Bill Warfield was having one of those magical musical nights when the planets don’t just align, they dance. The trumpeter was playing “All the Things You Are,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” and other jazz standards at a club in Prague with three crackerjack Czechs. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t rehearsed with his pick-up comrades, or that he’d never gigged with the drummer. The groove was so good, so uncommon, it was almost, well, telepathic.

“It was a great night,” says Warfield, an associate professor of music who heads Lehigh’s jazz-studies program. “We loved it, and the crowd loved it; talk about thinking you’re a rock star for a minute. We walked out of there going, yeah, this is a great idea—we should take it on the road.”

Warfield’s wish will launch on Feb. 28, when his new bi-continental combo opens a bi-continental tour in Lehigh’s Zoellner Arts Center, the residence of his New York Jazz Repertory Orchestra. The core members of the International Jazz Core-tet will be saxophonist Jens Jensen, an old friend from Denmark; guitarist Libor Smoldas and organist Jakub Zomer, newer colleagues from Czechoslovakia, and saxophonist Glenn Cashman, who wrote a commissioned piece for a live recording by Warfield’s big band. Guesting at Zoellner will be drummer Jeff  “Tain” Watts, the only core member of groups led by the brothers Wynton and Branford Marsalis, both of whom have played Lehigh.

The Core-Tet tour will continue in New York City, where Warfield will showcase his new CD “Trumpet Story” (Planet Arts Records), a showcase for renowned trumpeter Randy Brecker, who christened Warfield’s jazz orchestra in 1998. Also scheduled are shows in Portugal, where Warfield will lecture, and a festival in Morocco. The project is funded by a two-year, $20,000 New Directions fellowship from Lehigh’s College of Arts and Sciences.

New takes on old standards

Warfield specializes in taking old tunes in new directions. For 15 seasons his orchestra has played his arrangements of classics all over the map, everything from Jimi Hendrix’s psychedelic-rock tunes to Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain,” a landmark 1960 union of jazz, classical and global. His music has been all over the map in Europe, too. The Spanish government hired him to write a “Hollywood Jazz” revue for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. His “Le Jazz Hot” suite, where he riffs off motifs from French classical composers, premiered at the 2000 Paris Jazz Festival with commissioning saxophonist Dave Liebman, hired by Warfield as a 2009-10 Lehigh resident artist. Last year Warfield guested at the Royal Conservatory in Denmark, where he and Jens Jensen, the school’s jazz director, debuted Warfield’s suite from “Trumpet Story.”

One of Warfield’s favorite European gigs is running clinics sponsored by the International Association of Schools of Jazz, which Liebman founded. He enjoys coaching young performers from around the world in the intricacies of structure and improvisation, listening and responding, music as life and life as music. He’s especially proud of shepherding three students from Lehigh, a rare coup for a school without a conservatory.

The association has doubled as Warfield’s European concert pipeline. He was in Austria two years ago when he met fellow clinician Jakub Zomer, a master improviser on the Hammond B-3 organ. Czech and American played “a ton” together, sometimes turning shows into informal student laboratories. Zomer was so inspired, he invited Warfield to join him at the Prague club where he hosts a jam session. It was there, in 2013, that Warfield hooked up with guitarist Libor Smoldas, another teacher, composer, booker, bi-continental veteran and “real hustler.”

An adventurous cooperative

The American and the Czechs quickly learned that they didn’t need to speak the same native language to speak the same musical language. While performing “Stella by Starlight” and “Footprints” they explored their affinity for blending strong melodies with potent free associations, early 20th-century classical harmonies with mid-century bebop rhythms. They regularly referenced one of their touchstones, a set of live club recordings made in 1965 by Miles Davis with such killer musicians as saxophonist Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Herbie Hancock.

Like Davis, Warfield views his band as an adventurous cooperative. He plans to make the Core-tet more compelling by performing in Denmark and Czechoslovakia, his band mates’ homelands. He expects to finance extra dates and a live CD with the help of his record label, Planet Arts, a veteran ally of the U.S. Department of State. He hopes to hire trombonist Robin Eubanks, who co-founded M-Base, a collective featuring jazz luminaries like pianist Geri Allen and singer Cassandra Wilson.

The Core-Tet will allow Warfield to expand his roles as ambassador and entrepreneur, perpetual teacher and eternal student. Four decades have passed, and he remains jazzed by memories of moonlighting from his studies at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, sitting in and locking in with seasoned musicians in small, smoky bars.

“We’re returning to a purer place,” says Warfield of himself and his Core-tet comrades. “We’re taking away most of the marketing, removing the corporate stuff, losing the urban-chic appeal. We’re congregating in intimate spaces and performing for real fans who love real music. We’re talking about excellent musicians playing incredibly sophisticated tunes. We’re talking about playing your butt off to reach a higher consciousness.”

Photography by Christa Neu

Video by Stephanie Veto

Story by Geoff Gehman ’89 M.A.