The 53rd annual Monterey Jazz Festival has come and gone in a blur of activity and excellent music. While it will most likely be remembered for its New Orleans flavor — with Harry Connick Jr.’s face adorning all the advertisements and Trombone Shorty’s incredible sets creating the biggest buzz — MJF/53 was also notable for [...]
Ahmad Jamal was fired up. Closing out the Monterey Jazz Festival’s headline program in the Arena on Sunday night, Jamal came blazing out of the gate and never looked back, striking boldly and aggressively with a muscular quartet that was fully in sync.
The Fred Hersch Trio presented jazz mastery of the highest order in their debut set at the Monterey Jazz Festival, calmly enfolding the hotbox room known as the Coffee House Gallery in layers of complex interplay, sweeping romanticism and uplifting grace.
As Harry Connick, Jr. wrapped up the fourth song of his Monterey Jazz Festival debut — a sultry, almost pained reworking of the Beatles’ “And I Love Her” — a group of female voices shouted in unison from the right side of the Arena: “We love you, Harry!” A second group, on the opposite side of the venue, answered instantly in squealed agreement. Hold on a moment; is this 2010 or 1990?
Making her Monterey debut on a hot Sunday afternoon, world music superstar Angelique Kidjo cranked the temperature up even further with funky vocal romps and balmy pan-African rhythms, getting the Arena crowd up on its feet and dancing the day away.
Early on in the Arena set by Chick Corea’s Freedom Band, I began to wonder about that name. But soon a theory began to form. Maybe it’s about the “freedom” to explore tradition, to be yourself, and to just go out there and have a good time.
Quick and agile, percolating and twisty, Chris Potter’s Underground was revving on all cylinders in a Saturday evening set that drew the attention of several other Monterey performers along with a good number of younger attendees.
When pianist Billy Childs discovered that he would have a chance to collaborate with the esteemed Kronos Quartet on his newly-commissioned work for the Monterey Jazz Festival, he leapt at the chance — but he had no plan. “I had no storyline in mind,” he said before tonight’s premiere. “I just started writing music.” It may not have a narrative, but the finished piece lacks nothing in forward movement or creative passion.
It was one of those sets that people will talk about for a long, long time. Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and his Orleans Avenue crew blew up the Monterey Jazz Festival, sending a massive outdoor crowd into spasms and closing out Saturday afternoon on a roaring high note.
On an afternoon dominated by rhythm and blues, it was a small but adventurous group that headed for the room known as the Night Club to check out San Francisco bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and her twitchy, angular quartet, Bait & Switch. But for those who could hang with the band’s multiple twists and turns, it was a thoroughly enjoyable thrill ride.
Naomi Shelton’s voice is raw, gritty, filled with power and soul. It filled the Monterey air on Saturday afternoon in a combination of of Mavis Staples spirit and James Brown dynamite, kicking off the portion of the Monterey Jazz Festival program traditionally reserved for blues, gospel and soul with a short but compelling set.
Big bands are all the rage in modern jazz circles these days. But while a lot of these groups specialize in charts that seem to be the musical equivalent of differential calculus or quantum mechanics, the big band led by star trumpeter Roy Hargrove goes back to the fundamentals. Playing their second set of the evening, Hargrove’s crew provided swing, fireworks, and good old-fashioned fun.
