A Conversation with Entertainment Cruise Productions’ Executive Director, Michael Lazaroff – HuffPost 11.1.13
Mike Ragogna: One of the interesting discoveries I made from this cruise has been that smooth jazz versus other jazz is not really what’s going on right now, it’s an integrated jazz. For instance, the Gospel/Jazz show with Jonathan Butler wasn’t anything I expected it to be. One of the things I would like to do with this piece is tell people it’s not what they think anymore.
Michael Lazaroff: Very, very clearly, if we were to begin this cruise now, it would not be called “The Smooth Jazz Cruise.” We began the cruise during the peak of the smooth jazz era, when there were lots of smooth jazz radio stations. Now we have a brand, so that’s why we keep the name, but normally when I go on stage the first night, I actually talk about “no labels” and I always use the same quote, which is what my father taught me: “There are only two kinds of music in the world, good and bad.” This is a lot of different music. It is improvisational and it is audio-enhanced, which are two of the elements of what smooth jazz is versus straight-ahead jazz and some other stuff, but there is nothing smooth about it. It is vibrant and it is active and it is fun and there’s a lot of R&B in it, there’s a lot of funk in it, there’s a lot of blues in it, there’s a lot of fusion in it. It is just good music, and the reason that it is really good music is simple. They’re really good musicians. If you look at Marcus Miller and David Sanborn, they’ve played everything.
MR: Also there were surprises for me on this cruise, like the educational elements. For instance, the guitar trio of Marcus Miller, Earl Klugh and Norman Brown not only discussed their own origins, but they were discussing jazz, even showing certain chord patterns, etc. So this cruise includes education in addition to the performances, and the passengers are eating it up. Now, you also have jazz cruises, right?
ML: Yes, a straight-ahead jazz cruise.
MR: Which artists do you invite? Would artists like Herbie Hancock fit the bill?
ML: Those guys are actually modern contemporary jazz artists. Straight-ahead jazz is jazz the way that it’s always been played, bebop and forward–Ella Fitzgerald, The American Songbook, Nat King Cole, but with modern flavor. We have Arturo Sandoval, The Manhattan Transfer, Gregory Porter, Poncho Sanchez, we have our own big band made up of all-stars that include vocalist John Pizzarelli; it is jazz the way that it’s always been played. Herbie Hancock takes that element of jazz and then does an impressionistic angle to it. Our guys play the notes in their own voice, but they play the notes the way the notes were always meant to be played.
MR: So it’s more traditional?
ML: “Traditional” is a word that I try to avoid for one reason. Technically, “traditional” jazz is New Orleans jazz, Dixieland jazz. You can stumble in the jazz world by just a very small little word here and there. There was a time when the Grammys had thirteen different categories of jazz. It’s all over the place.
MR: What is the mission of this 2013 Smooth Jazz Cruise?
ML: We used to call all of the non-music events “Behind The Instruments,” because that’s our goal. Our goal is to present shows but then to give our guests the opportunity to learn more about the artists, more about the genre, to have an education and also have some fun. We have a lot of fun events. In about an hour, Euge Groove will be up there doing a party show. That’s just fun.
MR: Your audience seems to be so up on the artists, the concepts, and the history, more so than I’ve seen with regular concert attendees.
ML: Well these are the P1 fans; you have to realize this. These are folks that have taken a week out of their lives and a bunch of money out of their bank accounts to spend all this time doing this. They’re not casual fans. They’re into it. They have seen these guys perform numerous times but they come on the ship because, just like the opening night when you saw a whole bunch of them together, that can only happen on the ship. It cannot happen anywhere else. Financially, it can’t happen anywhere else because you couldn’t afford to hire them just for one show but when they’re on the cruise the whole week, they mix, they match, they share the stage.
MR: During my interviews, I’ve been asking the performers, “What are the long-term effects of this cruise?” I think almost all of them said they were meeting up with other cruise performers to do projects beyond the cruise.
ML: There isn’t any question that some very important associations began on the cruise. Marcus and David Sanborn had not performed together in the twenty-something years before we put them on the cruise. During that particular cruise, they talked to George Duke and then the three of them toured for a year. David Sanborn had never met Brian Culbertson, met him on the cruise, they toured. So it does foster those kinds of opportunities.
MR: What we witnessed on the main stage was pretty extravagant. What goes into these shows? Do the artists just rehearse once and this is what we end up with because they’re that good?
ML: Well, they are that good, but we have rehearsals the whole week before the cruise in LA. Brian Simpson, who is our music director, runs the rehearsals, a Dane Butcher and a Joey Fairchild do the programming–they actually match the people up–and then the artists submit their play list and then they are assigned one of the three bands that we have. That’s the other magic of our cruise, we have terrific bands, we have the best guys in the industry for that.
MR: So far we’ve seen a few acts, but to what you just said, I don’t think those backup bands were the same. How does that work?
ML: They weren’t. We have three separate backup bands and they were assigned to various performers and they all do different things.
MR: Who did you consult with to get the acoustics right?
ML: Joey Fairchild, who’s our production manager, has been doing this forever. This is his twentieth cruise with us. So he has the sound down very, very well.
MR: Tower Of Power is showing up on Tuesday and then they leave the same day as opposed to the other artists, except Marcus Miller, who will stay for the whole cruise.
ML: They come on, they’re going to have a sound check, they rehearse for probably about forty-five minutes, do two shows and then leave. They’ll be great.
MR: As far as the future, where is The Smooth Jazz Cruise headed, so to speak? What kind of innovations are you working on?
ML: Every year, more top-end folks are willing to participate. Last year, we had George Benson. A future cruise will have Natalie Cole. Years ago, she wouldn’t have even dreamed of going to one of our cruises, but as they become more well-known, accepted, legit, whatever the word you wanted to use, we’re able to get more folks like that. So each year, we wind up with kind of more interesting events and things just kind of move a little easier. That’s all.
MR: So it’s really just judging what’s happened from the last cruise and how the next one can build on that.
ML: Exactly right. But I don’t see any major changes.
MR: Okay. I’m just making sure you don’t have something in the wings that you can’t quite talk about yet or anything.
ML: No, well, other than our Star Vista signature cruise, which is our European cruise with Diana Krall.
MR: Oh, nice. From where does that depart?
ML: That leaves out of Monte Carlo in the Mediterranean.
MR: What else do you have in the works?
ML: Well, we have our Australian jazz cruise, that’s in its thirteenth year. It’s absolutely spectacular. We have a country music cruise coming up in January that has Vince Gill, Kenny Rogers, The Gatlin Brothers, Ronnie Milsap, Jo Dee Messina, and that’s a fabulous cruise. We have our virtually sold-out Malt Shop Memories cruise, Neil Sedaka, The Four Tops, Lesley Gore, Petula Clark, all kinds of fun things like that. We just finished our Soul Train cruise, we had Gladys Knight, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jennifer Holliday, Jeffrey Osborne, that was great and then we have another one in late February.
MR: Whose idea was it to start this venture?
ML: My mother. At age seventy she was the first person in the world to charter a ship for music.
MR: Wow.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne