Quintet offers more than jazz

"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." -- Charlie Parker \nMichael Burton looks stressed.\nHe stands at the rear door to the Jazz Fables room at Bear's, looking between the stage and the back wall, wetting the reed of his alto saxophone. The keys click as he fingers through a warm-up before taking the stage. Outside of his graduate level jazz studies classes, Burton performs with his friends. Major players of the IU-Bloomington jazz and gospel scene, saxophone player Burton, drummer Deno Sanders, bassist Lance Tolbert, guitarist Tyron Cooper and occasional guitarist Dan Cole have their own band now. \nLegacy\nEveryone who attends Fables or Monday night jazz at the MAC knows Sanders. They know his pursed lip, narrowed eyebrows and occasional smiles from behind the set. They can see his sticks hop from snare to tom, or his brushes glaze across the drumheads while he plays. He said Legacy brings a new sound to the local jazz scene, something that no one has tried before. A place for his influences and creativity to fall into place.\nAn outlet\nTolbert is the quiet one. He stands holding his bass in the back -- always holding his bass, always playing. He just reaches his long fingers around the massive fretboard of his six-string bass and moves to the song. A senior, Tolbert is the youngest member of the quartet, and said he loves to learn from the other guys in the group. He didn't start listening to jazz until he came to IU. He said he learned the language of improv from Legacy.\nThe language of jazz and soul\nWith a little bit of funk and a lot of soul, Cooper strutted the stage and worked up the crowd at last Saturday's IU Soul Revue concert at the Buskirk-Chumley theater. Director of the Revue since 1999, Cooper whipped his guitar and the crowd into a frenzy for the ensemble's 30th anniversary show, host to a cheering (and often standing) audience. His passion for the music coursed through his words -- a feat he tackles with only his strings at a Legacy performance. \nBut when asked about his performances with the group, Cooper turns the spotlight to his occasional replacement, new possibly permanent Legacy man Cole. \nGuitarist Cole began filling in for Cooper on Valentine's Day, with his background as a graduate student in jazz studies and experience freelancing for local bands behind him. He was tuned onto Legacy when he saw the group playing at Scotty's Brewhouse. Cole said one of Legacy's main draws for him is playing with the tight rhythm section of Tolbert and Sanders. \nDoing something new\nIn Bloomington's swarm of jazz and college rock, Cole wouldn't call Legacy a jazz combo. \n"(Legacy is) definitely a local band," he said. "A very jazz-informed local band."\nLegacy mixes multiple styles with traditional jazz, creating something that the members said no one else is doing, at least locally. Burton said most jazz combos don't combine these different elements, but he enjoys it. \n"What we do is take stuff from the African-American tradition," Burton said. "We take our jazz theory and put it with soul and R&B."\nThis mix of influences is both the band's weakness and strength, Cole said. Tolbert brings gospel and Burton brings Grover Washington. He said there are too many ideas and directions being thrown around, but that eclectic blend is what makes the band what it is.\n"That's also what makes it unique to me," Cole said. \nLegacy is a maze of on-campus musicality. All of the musicians are involved in some way with the African-American Arts Institute. Cooper is director of the IU Soul Revue, Burton is its associate instructor and saxophonist and Tolbert plays bass in its band. Sanders is the associate instructor of the African American Choral Ensemble. Sanders, Burton and Cole are also in IU's jazz bands, and Cooper was a guest vocalist for the year end "Big Band Extravaganza" concert on Monday. Tolbert is the music director of IU Voices of Hope, an ensemble in which all the members of Legacy have been involved with at some point.\nThe musicians draw heavily from the gospel tradition, and Burton said they learned music through playing at church. This common background brought the four together as friends first, musicians second, though the two aren't far separated.\n"We just bonded through our music," Sanders said. \nLegacy is making the musicians better at their craft, Sanders said. They rehearse at least once a week, often in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center. But their real experience comes from playing out, including their weekly Thursday night Scotty's gig. \n"You can practice expertise, but you can't practice spontaneity," Sanders said. \nThree weeks ago Legacy passed one of the premier tests for local jazz musicians. The band took the stage at Bear's for Jazz Fables, David Miller's weekly Bloomington jazz series that holds a rich local tradition. Legacy, although branching out from the usual traditional jazz seen at the shows, collected applause and played to a "medium to slim" crowd, Sanders said. \nThe band mixed new arrangements of standards and original compositions into its set, with Cole filling in for Cooper. At Fables, with pictures of some of music's greatest lining the walls, the first set boasted "Summertime" and a Sanders-composed debut. The second had Burton and Sanders originals and ended with a Sonny Rollins tune. Such a mix is just what Legacy is trying to convey -- as Sanders said, "jazz with a backbeat." Jazz with something more. \nThough the band is steeped in tradition from all sides, it is trying to do something new. It may not be pure jazz, but Legacy just wants to play good music.