces of information as far as chords and scale and all that,” Rezek said. “But we also talk while listening to professional recordings and give those as examples.”
Rezek explained that those recordings are often more accessible while still being pulled from skilled artists. This makes developing as a jazz artist less daunting. By walking the students through digestible examples and then allowing them to explore them with their peers, the entire experience becomes more inviting.
“It’s just like learning a foreign language,” Rezek said. “You know, you can learn a bunch of words, but if you don’t know how to speak sentences, then you’re just learning vocabulary. You’re just learning words, and you’re not sure how to have conversations with people.”
While developing new artists and luring new audiences will define the future of Midwestern jazz, predicting that future is a challenge. However, there are strong voices in the Midwestern jazz scene pushing for a reimagined one.
What’s next for Midwestern jazz?
For Findley, the future is banking on the community’s approach to jazz as a whole.
“I think we need to dig deeper and be better people, creating better music and musical experiences, in order to really inspire and heal and change people’s lives,” Findley wrote. “That deep soulful intention will naturally attract not only youth, but many more people of all ages and stages who stand to benefit from this amazing American art form.”
One thing jazz artists within the Midwest and Des Moines, in particular, can expect is expansion.
“We are interested in doing more locally and potentially producing more shows that are developed at Noce and then go to larger venues,” Wellman said. “We’d also like to open a second venue in Iowa within the next couple of years.”
While the resurgence of Midwestern jazz charges onward into an unclear future, fans of the scene can rest easy knowing that jazz melting pots like Noce, jazz groups like the Des Moines Big Band, and jazz educators like Rezek are moving further and further away from extinction.
According to Ray, the challenge in avoiding extinction will always lie within the community’s ability to move forward and let the innovative art evolve.
“I think the real challenge ahead is if we can beat the intoxication of nostalgia,” Ray wrote. “Art is always evolving and growing. I just hope the spirit of jazz stays in conversation.”