Detroit Jazz Festival

[Frisco]

Detroit Jazz Festival, Saturday September 2, 2006
Kirk Lightsey - piano, flute
Cecil McBee - bass
Bennie Maupin - tenor sax, soprano sax, bass clarinet
George Bohanon - trombone
Bert Myrick - drums

Very nice way to end a miserable day at the Detroit Jazz Festival. Cold rain, brittle winds, and 50 degree temperatures made for a less than memorable day. On Friday night, thousands of people flocked to the Campus Martius stage to hear the Temptations Revue, It was referred to as the largest crowd to witness a set at the Detroit Festival. Did someone say jazz? Well, the crowd at that stage was overflowing once again as we approached on Saturday night. The sounds of contemporary r&b were echoing off the downtown buildings as another overflow crowd gushed over the sounds of Rachelle Farrell. Did someone say jazz?

Embarassingly, at least 90% of the crowd filtered out after her set, leaving a handful of jazz lovers to witness this group of jazz legends. After waiting for a thirty minute display of booming fireworks to conclude on the riverfront, the band began a fine, close to 90 minute set of original pieces by four of the five band members. One of the highlights was a very bright, enthusiatic reading of Bennie Maupin's "Jewel in the Lotus", featuring Bennie on a very fluid and uplifting soprano sax. Maupin was also featured earlier in a bass clarinet solo piece. Lightsey's brilliant and inventive chord structures were a joy to hear and his left hand work was amazing. Most of the tunes were done at mid tempo and the fires never really burned but simmered nicely enough. It was Cecil McBee who lit the crowd with his always stellar bass work. Cecil saved the best for the end, engaging in a bowed solo that took the music out to places that this festival provides very, very little of. During this piece Lightsey joined him on flute for what was, to me, the highlight and saving grace of an otherwise dismal, wet, and cold day at the festival.

[Captain Hate]

Pat, does Lightsey still live in Detroit and/or play around the area frequently?

[Frisco]

No, I've not seen him in years. Really don;t hear about him playing in NY all that often either. I recall a few excellent duo gigs with McBee in NY in the early 90's. I think that his gigging years in Detroit were just beofre my time. I only recall gigs here with Dexter Gordon.

[Captain Hate]

Doing a web search it looks like he moved to Paris a while back and hasn't recorded much recently. Too bad because I picked up a nice trio rekkid on Limetree in the mid 80's that I liked a lot, despite the lukewarm review that the geniuses of AMG gave it. I saw him with The Leaders but other than that nada.

[Lois Gilbert]

Rain doesn't stop the sound at Jazz Fest

Susan Whitall / The Detroit News

The rain threatened, it dribbled down a bit and by 4:30 p.m. the clouds split and were actively pelting audiences at the Detroit International Jazz Fest today in downtown Detroit.



But the music went on and the rain ponchos and umbrellas appeared, sheltering music fans who sipped coffee against the chill. The forecast was for the rain to taper off by 7 p.m.

On the Absopure Waterfront stage, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson got in most of his set in before the rain came to stay. Donaldson, a veteran of the hard bop movement of the '50s known for his soulful, bluesy sound kept the audience in stitches with his between-songs and sung punchlines. One notable verse in a blues was that he dreamt he was in the White House but could find no weapons of mass destruction.

Donaldson was joined by Dr. Lonnie Smith on the Hammond organ, and later David "Fathead" Newman came out to first play flute, then his tenor saxophone. "I don't even know why he's playing, he's famous now since the Ray Charles movie," Donaldson joked.

After Newman soloed on and off, Donaldson returned to duet with him, with their saxophones running alongside, in and out and on top of each other.

Over in the Jazz Talk Tent, pianists Kirk Lightsey and Bess Bonnier discussed the Detroit piano tradition, and their adventures during Detroit's thriving jazz scene of the '50s and '60s.

When moderator Lars Bjorn noted that another pianist, Terry Pollard, used to hang out at the Pontiac home of the famed Jones family (from whence jazz greats Thad, Hank and Elvin sprung), he said Pollard was too intimidated to play at the endless jam sessions at the Jones house.

"Can you imagine someone that good being intimidated? And what about you, Bess, did you play at all when you were visiting the Joneses?" Bjorn asked.

"Nope, I was the same way. I did not play," Bonnier said with a laugh.

The crowd estimate for Friday night's show in Campus Martius Park with the Funk Brothers and Dennis Edwards' Temptations Revue was 12,000, from the Detroit 300 Conservancy, which based it on a previous crowd that it had hand-counted that was half as big.

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[Lois Gilbert]

I'll give a full report when I get back.

FYI Lightsey lives in Paris. He did a tribute to John Hicks at Caramoor in August and his own stint at the Jazz Standard a few months earlier. They sounded fabulous tonight.

[Lois Gilbert]

Jazz fest: Its future safe; music swings
Attendance up from last year's event
BY MARK STRYKER
FREE PRESS MUSIC CRITIC

September 5, 2006



Ed Nuccilli plays to the crowd on Monday, Labor Day. (ROMAIN BLANQUART/Detroit Free Press)

Jazz festival highlights
• Urban Transport: A no-nonsense and aggressive set on Saturday by one of Detroit's tightest working groups.



• Kirk Lightsey's Detroit Four + One: A blistering post-bop reunion of Detroit-bred modernists on Saturday, including saxophonist Bennie Maupin, trombonist George Bohanon and bassist Cecil McBee, featured the most adventure of the festival.



• Lewis Nash Quartet Tribute to Tommy Flanagan: An immaculately tailored and invigorating homage on Saturday by Renee Rosnes, Steve Nelson, Peter Washington and Nash.



• Joe Locke and the Milt Jackson Tribute Band: On Monday, Locke's inspired vibes breathed fire while the most supple and swinging trio at the festival -- pianist Mike LeDonne, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Mickey Roker -- simmered with soul.



• David (Fathead) Newman: The saxophonist and flutist deserves kudos for sitting in with three acts -- Lou Donaldson, Detroit Jazz Griots and Dr. John.



• Ahmad Jamal Trio: A textbook lesson in tension and release Sunday by the legendary pianist. You knew what was going to happen; you weren't sure when.



Mark Stryker

The most thrilling single facet of the 27th annual Detroit International Jazz Festival, which closed Monday night, was that nobody need worry that there might not be a 28th.

For years, the festival has operated under a cloud that financial and management troubles might implode the event, one of the largest free jazz festivals in North America and a critical cultural asset in a city where music remains a precious resource.

But with Music Hall transferring producing responsibilities this year to a nonprofit foundation -- created with a $10-million gift from Detroit philanthropist Gretchen Valade, a Carhartt Clothing heiress and owner of Mack Avenue Records -- we can all stop worrying for the foreseeable future. There are still bland spots in the programming preventing the festival from reaching its full potential, but the first thing to note is this: You rock, Gretchen.

Conceptually, the 2006 festival built on the expanded footprint created last year by artistic director Frank Malfitano (who has retained his role with the new foundation). Stages at Campus Martius and near the Spirit of Detroit, along with a pedestrian promenade along Woodward Avenue, have reinvented the festival's physical and emotional landscape, providing platforms for roots music styles and R&B. The festival is now simply a lot more fun, especially for everyday fans.

There were new ideas this year. One of the best was turning the Pyramid Stage into a New Orleans-themed corner. Decked out with purple and gold Mardi Gras streamers and a banner emblazoned with an image of Bourbon Street, it felt cozy and exhilarating -- especially on Sunday night, when Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas had a sardine-packed crowd dancing to a swampy shuffle beat so volatile you could measure it on the Richter scale.

Tributes to New Orleans and Detroit were a major theme of the weekend, and it felt respectful in the aftermath of Katrina. But this was also the second year in a row with a heavy Gulf Coast flavor. Perhaps future festivals could pair Detroit with other cities rich in jazz and vernacular music traditions -- Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Los Angeles.

Another idea that worked was capping Saturday and Sunday at the Jazz Talk Tent with sets by veteran Detroit beboppers. The tent morphed into an intimate club setting -- a vibe unlike any other at the festival. On Sunday, star tenor saxophonist David (Fathead) Newman played a loose but vibrant set of bebop and blues with a local trio. More, please.

On the downside, a Saturday night fireworks display was a vulgar interruption to the music, made worse by rain that knocked the schedule out of whack and forced at least a 30-minute delay to the start of a highly anticipated Detroit reunion set with Kirk Lightsey, Bennie Maupin, George Bohanon, Cecil McBee and Bert Myrick. The quintet's blistering post-bop was one of the high points of the weekend -- and the kind of Detroit-centric moment that represents the festival at its most profound.

Artistically, the festival stands on the brink of greatness, but the programming remains too disconnected from the vanguard of jazz and simply not ambitious enough to elevate the festival to its highest aspirations. Malfitano is a savvy populist, and by broadening the menu of music beyond jazz and expanding up Woodward, he saved the event from extinction. But now it's time to feed the aesthetic soul with a more curatorial approach.

After all, the festival is on sound financial footing and the crowds are back. Detroit police and festival organizers don't give attendance estimates, but operations director Mark Loeb said Monday that even with weekend rain, food and beverage sales point to a 10%-20% leap in attendance over last year's soaring turnout.

It's not that there weren't lots of magical moments, among them an invigorating tribute to Detroit pianist Tommy Flanagan by the Lewis Nash Quartet and the theatrical production that remains the Ahmad Jamal Trio in action. But such cornball diversions as Brasil Brazil or Sergio Mendes are frustrating when some of contemporary jazz's most vibrant music is being made by Latino musicians like Miguel Zenon or Danilo Perez.

There were four tributes to dead musicians this year -- Flanagan, Milt Jackson, Jaco Pastorious and Frank Zappa. Each had its virtues, but coupled with the dearth of progressives -- players like Jack DeJohnette, Steve Coleman, Wayne Shorter or David Liebman -- the nostalgia parade left an overly retro-haze in the air. To serve the art, a jazz festival should look to the future as well as celebrate the past.

The seeds of a solution are in the soil of Detroit. Why not, for example, commission the Detroit-born pianist and composer Geri Allen to write a piece for the festival? Why not showcase some of the younger generation of former Detroiters making a mark in jazz like drummers Karriem Riggins, Gerald Cleaver and Ali Jackson and pianist Craig Taborn?

Victory is tantalizingly close. The Jazz Festival is already a gem. Let's polish it to perfection

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[Lois Gilbert]

Festival's end showcases Detroit-bred jazz
By Mark Stryker
Free Press Music Critic

September 5, 2006

A remarkable chunk of Detroit-bred jazz history reunited on Monday evening at the Detroit International Jazz Festival, and it was hard to listen to the Detroit Jazz All Stars - pianist Barry Harris, trombonist Curtis Fuller, alto saxophonist Charles McPherson, drummer Louis Hayes, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and bassist Rodney Whitaker - without shaking your head once again at this city’s historic role as an incubator of jazz talent.

Harris, Fuller, McPherson and Hayes came roaring out of Detroit’s golden age of modern jazz in the ‘50s and became major figures, recording widely and working with many of the greatest names in jazz. Their peer, Belgrave arrived in Detroit in 1963, and Whitaker, the baby of the band at 38, first came to prominence in the late 1980s. To recount the players’ personal histories would take a book - in fact, there is one, “Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit” by Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert, which does a fine job of documenting the details.

Still, it’s worth taking a moment to note the key role that mentors played in developing Detroit as a jazz mecca, and the amphitheatre stage on Monday was ripe with examples: Harris, a bebop guru, taught Fuller and McPherson. Hayes’ most important apprenticeship in Detroit was with saxophonist Yusef Lateef, another key mentor. Belgrave taught Whitaker, and Whitaker himself is now a professor at Michigan State University.

The music Monday was unadulterated bebop, the music that Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk pioneered in the 1940s and remains the lingua franca of modern jazz. There were anthems by Parker (“Confirmation” and “Now’s The Time”), Monk (“Epistrophy”) and Powell (“Bouncing With Bud”), as well as Oscar Pettiford’s “Tricotism,” which showcased Whitaker’s deft improvising, and ballad features for Harris, Fuller and Belgrave and a slow blues that was all McPherson. The flag-waver was Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol’s “Caravan.”

Frankly, the ensemble passages were a motley, unrehearsed mess, and it would be nice if the festival could build into the schedule some rehearsal time for such all-star groups. Better still would have been the chance to hear some original music, especially by Harris, who has a thick book of alluring compositions that rarely get played. But no matter - the joy of the set was the chance to hear the old gang back together.

There were many heartwarming moments. Harris, 76, played more aggressively than he does usually these days, paced by the lockstep beat of Whitaker and the 69-year-old Hayes, whose cymbal beat remains a marvel of calibrated swing. Harris echoed Powell’s arrangement of “Like Someone in Love,” carrying the melody in rippling chords played out of tempo before sliding into a relaxed-bounce tempo. When Hayes switched from brushes to sticks, Harris swung into a higher gear, his poetry growing more complex and evermore witty. His final melody statement was a symphony of unexpected passing chords.

Belgrave, who turned 70 this summer, was in tiptop shape. The trumpet is an unforgiving instrument, but Belgrave carved snaky lines with firm control and an airy, beautiful tone. His ballad feature, “You Leave Me Breathless,” unfolded with the candlelight glow of romance. Once an impeccable technician, Fuller, 71, has had health problems in recent years and no longer commands his instrument as he once did. But he rallied on “Bouncing With Bud” with some of his trademark skipping-down-the-street enunciation.

Finally, McPherson was the catalyst, handling the introductions with live-wire animation and playing with incendiary energy and charisma.. The ecstasy of his tone and the delirious rapture of his improvisations were startling. On the slow blues, he stacked layers of fresh 16th and 32nd note melodies on top of one another, each stuffed with progressively more imagination and less patently tied to the beat. It was a virtuoso performance, and when it was over, Harris beamed at his one-time student.

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[Lois Gilbert]

REVIEW: Jamal keeps Jazz Fest crowd guessing
By Mark Stryker
Free Press Music Critic

September 4, 2006

Nearly 50 years after he first became a sensation in jazz, pianist Ahmad Jamal still has a reputation as a jazz minimalist, vamping till the cows come home, leaving gaping holes of silence in his music and plinking melodies played so high up on the keyboard and so softly that it almost sounds as if the music is evaporating right in front of you. But Jamal, a conceptualist who influenced Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett and countless others, is also a maximalist.

Jamal, whose trio closed out Sunday night's performances at the Detroit International Jazz Festival at Hart Plaza's amphitheatre, pivoted incessantly between whispered transparencies and dense explosions of chords, muscularly thumped bass notes and gyrating, almost chaotic densities all over the keyboard that clouded into obscurity the grooves dug by bassist James Cammack and drummer Idris Muhammad. Suddenly, as if flipping off a light switch, Jamal wiped away the debris and the groove reappeared from the rubble. He then rode the beat with some slyly humorous riffing before building to his next barrage.

This play of tension and release is Jamal's idée fixe. Every tune Sunday followed a similar formula, from the opening standard, "Time On My Hands," to revivals of his early hits "Poinciana" and "But Not For Me," to simple originals based on nothing more than oscillating intervals and a series of repeating bass ostinatos. The rhythms were generally based on swing or a kind of swampy shuffle that drummer Vernel Fournier invented with Jamal in the '50s and that Muhammad updated with a slightly funky twist.

Still, while you know what's going to happen in Jamal's music, you never know when it's going to happen. Jamal, who controls every move his ensemble makes like an auteur, keeps his listeners (and his sidemen) guessing. The emotion in his music comes from surprise. His encore Sunday had so many false endings the music warped into surrealism.

Jamal's music is easy to understand but it remains downright mutinous in its absence of melody. He has essentially replaced the linear melodic improvising that governs nearly all jazz with an aesthetic based entirely on dynamics, dramatic silence, theatrical surprise, texture, contrast and riffs. The music can be tedious, self-conscious and excessively splashy, and there were times Sunday when I longed to hear the music ascend to a higher plane of melodic and harmonic development and improvisation. Call me old fashioned. But nobody jogs in place so profoundly as Jamal.

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[Enforcer]

Despite a weekend full of endless other commitments, I managed to get down to the festival on Monday for a bit. Caught some of the Detroit Jazz All Stars and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The festival looked great. Expanding the event up Woodward into Campus Martius last year was a great idea. I agree that shutting down Jefferson from Cobo Arena to Woodward makes sense. That's always a hazardous crosswalk. Gretchen Carhartt-Valade is a godsend. When I heard about her (outrageously) generous donation last year, it seemed too good to be true.

I'm so happy to hear that Jazz Corner has taken on a sponsorship role at the festival. Groove on, Lois!

[Lois Gilbert]

Oh Larry, I wished I had known as we discussed - and I'm glad you came down on Monday. I caught a little of Lyman Woodard's set on Monday after spending the morning with Gerald Wilson in my hotel. I can't wait for you all to hear our conversation, but then I had to leave so....

Meanwhile here's another review. I am so proud we are affiliated with Detroit Jazz and with Mack Ave

[Al in NYC]

I was there with my parents on and off for 3 days during my annual late August/Labo(u)r Day weekend visit to my family in S.E. Michigan and S.W. Ontario.

I attended the Lightsey set that Pat Frisco reviewed above alone and thoroughly enjoyed it (after the interminable fireworks ended - whose idea was that? - which drove my parents to go home). I've always said that Bennie Maupin was one of the most underrated guys out there, and his absolutely lovely soprano feature showed his underappreciated greatness once again. Lightsey himself is another guy who, despite his earlier fame, has become pretty much a lost man to American jazz fans. Wonderful to see him again, and to see him playing so well.

I pretty much felt the same way about the Ahmad Jamal set as the Free Press reviewer that Lois double-posted above. I've usually found his approach way too cute and repetitive, and not all that interesting overall from a jazz perspective. Although he was the popular hit of the festival for the Detroit crowd (he's always been quite popular in Detroit, and I believe it's been a long time since he last appeared there). The Amphitheatre was completely packed for his set with happy, and is usual in Detroit, vocally responsive fans. The set did have it's moments though, as Jamal's approach can provide some interesting instrumental contrasts, and, of course, it's always nice to see the great Idriss Muhammed.

Similarly to my objections to Ahmad Jamal, I have a definite resistance to Zydeco, which all sounds the same to me after a song or two (and it's a pretty grating sound too) and seems to skate by on the sort of forced merriment "ain't we havin' a ball!" stage business that drives me nuts. About 3 and a half songs was all I could take. So the point of that "innovation" was completely lost on me, and just served to cost us the Pyramid stage, which has by far the best acoustics and atmosphere of all of the stages. I'm also not at all sure what it has to do with jazz or Detroit, but then I guess that just shows I'm on my way to curmudgeonhood.

Among the other highlights for me, beyond the Lightsey show, was the "Tommy Flanagan tribute" set on Saturday after the rain, which was a quartet of Lewis Nash, Peter Washington, Steve Nelson, and an absolutely on fire Renee Rosness, playing material from Flanagan's songbook with great flair and originality. It was a conventional hard bop performance to be sure, but at a very high level of musicianship and musical interaction. Another fine performance was the Moutin Brothers Reunion Band set on Sunday afternoon, which featured another underrated and partially forgotten Detroiter, Rick Margitza, playing some seriously locked-in advanced hard bop with a fine French rhythm section helmed by the Moutin brothers' bass and drums. Very exciting stuff, with the kind of chance-taking one all too rarely sees in festival sets.

The Detroit Jazz All Stars that Larry refers to was also a fun show. I generally dread this sort of thing, as this sort of pick up all star band almost always falls flat, with the players stumbling over one another and the set turning into round after round of boring rote solos. But this set was built around features for each of the major instumentalists and hung together relatively well, except for the ensemble passages, which were the usual uncoordinated mess. A great rhythm section of Barry Harris, Rodney Whittaker, and Louis Hayes definitely helped, as did the fact that Curtis Fuller and Marcus Belgrave were both sounding better than I had heard them in quite some time. But the glue that held the whole thing together was the leadership, and truly fine firey alto, of a happy-looking (for once) Charles McPherson.

Of course, I will lodge my usual complaint that the Detroit Jazz Festival ignores a significant segment of both Detroit's and the world's jazz community. The amount of advanced creative jazz presented has declined to pretty much none now, and the amount of non-jazz music presented has grown significantly. To the organizers' credit, they have resisted the road that so many festivals have gone down and have maintained a significant amount of actual jazz programming, but most of it is very unadventurous and a lot feels very stale (how long has Lou Donaldson told those same jokes?). I will write yet another letter to Frank Malfitano, expecting no response as usual, asking that they consider bringing back to the schedule some more musically adventurous acts, and adding more interesting younger performers. But then, like I say, I suddenly find myself becoming a curmudgeon on these matters.