MJF/50, Day 3: In a Sentimental Mood

Originally published on Jazz Police.

The third day of the Monterey Jazz Festival is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the final evening in the Arena is invariably a star-studded event. On the other hand, it’s the final evening. You want the barbecued ribs, the reunions with friends, the interesting conversations with strangers and fellow jazz fans, the mellowness despite the crowds, and especially the music to go on and on.

I’m kicking myself for missing Ornette Coleman, but who scheduled him for 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, anyway? Could I have handled his complex, unpredictable, audacious music with the California sun beating down on my head? Plenty of other people did, and many enjoyed it, according to reviews I read later. Coleman played with three basses: Tony Falanga (bowed acoustic), the marvelous Charnett Moffett (acoustic with wah-wah), and Al Macdowell (electric), all accompanied by Coleman’s son Denardo on the drums. Although it won’t be anywhere near the same as the live performance, I’m getting Coleman’s Sound Grammar (with Falanga, Denardo, and Greg Cohen) ASAP. This is the album that just won Coleman the Pulitzer Prize.

Later that afternoon, we stopped by the Night Club to hear the Monterey County High School All-Star Band directed by Paul Contos. Several school bands performed that day, dubbed “Family Day” and sponsored by Macy’s. It’s part of MJF’s tradition of spotlighting student artists and supporting jazz education; Joshua Redman, Benny Green, and Patrice Rushen played the Festival with their high school bands. The All-Star Band recently toured Japan. In the Night Club, vocalist Simone van Seenus performed a challenging duet with bassist Ryan Grech, and the band came together for “Cry Me a River.” The room was full of parents and grandparents.

Over lunch in the Festival’s outdoor food court—a grassy area filled with picnic tables surrounded by food booths, many with smoke billowing from grills and most with long lines in front of them—we spoke with people from Miami who’d met people from Wisconsin who’d met a couple from Dubai.

Shortly before 7:00 p.m., we followed the crowds into the Arena for the closing show. Fifty years ago, comedian Mort Sahl emceed the first Monterey Jazz Festival with Dizzy Gillespie. Sahl returned solo this year, joking that “you wouldn’t call this a steady job.” He introduced the MJF 50th Anniversary All-Stars, a dream band featuring Festival artist-in-residence Terence Blanchard (trumpet), James Moody (saxophones), Benny Green (piano and musical director), Nnenna Freelon (voice), and Blanchard trio members Derrick Hodge (bass) and Kendrick Scott (drums). In January, the All-Stars will begin a national tour, bringing jazz—and the Monterey Jazz Festival brand—to over 50 cities.

Brand? This is the age of the brand. Why shouldn’t the Monterey Jazz Festival trade on its good name and reputation as one of the world’s preeminent music events? In addition to the All-Stars, there’s now a Monterey Jazz Festival Records label, which just released a series of live-at-Monterey recordings. The size and depth of the Festival’s vaults (more than 1,600 tapes, over 2,000 hours of concerts) ensures future recordings should the first six (Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, and a festival sampler) prove successful. The Festival has become a book publisher as well. Its debut release, The Art of Jazz: Monterey Jazz Festival/50 Years is a hardcover coffee-table book with a foreword by Clint Eastwood, classic photos, and full-color images of posters and program covers spanning the Festival’s history. If you want, you can order a limited edition copy signed by Eastwood. While you’re at the official MJF/50 online store, buy a mug. This year’s posters are totally sold out. We watched a woman buy the last one at the official MJF stuff booth. It had been taped to a box for display and had to be cut off with a knife.

We were hoping to get hooded sweatshirts, but they were gone. Later, we found some at the Brother Thelonious booth. Brother Thelonious is a Belgian-style abbey ale; sales benefit the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. It’s tasty and it supports jazz education, which makes it the ideal beer for every occasion. Brother Thelonious normally comes in a big (750 ml.) bottle topped with a traditional cork-and-wire, though the Festival served it in plastic cups.

The All-Stars were terrific, even though Benny Green claimed that playing together was so new for them they hadn’t yet figured out the timing of a 60-minute show; they ran over, but nobody seemed to care. Someone had written lyrics to Gerald Wilson’s “Monterey Moods,” which Wilson premiered in instrumental form the night before. Freelon sang them beautifully. Blanchard’s cinematic horn starred in John Coltrane’s “Straight Street.” At one point, Benny Green called Blanchard “the most positive presence in the music today,” an apt description of the amiable, accessible, prodigiously talented musician and composer. The set ended with “Time After Time” and Freelon’s voice—warm, pure, and bright—soaring over the crowd.

Next up: living legend Dave Brubeck, the man whose music inspired the Monterey City Council in 1957 to okay the first jazz festival despite strong misgivings. “The very idea: bringing jazz to a respectable community,” Ira Kamin noted in the first book about the Festival, Dizzy, Duke, the Count and Me (1978). “[Festival founder Jimmy Lyons] had to convince the community that jazz (which meant black people and junkies) wouldn’t spoil the children, wilt the vegetation, or corrupt the coastline.” Brubeck was an ideal ambassador, and he has been a Festival supporter and performer ever since. At the closing concert, he and his trio—Bobby Militello on alto saxophone and flute, Michael Moore on bass, Randy Jones on drums—gave us exactly what we hoped for: elegant, swinging jazz under the stars.

Midway through his set, Brubeck introduced guest Jim Hall, who had also been at the first Festival. “We haven’t had a chance to play one note together,” Brubeck said, “but we’ll start in right now.” Hall opened with the first sweet notes of “All the Things You Are” and Brubeck’s quartet made a perfect entry. Everyone on stage had silver hair. At one point, I was struck by how extraordinary it was that in a large open-air stadium filled with thousands of metal chairs, Brubeck was able to play a solo so quiet it seemed he was whispering in my ear. How lovely to be in a crowd of people who listen…and three cheers for the sound system. After a series of seemingly unrelated chords, Brubeck made a sharp turn into “Take Five,” one of the great jazz tunes that, like “’Round Midnight,” will still be played when the MJF celebrates its 500th year.

The grand finale was Sonny Rollins, the Mount Rushmore of the saxophone. He came out blowing and blew so hard the clouds retreated. I mean it. When he walked on stage, there was a solid ring of clouds all around; by the time he finished, the sky was all moon and stars. Of course he played “St. Thomas” and “In a Sentimental Mood,” and there were other songs I recognized but can’t name. Every member of his band—Clifton Anderson on trombone, Bobby Broom on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on bass, Kimati Dinizulu on percussion, and Willie Jones III (fresh from Saturday’s Ernestine Anderson show at the Night Club) had a chance to shine. People with early flights were rising to leave, but quietly, taking care not to disturb the rest of us. And then it was over. In one night, we had heard the old and the new, the founders and the future.

Earlier, over lunch, a woman from San Francisco asked how often we’d come to the Festival and whether we’d return. I told her three times and hopefully yes. “This festival is addictive,” she said, stating what’s now obvious to me. There are worse things to get hooked on than jazz by the sea.

MJF/50, Day 2: From Blues to the Silvery Moon

Originally published on Jazz Police.


It was one of those days that made you vow to attend the Monterey Jazz Festival every September for the rest of your natural life, even if it means bringing your walker. Which plenty of people do.


Saturday is blues day, and we had two chances to hear James Hunter and Otis Taylor: first in the Arena and afterward at the Garden Stage. We chose the up-close-and-personal Garden Stage.


Hunter is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and arranger with an old-school soul man’s scream, rubbery knees, and a wicked wit. Raised in a mobile home in an onion field in Thorrington, formerly a railroad worker and busker, he has won fans including Van Morrison, who calls him “one of the best voices…in British R&B and soul.” Backed by his solid band, he delivered song after song to an audience that wanted to dance and did, including an elegant couple who dipped and twirled as if they were on a ballroom floor.

We chased the fast-moving Hunter to the Borders’ autographing station after his performance, hoping to score his Grammy-nominated CD, People Gonna Talk, and a signature, but the CDs sold out shortly after we got in line. At his manager’s invitation, we chased him back to the Garden Stage, where they happened to have a few copies in reserve, cash only please. His manager told us they had been on tour in the US for months having a wild time. No doubt.

Back at the Garden Stage, Otis Taylor was presenting his unique brand of certified trance blues. Like Hunter, Taylor was at Monterey for the first time. Unlike Hunter, who sounds like Sam Cooke and looks like a 1950s bad-boy movie star, Taylor looks like a bluesman: cool, menacing, nobody’s fool. When he sings of social injustice, homelessness, murder, and infidelity, he is not messing around. His band—no drums, just guitars, harmonica, and pedal steel—includes his daughter Cassie on a powder-blue electric bass. For most of the Garden Stage set, they were joined by David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, who had followed Taylor earlier at the Arena. Unforgettable, and now I want to hear more blues.

As 8:00 p.m. on Saturday night approached, we faced one of Monterey’s glorious dilemmas: the stellar line-up at the Arena or the temptations of the grounds? At the Arena, Terence Blanchard and his quintet would be joined by the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra for Blanchard’s heart-wrenching A Tale of God’s Will (Requiem for Katrina). Gerald Wilson would follow and premiere his Monterey Moods, this year’s Festival commissioned composition. And Diana Krall would return after a seven-year absence to wrap up the evening. We had seen Blanchard earlier this month at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis; I had listened to an advance CD of Wilson’s lovely music; I’ve seen Krall perform. But someone I had never seen was playing the Night Club at 9 p.m. The lines were already forming. We would see Ernestine Anderson. Like Dave Brubeck, Sonny Rollins, and Jim Hall, Anderson was at the first Monterey Jazz Festival a half-century ago. She recently turned 78 and rarely performs live anymore.

Because we arrived at the Night Club early, we caught the last part of Christian Scott's set. There’s been a lot of talk about this bright young trumpeter, and now I know why. Just 22 years old, the New Orleans native, Berklee graduate, and nephew of alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, Jr. is thrilling to see and hear. He plays and records mostly his own compositions, and we heard his full, live “Litany Against Fear,” which Scott preceded with a story about its origins. He was back home in New Orleans visiting the Ninth Ward when he noticed a little boy crying on a corner. When he asked the boy why he was crying, the child explained that he was afraid. Why was he afraid? Because, the boy replied, he couldn’t tell the difference between the bad police and the good police: Both wear blue. Scott’s “Litany” is expressive, emotional, and ultimately freeing. I can’t wait to hear more when he comes to the Dakota Jazz Club on October 7, and I hope he brings the quintet he played with here.

The crowd rose to its feet when Ernestine Anderson came on stage. She sat during her entire performance, saying more than once how she wished she could stand and dance, but that was the only sign of frailty in her performance. Impeccably dressed, perfectly coiffed, she sang with power, conviction, affection, and grace. Beginning with “I Love Being Here with You,” she treated us to “Night Life” and “This Can’t Be Love” before asking to have the lights turned up; “I want to see the faces.” Next, a luscious “Skylark” and a bossa nova arrangement of “Never Trust the Stars.” Earlier, the man sitting to my right told me that he had been listening to Anderson’s recordings for years but had never seen her live. Between songs, I asked him if this was what he had expected. “Better,” he breathed.

When Anderson announced, “We have now reached the blues portion of our show,” the crowd went wild. Backed like Betty Carter often was by a hardworking trio of brilliant young musicians—Lafayette Harris on piano, Michael Zisman on bass, and the wonderful Willie Jones III on drums (we last heard him with Kurt Elling; Anderson calls him “Baby Boy”)—she gave us the “Down Home Blues,” “A Song for You,” and a sung-and-spoken version of “Never Make Your Move Too Soon.” She more than deserved her standing ovation. As we left, people all around us were calling this the high point of the festival.

Back at the Garden Stage, we arrived in time to hear Sean Jones introduce singer Carolyn Perteete. She appears on Jones’s most recent CD, Kaleidoscope, on which he backs several singers including Gretchen Parlato and J.D. Walter. Jones met Perteete in Pittsburgh, where both live, and calls her one of Pittsburgh’s best-kept secrets; her day job is teaching school. She sang Kurt Elling’s “Esperanto,” written to Vince Mendoza’s music and featured on Elling’s Live in Chicago. Of all the songs on Kaleidoscope, that’s the one I most wanted to hear live, and I wasn’t disappointed. Perteete’s voice is pure and clear, with almost no vibrato; think Astrud Gilberto. As a bonus, she was wearing a killer pair of patent leather pumps. Jones ended his set with a blazing piece by alto sax player and bandmate Brian Hogans. The lead trumpeter for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Professor of Jazz Studies at Duquesne University, and now leader of his own sextet, Jones recently played the Dakota. Backstage after his set, he tells us he might be returning to Minneapolis in June of 2008.

We’re off to the Coffee House Gallery, where we last saw Craig Taborn, for the Cyrus Chestnut Trio's final performance of the evening. We walk into a whole different sound than the night before. This trio—Chestnut on the piano, Dezron Douglas on bass, Neal Smith on drums—is as tight as a screwtop jar. The soft-spoken, gentlemanly Chestnut alternately caresses the keys and brings them to Jesus, handing us gorgeous single notes and waves of impossibly fast arpeggios. From ballads to blues and “Don’t Be Cruel” (his next CD, due out in January, is all Elvis tunes), it’s a terrifically exciting, energizing set, full of joy and improvisation; when someone’s cell phone gives an annoying breep breep, Chestnut instantly quotes it, to the delight of his audience. He ends (or thinks he’s ending) with a beautiful “Body and Soul,” full of unexpected chords and trills, followed by a New Orleans-style “You Are My Sunshine,” but even when the band stands up and the background go-home-now music switches on, the crowd won’t let him leave. People shout “One more!” “The night is still young!” “I promise I’ll buy your CD!” and the trio returns for a boogie-woogie encore.

We think our night is over, too. It’s not. As we exit the Gallery, music wafts through the air. It’s well after midnight; could Diana Krall and her trio still be performing? They could and are. Inside the dark Arena, thousands of rapt listeners snuggle beneath their blankets. Stars dot the sky and a silvery moon shines overhead. It’s too perfect. A day packed with terrific music, and now a tall, cool Diana Krall nightcap. “East of the Sun,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “I Don’t Know Enough About You,” “Why Should I Care” (written by Clint Eastwood), and finally “’S Wonderful.” Big sigh.

Later, I learn that Ernestine Anderson and Diana Krall have something in common: Both were discovered and encouraged by Ray Brown.

MJF/50, Day 1: The Monterey Jazz Festival Opens in the Rain

Originally published on Jazz Police.

The first thing you realize about the Monterey Jazz Festival is you can’t see everything. Choose a headliner event at the Jimmy Lyons Stage (Arena) and you’re missing another live music performance you wish you could see at the Garden Stage, Dizzy’s Den, the Night Club/Billy Berry Stage, the Coffee House Gallery, or the new Lyons Lounge dance club venue.


The second thing you realize is you can’t get into everything you want. The golden anniversary of the world’s oldest continuously running jazz festival is drawing big crowds. If you bought an arena package, you have your own seat in the Arena, and that’s guaranteed; if someone else nabs it, he or she will vacate, with apologies, when you approach. Everything else is first-come, first-served, and the lines were already long on Friday, the opening night. If you planned to see the Terence Blanchard Quintet at the Night Club at 11:00 and you weren’t already inside for Geoff Keezer and Jim Hall at 9:30, good luck.


As we make our way across the Monterey County Fairgrounds toward the arena, it seems as if the more than 40,000 fans expected to attend have already arrived. The paths, picnic tables, and vendor booths are packed. We stop to buy 50th-anniversary T-shirts; traditionally, if you don’t buy festival stuff on the first night, anything you want is gone. Inside the arena, the dream team of bass giant Dave Holland, tenor sax master Chris Potter, powerhouse Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and young lion drummer Eric Harland are on stage. We arrive in time for “Step It Up,” a tune written by Holland for the occasion. If you know Holland’s music, you can imagine the general feel of the piece: upbeat, complex, jaunty, asymmetrical.


On stage, Holland looks like the happiest man in jazz. Harland has included a tambourine in his drum set, and it adds new flavor to the sonic mix. Potter is cool and professional, stepping back to showcase the trio. Rubalcaba is his sleek and impeccable self. A light rain is falling but doesn’t seem to concern the crowd, especially in Section J up in the bleachers to my right, where there’s a loud party going on. All around me, people are greeting old friends. Temporarily distracted from the music, I’m called back by one of those moments I love about Dave Holland: piano, sax, and bass in unison, cushioning Harland on a daring and ecstatic solo adventure. Then Potter takes back the tune and soars.


Following a lyrical, film-noir performance of Holland’s “Veil of Tears,” they close out the set with a new Chris Potter piece, “Ask Me Why.” Holland announces the song, and someone in the audience shouts “Why?” The crowd laughs. During Harland’s solo, with Rubalcaba and Holland in unison beneath him, the first plane of the festival flies overhead. There’s a direct link to Monterey Jazz Festival history. In 1958, the festival’s first year, Dave Brubeck was playing when a low-flying plane crossed the airspace above the arena. Without missing a beat, he quoted “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder.”


John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension are up next in the arena. We opt for Jim Hall and Geoff Keezer in the Night Club. There’s a very long line. Our press credentials get us in, after we promise to stand at the back.


Guitar legend Jim Hall played the first Monterey festival with the Jimmy Giuffre Three and Bob Brookmeyer; pianist Keezer (who began his career as a teen, with Art Blakey) wasn’t even born yet. The two recently collaborated on an ArtistShare, Free Association. Tonight celebrates that virtuosic and elegant pairing and more. We hear the classic Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II “All the Things You Are,” Keezer’s original piece “Wide-Angle Lens,” and Hall’s “Ougadoudou,” which begins with Keezer plucking the piano strings. After “Ougadoudou,” Keezer tells the sound guy to turn Hall up and him down. Then he turns the stage over to Hall alone, who gives us a version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark” so soft and delicate that people tiptoe in to score the few vacant seats. When Keezer returns, Hall jokes, “Now keep the piano that low.” The set ends with the Milt Jackson-inspired “A Merry Chase.” On the way out, we pass through multiple layers of the line waiting for Terence Blanchard at 11:00.


We head for the Coffee House Gallery, where the Craig Taborn Trio has held court all night, playing earlier sets at 8:00 and 9:30. We’ve heard Craig play before in various configurations at the Dakota Jazz Club and the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, and we plan to hear him again when he returns to the Dakota Jazz Club in February 2008 and performs at the Walker Art Center in March. But we like his music and we know his mom, so we don’t want to miss his moment in the spotlight at Monterey. (In the Festival program, the Craig Taborn Trio is high on general manager Tim Jackon’s Top 10 list of must-sees.) The other members of the trio are Thomas Morgan on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums.


Chris Potter (with whom Taborn will play the Dakota in February) is in the house; so is Astral Project’s James Singleton. Taborn tells the audience that Potter wants to hear “Little Red Machine,” so that’s where they begin. The music is complex, smart, and concentrated. Long passages become trancelike and hypnotic; there’s repetition, but repetition like a heartbeat; you don’t want it to stop. Taborn plays with a sense of fun (as the set winds down, he smiles frequently at the other members of his trio) and fierce intelligence. Following the tune he announces as their final piece, he nods and they segue into a lush, melodic, chord-filled version of Sun Ra’s “Love in Outer Space.” It’s breathtakingly beautiful and the perfect end to a music-filled night.