2010 New Haven Jazz Festival Line-Up

[Lois Gilbert]

JazzCorner.com is proud to be the online sponsor for the:
2010 New Haven Jazz Festival Line-Up
Presented by Jazz Haven in collaboration with Casey Family Services & Department of Cultural Affairs

August 14 & 21, 2010

New Haven Green, New Haven, CT

Saturday, August 14, 2010 ~ 3-9pm

Neighborhood Youth Jazz Orchestra - 3:00pm
Noah Baerman Jazz Suite “Know Thyself” Septet featuring Wayne Escoffrey - 4:00pm
Afro-Peruvian Jazz Showcase - 5:15pm
Winard Harper Sextet - 6:30pm
Bobby Watson Quartet - 7:45pm

Saturday, August 21, 2010 ~ 3-9pm
Jackie McLean Youth Jazz Orchestra - 3:00pm
Joe Morris, Matthew Shipp, Jim Hobbs, Gerald Cleaver - 4:00pm
Steve Davis Quintet - 5:15pm
Claudia Acuna Latin Jazz Group - 6:30pm
Robby Ameen Latin Jazz Sextet - 7:45pm

[Lois Gilbert]

New Haven Jazz Festival kicks off with ECA alums and NMS Youth Jazz Orchestra
Published: Friday, August 13, 2010



Noah Baerman “Know Thy Self” Jazz Suite.
By Mark Zaretsky, Register Staff


NEW HAVEN — The New Haven Jazz Festival returns to the New Haven Green Saturday and Aug. 21 as a two-weekend event — the first time it will span multiple weekends since Jazz Haven resurrected the popular event in 2008.

As has been the case since the fest was reborn after a two-year absence, it will be an all-jazz event, without the pop flavor that seeped in during the later years of its original incarnation.

This year’s 28th Jazz Festival also is chock-full of talent — both local and international.

Saturday’s lineup includes the Bobby Watson Quartet, the Winard Harper Sextet, the Afro-Peruvian Jazz Showcase, the Noah Baerman “Know Thyself” Jazz Suite — a super group of sorts of New Haven-bred musicians who came out of the Educational Center for the Arts and went on to bigger, better things — and New Haven’s Neighborhood Music School Youth Jazz Orchestra.

The shows runs from 3-9 p.m. both Saturdays.

Besides piano player Baerman — who grew up in New Haven, lives in Middletown and has recorded albums accompanied by the likes of jazz bass icon Ron Carter — the “Know Thyself” conglomeration includes New Havener-turned-New Yorker Wayne Escoffery on tenor and soprano saxophone, Erica von Kleist on alto sax and flute, Chris Dingman on vibraphone, Amanda Monaco on guitar, Henry Lugo on bass and Vinnie Sperrazza on drums.

Escoffery and Monaco both also are members with Baerman of Playdate, a quintet that put out its first album in 2009.

The lineup Aug. 21 includes Chilean-born New Yorker Claudia Acuña; New Haven’s Robbie Ameen Latin Jazz Quartet; the Steve Davis Quintet with Larry Willis, Joe Morris, William Parker, Gerald Cleaver and Jim Hobbs; and the Jackie Mclean Youth Jazz Orchestra from Hartford’s Artists’ Collective.

Jazz Haven President Doug Morrill said this year’s New Haven Jazz Festival is more important than ever because in the economic crisis, “We need to celebrate our culture more than ever. Rather than cut art and music programming, we need to protect what we have.”

Pulling together the Jazz Fest “is a struggle year after year ... but right now it’s come together, and I think it’s going to be an exciting festival,” Morrill said.

“This year, we decided to expand it to two weekends, which I think was the right decision,” Morrill said, pointing out that Casey Family Services has continued to sponsor the festival year after year.

The first resurrected Jazz Festival in 2008 spanned two days on the same weekend. Last year’s fest was just one day.

Here is a brief rundown on Saturday’s other performers:

- Bobby Watson is a saxophone player, composer, producer and educator who grew up in Kansas City and is the former musical director of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, playing with the renowned jazz training and polishing ground from 1977 to 1981. He has played with a who’s who of jazz royalty, including drummers Max Roach and Louis Hayes, fellow sax players George Coleman and Branford Marsalis and vocalists Joe Williams, Dianne Reeves, Lou Rawls, Betty Carter and Carmen Lundy. Watson also wrote music for the soundtrack of Robert DeNiro’s directorial debut, “A Bronx Tale.”

- The Afro-Peruvian Jazz Sextet includes members who live both in New York and Peru. Afro-Peruvian jazz is characterized by soulful and complex polyrhythms that grew out of the African-influenced culture of coastal Peru — featuring the distinctive sound of the cajón, a wooden box-like percussion instrument that players sit on as they play.

Winard Harper, a drummer, has led his sextet, which is full of impressive young jazz talent, for nearly a decade, playing at venues ranging from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to Yoshi’s in San Francisco. “This music is powerful,” he says of jazz. “It can do a lot of good for people. If they’d spend some time each day listening to it, we would see many changes in the world.”

- The Neighborhood Music School Youth Jazz Orchestra will showcase the young talent developed in New Haven’s long-established and well-known music school on Audubon Street.