For the gay vacationer, Provincetown is like Oz; along its Yellow Brick Road, also known as Commercial Street, drag queens, Broadway divas, and camp cabaret make up most of the entertainment. Audiences there are not known as jazz lovers.
Yet alto saxophonist Mike Flanagan, who is gay, has become a local star by offering jazz that flies over nobody’s head. Warm, tuneful, and swinging, it fits nicely in almost any setting, from bebop-flavored combos to Whitney Houston and Pink cover shows. In Provincetown alone, where he lives full time, Flanagan plays five nights a week, two of them at Tin Pan Alley, a restaurant whose bar has become his musical workshop.
In order to survive, however, he has to keep several plates spinning at once. Flanagan is the booker for both Tin Pan Alley and the Post Office Café and Cabaret; those jobs require him to fill a total of 39 performance slots per week. Flanagan plays keyboard for bar vocalists and saxophone for singers Lea DeLaria and Matt Alber, two zealously out LGBT favorites. He also teaches music three days a week.
Flanagan, 39, has joined a small cohort of out-gay jazz musicians who have forged places for themselves in a traditionally gay-unfriendly field. Now he’s about to test his mettle in the “real” jazz world when he makes his debut at Scullers Jazz Club on May 17, to preview the forthcoming “Many Rivers,” his first full-out jazz album.
Singer Suede, the veteran earth mother of Cape Cod cabaret and jazz, foresees a bright future for him. “He’s an incredible go-getter, constantly working, making new connections, and growing as an artist. He does his homework — on tunes, theory, players, venues, promoters — and never seems to be stopped by thinking he’s over-reaching. He has that lovely balance of being comfortable in his own skin without an overly large ego taking up too much space.”
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As a Berklee College of Music student, Flanagan found his North Star in the late Yasko Kubota, the Boston-area jazz pianist and educator. She had enough R&B in her to catch the ears of New Kids on the Block, the famous boy band from Dorchester, who took her on tour. “I thought, I want to play jazz and make people feel the way she’s making me feel right now,” says Flanagan. Before graduating in 2008, the saxophonist — fiercely driven even then — landed a residency at the Sheraton Boston, where he led bands that he had stocked with Berklee faculty and students.
By then, the notoriously macho jazz field had a handful of openly gay and lesbian stars, including vibraphonist Gary Burton, pianist Fred Hersch, and singer-pianists Patricia Barber and Andy Bey. Still, Flanagan, who had come out at 21, felt like a misfit. “A lot of the bonding being done was over attraction to girls, or saying misogynistic things,” he says. “I thought, I’m never gonna fit into this boys’ club.”
He took a sharp detour. Adopting a cool-sounding handle, MikeMRF (his initials), Flanagan became the musical director and composing partner of Lisa Bello, a Boston-born singer of blue-eyed soul and hip-hop. (“She’s straight but an ally,” he explains.) Their songs, some of them gay-themed, earned two Outmusic Awards as well as the John Lennon Award, founded by Yoko Ono to honor young songwriters. In the video for “Trying,” Flanagan acts the part of a heartsick gay man involved in a breakup. “Trying” has scored more than a million views on YouTube.
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Each July, thousands of men of Flanagan’s physical type invade Provincetown for Bear Week. In 2010 he was hired to play there for a drag queen. No one around had his jack-of-all-trades musicianship, and within a few summers his schedule was bursting. In 2016 he moved to Brooklyn and earned a master’s degree in music at New York University. He taught there and toured with Bello until the pandemic halted everything. It made sense for him to settle in Provincetown, where employment was assured.
Along the way, his focus on jazz had gotten blurred. “Many Rivers” seeks to restore it. The album’s personnel includes drummer Richie Barshay, formerly with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, and Steve Davis, a star trombonist and Berklee professor. “Although Mike’s style often leans toward an R&B/smooth-jazz approach,” notes Davis, “he can play changes and likes to bebop, too.”
On July 18, during Bear Week, Flanagan will, he hopes, fill Provincetown’s 708-seat Town Hall when he headlines a show he’s self-producing. An array of his closest colleagues, including Bello, will be there to help sweeten the package. Two other participants — Chris Grasso, Provincetown’s first-call jazz pianist, and Lauren Scales, a runner-up in the 2016 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition — will join him at Scullers, too.
Flanagan dreams of taking his act abroad, but not at the cost of his summers in Provincetown, where he has earned blanket approval. “It’s allowed me to implement jazz in an LGBT town,” he says. “Oftentimes the compliment we get is: ‘I don’t often listen to jazz but I want to see you guys again.’”
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MIKE FLANAGAN
At Scullers Jazz Club, 400 Soldiers Field Road. May 17 at 7 p.m. Tickets $35-$110. scullersjazz.com
James Gavin is the author of “George Michael: A Life,” “Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee,” “Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne,” and “Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker.”