The 54th annual Monterey Jazz Festival has come and gone, one more weekend of music and merriment to file in the list of fond jazz memories, but with a few desperate hours in the middle your friendly neighborhood Jazz Observer would just as soon forget. Luckily Sunday’s website outage had only a limited impact on [...]
There’s a crazy rumor going around that Sonny Rollins just turned 81 years old. Impossible. Can’t be. When he blows into that tenor sax, time becomes simply irrelevant.
A collection of shots from the final day of the 54th annual Monterey Jazz Festival
Saxophonist Steve Coleman and his adventurous quartet bridge the cerebral and the physical, challenging the mind with new ideas but still speaking to the essential connection between music and movement.
Saxophonist Tia Fuller first came to Monterey playing in a student ensemble. But her powerhouse performance at the head of her own band is more like a master class.
Sunday, 5:00 p.m. — The Fairgrounds The database disaster which took the Jazz Observer website offline for nearly five hours today kept me away from the Monterey Jazz Festival until deep into the afternoon, but I managed to gather a few quick impressions before the early shows ended… It’s a good vibe here today, as [...]
The supergroup of Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman and Eric Harland needs a few tunes to hit its stride, but then its all out to close Monterey’s second night.
Saturday, 9:30 p.m. — Coffee House Gallery Two sides of the Bill Carrothers Trio are on display in the second of three sets in Monterey’s smallest, darkest room. On one hand there are heavy, high-powered blasts that pound the floors as if trying to drill through to bedrock. But in between these monoliths drift lighter, [...]
Saturday, 8:00 p.m. — The Arena Tap dance is far from a lost art, but it’s fair to say it’s become a somewhat arcane one, and downright underground where modern jazz is concerned. So it’s refreshing to hear an artist like pianist Geri Allen embrace tap percussion in her Timeline quartet, adding dancer Maurice Chestnut [...]
Composer, trumpeter and vocalist Sarah Wilson’s mercurial, shape-shifting quintet is a perfect fit for her own quirky compositions and performing style.
The Soul Rebels Brass Band declares Monterey an honorary neighborhood of New Orleans, kicking off a Big Easy extravaganza with Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Kermit Ruffins and Terence Blanchard.
