By Sophie Young for Mirror Indy.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Mirror Indy-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.
Robert Montgomery was only about five years old when his father, legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, died of a heart attack at age 45. He doesn’t remember much from that time.
“His death really shook me,” said Robert, the youngest of seven siblings, and it wasn’t until he got older that he began to listen to his father’s music.
“I remember going to my mother and saying, ‘Mom, Dad was really good,’” he said. “And she goes, ‘Of course, you blockhead. Of course he was.’”
Now, Robert, 62, is one of his father’s biggest fans.
“To me, nobody plays as good as he does,” he said. “You know, not just because he’s my dad. Because I’ve listened to guitars, and they’re great. But they’re not Wes.”
Wes Montgomery, who was born in Indianapolis in 1923, was an innovator on the guitar, creating a new sound by playing with his thumb instead of a pick — a style he created so he wouldn’t disturb his family or neighbors while practicing at night after working long days at a factory. He got major record deals, won Grammys and toured.
Even though his music took him across the world, his home was always in Indianapolis. He was recognized on March 6 with a public dedication of a historical marker on what would’ve been his 101st birthday.
The Indiana Historical Bureau, which runs the marker program, has had Wes on its wishlist of people to recognize for years. Wes left his mark across the city, so it wasn’t easy to decide where the marker should go.
It could have gone on Indiana Avenue, where he played in jazz clubs. Instead, it will be at 10th and Bellefontaine Streets, near the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. The marker is close to where the Montgomery family home stood on Cornell Street before it was razed to build the interstate.
The decision for the location aligned with Wes’ priorities. He wanted to move to the West Coast to pursue music, but he stayed in Indianapolis for his wife, Serene, and their kids. Wes and Serene were 19 years old when they married in 1943 and were together until Wes’ death in 1968.
“The music was second. We were first – and my mother,” Robert said. “He was really truly a family man. At the very heart of being a family man, the love for us was impeccable.”
It wasn’t easy to capture Wes’ 45 years – his family, his work, his music – on a historical marker. Each side of the metal sign can only hold 372 characters, including spaces. And the text can’t include superlatives like “best” or “first;” everything has to be factual and backed up by primary sources.
“You had to really think about, ‘Okay, how do we talk about this person and not connect my emotional feelings and inspirational things that he brought to my life and music?” said Rob Dixon, a saxophone player. “That was a challenge, but it was rewarding.”
Dixon is the artistic director of the Indy Jazz Fest, and he was part of a team that helped with the application process.
The research was led by Scott and Katie Taylor, who met Robert’s siblings while applying for a marker for John Hope School 26, an initiative led by the Oaks Academy to pay tribute to the history of the school it had purchased. From there, they became interested in Wes’ life and legacy.
All the research fits in a thick, heavy binder full of newspaper clippings, advertisements for shows and more. The book ends with pages of articles about Wes’ legacy and influence.
Wes died on June 15, 1968, and 2,400 people showed up at his funeral, including Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, a renowned saxophone player who “discovered” Wes in 1959 at the Missile Room on North West Street. Adderly and other jazz stars were in town for a show at the Indiana Theater, according to IndyStar reports from the time.
After the public dedication ceremony for the marker on March 6, the Bottleworks Hotel hosted a private reception where Robert and other family members, and musicians and friends from across the country came out to remember Wes.
Serene Miles Montgomery-Woods, who later remarried, died in 2020 at age 96. Robert shared a story his wife told about riding in the car with Serene when she was in her 80s.
“This song came on – Freddie Jackson’s ‘My Lady.’ And my wife thought maybe she didn’t want to hear it, so she turned it down,” he said. His mom said, “‘No, turn that up.’ And she said, ‘Wes used to say that about me all the time. I was his lady.’”
Sophie Young wrote this article for Mirror Indy.
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By Randiah Camille Green for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Chrystal Blair for Michigan News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
A waft of what smells like fresh cut grass and burnt oil hangs in the air of Detroit's East Canfield neighborhood. The eerie smell comes from the nearby Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant, which has received repeated air quality violations for paint and solvent odors over the last several years. In March, Stellantis agreed to pay a $84,420 fine from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) for air quality violations for one of its plants in the same neighborhood. This neighborhood has one of the highest rates of asthma hospitalization of children under 18.
Despite its foreboding presence, residents like sisters Kim and Rhonda Theus are finding intentional ways to erect beauty. They run the nonprofit Canfield Consortium, which repurposes vacant lots for things like community gardens and public art. They're even renovating a former corner store into a coffee shop and art gallery, and carving out a future bike path.
Honoring Place and People
Their latest project is the Detroit Remediation Forest, a forest bathing installation located in the East Canfield Art Park that they hope will help mitigate air pollution from the Stellantis complex. The forest is anchored by a gold sculpture called "New Forest, Ancient Thrones" by New York-based artist and activist Jordan Weber. The piece has an air quality monitor that tells residents the particulate matter levels in the air.
It's shaped like two crowns, as an ode to Queen Idia of Benin (modern-day Nigeria) and Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar who fought colonization. The crowns also honor Kim and Rhonda as modern-day queens.
"It's a strong symbolic representation of the African diasporic experience and the trauma that's in the land in both Africa and the U.S.," Weber said. "There's the 2008 housing crisis where you see what happened to the legacy of Black homeownership in Detroit, for example. Queen Ranavalona was exiled from Madagascar and forced to live in Europe for the remainder of her life, and that's no different to me than us being displaced in our communities where we have [generations] of families who literally sweat and bled to get that land."
Weber's sculpture was unveiled to the public in May. A second phase of the forest installation will include planting air-purifying conifers like white pine and fir in partnership with the Greening of Detroit, and installing an elevated walkway. It will also host outdoor programming for the Barack Obama Leadership Academy across the street.
"New Forest, Ancient Thrones," is the newest addition to the East Canfield Art Park, which the Theus sisters opened in 2021 on a vacant corner. Kim and Rhonda wanted to leverage the power of art to spark conversations on environmental issues, gentrification, and Black representation.
The first art piece in the park was a bronze sculpture by Detroit sculptor Austen Brantley called "Boy Holds Flower." In that piece, a young Black boy sits cross legged as he gazes in admiration at a flower he's just picked. It's important for the children attending the Barack Obama Leadership Academy to have this image of joyful Black boyhood. The park also includes a "Hood Closed to Gentrifiers" sign by artist Bryce Detroit.
Guided by Purpose and Legacy
Kim and Rhonda remember when the neighborhood was a bustling, Black middle class area - before the Stellantis plant expanded its footprint and displaced their neighbors and before Detroit's foreclosure crisis caused families to lose their homes.
"There was a middle school that we went to, a [recreation] center, playgrounds, and all those things are gone," said Kim "People who are building families won't move to a neighborhood where they don't have those types of amenities, so a lot of the work that we're doing at Canfield Consortium is addressing things like that."
Weber was selected as an artist-in-residence by Sidewalk Detroit, a place-keeping organization championing public art and urban greenspace. Sidewalk Detroit Director and Founder Ryan Myers-Johnson said that during planning meetings, East Canfield residents stressed that any art brought to their neighborhood should address issues they are facing instead of beautification.
"We started to really understand the problem with Stellantis and the air quality issues and how [the plant] is touted as bringing in jobs and not something that is actually destroying health and the fabric of this neighborhood," Myers-Johnson said. "So, we needed somebody rooted in understanding spatial trauma and environmental justice issues."
Reclaiming their neighborhood is Kim and Rhonda's way of preserving the legacy of families like theirs who moved to Detroit to escape the Jim Crow South.
"Our parents were born and raised in Tennessee ... The only jobs they could get there were either domestic work or sharecropping. They wanted to buy a home and build a family, so they left everything they knew in Tennessee to move to Detroit and bought a house in East Canfield Village," Rhonda said. "The majority of people that live here come from the same situation... so these houses have a powerful legacy."
Randiah Camille Green wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
Disclosure: Arts Midwest contributes to our fund for reporting on Arts and Culture, and Native American Issues. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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By Kristy Alpert for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
On any given Friday night in the Township of O’Fallon, the loudest cheers do not come after a touchdown or a field goal. The real roaring begins the moment the final note of the halftime performance reverberates through the stadium.
In this Illinois suburb, music is the main event; specifically, the town’s beloved high school marching band. Across the town, band fan gear is sold in toddler sizes, lawns proudly proclaim that a “Marching Panther Lives Here,” and weekly marching practices often have cheering sections.
“I believe the band is the identity of the town,” explains Beth Mueller, a former O’Fallon band member (1988-1992) and current band parent. “It goes beyond just an activity that kids participate in; our band really plays an active role in the community and our community has a lot of pride and passion for the band program.”
The town’s passion was put to the test during the 2013-2014 school year, when district wide budget cuts threatened to silence the music program. Parents showed up in astounding numbers at town hall meetings saying cutting the music program would be “taking away their foundation.” During a time when band programs were being cut throughout the Midwest, the O’Fallon community refused to let theirs go.
Along with the band director’s fearless advocacy, the community started a nonprofit called Lifelong Music in O’Fallon Schools, which helped explore grants and sought creative ways to save the music.
“The community rallied around, and so did our school district, and we were able to kind of run it [the band program] through the Parks and Rec … until we were able to bounce back the following year with funding,” recalls Melissa Gustafson-Hinds, performing arts department chair and director of bands for the O’Fallon Township High School. “It was a one-year scare that we got through, and I would be really surprised if anything like that happened again.”
Thanks to the organization and the band booster club, the band’s budget has never been stronger, and neither has the community’s support, cheering the band on as they bring back numerous national awards—including the coveted John Philips Sousa Sudler Shield award—and as they participate in some of the country’s most prestigious national events, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Tournament of Roses Parade.
“We’re always looking for ways to highlight our students, because they are so great, but we also try to be humble within our community. … we do try to find ways to showcase their talents and to reward them so the community and the nation know that we have something special,” says Gustafson-Hinds.
They provide opportunities for the musicians to volunteer around town, like offering free community performances and creating leadership groups to support annual events for the town’s veterans and local charities. “I think it’s important for our students to learn the importance of giving back,” she adds.
And in O’Fallon, Illinois, that strength is derived from altruism, both from the many talented young musicians and from the community that supports them.
Kristy Alpert wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
Disclosure: Arts Midwest contributes to our fund for reporting on Arts and Culture, and Native American Issues. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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By Jacqueline Kehoe for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
Yerkes Observatory, in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, calls itself a 125-year-old start-up. Widely regarded as America’s most historic observatory—names like Carl Sagan, Edwin Hubble, and Nancy Grace Roman once dashing through its hallways—Yerkes seemed destined to become a dusty museum. And then, growing like a nascent star, it found a second life.
“The University of Chicago couldn’t make this facility work exclusively as an observatory,” says Walt Chadick, Yerkes’ director of programs and external affairs. Observatories are in the sky, or on mountaintops in faraway lands—not subject to the light pollution of Chicago. When the Yerkes Future Foundation took over in 2020, they needed a new plan. “We realized we needed to branch out beyond what astronomy is to what people make based on astronomy,” says Chadick. That’s how we could make an impact on our community.”
Reopened in May 2022, Yerkes has already put its mission to work: Poet laureates, Grammy winners, NASA sculptors, Pulitzer-winning authors, and composers and artists across nearly every genre have gathered here to be inspired by astronomy. The result? Ideas as big as the cosmos.
Prior to the University of Chicago handing over the reins to the Yerkes Future Foundation, the aging facility was slowly becoming an archaeological site. “They had the occasional Saturday tour,” explains Dr. Amanda Bauer, deputy director and Yerkes’ head of science and education. “They ran summer camps and had a bunch of 3D printers—but it was more of a museum as opposed to whatever you call what we are now.”
When pressed, Bauer calls Yerkes a “science destination.” She quickly adds caveats: the history, the art, the architecture, and the landscape—Yerkes is an Olmsted site and an accredited arboretum.
Those caveats have served as Yerkes’ artistic compass: US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith read “Life on Mars” under the gaze of the Great Refractor, the largest refracting telescope in the world; 30 musicians, led by Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird, composed and performed new works based on star images and plates; Ashley Zelinskie, the official sculptor for NASA, created a custom work evoking light bending through spacetime, infused with nods to Yerkes’ historic details; and the world’s largest glass tree, blown onsite, marked Christmas. “Connecting our material to art—we’ve got the largest glass lens used for astronomy, 180,000 glass plates—that’s the through line for all of these cross-pollinated, big ideas,” says Bauer. “That’s the sort of thing we’re doing here.”
In 2024, the Blackbird Creative Lab is back alongside more summer events, from a puppet show directed by Ann Hamilton, a visual artist known for her large-scale multimedia installations, to a night with Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of music at Northwestern University. Artists “go down that road of what is the science of music and art,” says Chadick, “using old astronomy equipment, using books and our plate collection to inform composition. We keep astronomy at our core, and then we bridge-build from there.”
Jacqueline Kehoe wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
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