Before this year's Newport Jazz Festival, I was bemoaning to my host/acro partner/concert buddy about my concerns about this year's booking, after last year I thought the festival leaned too heavily on jam band acts and less on (whatever the word means) "jazz". And they asked me "so who do you think shouldn't be there", which was a useful frame as I made my notes. The answer, thankfully, was a lot less acts than I expected, and that meant that while there were the inevitable letdowns and far too frequent technical issues, this was a strong festival, showcasing a broad range of whatever the word "jazz" might mean right now.
Caveat 1- I didn't get to everything, especially the late day sets, so if it's not here it's because I didn't see it (or barely saw it) and won't comment. And I did take some photos this year, but I'm at best a hack photographer. I hope they help convey some sense of the vibe.
Caveat 2- There's an anecdote (one of many) about Benny Goodman's first Carnegie Hall concert in 1938. The NY Times sent their classical critic, who unsuprisingly panned it in very bitter terms. The moral of the story is not that the Goodman band played a bad show, it's that the Times sent the wrong critic. I think there were a few acts for whom I'm the wrong critic, and I'll try to be up front about that.
Also, I didn't catch every band's personnel, so forgive any typos, and please leave comments or e-mails if you catch errors.
I was just able to get through the security line (more on that at the end) in time to see Luke Stewart, the festival opener. (Artistic director and bassist extraordinaire Christian McBride had an unusually high number of acts with bass players as leaders. Hmmm...) I wasn't familiar with Stewart beyond his NY Times profile, so I didn't know what to expect, except that by current Newport standards it may be a little "out". It was- after opening with a striking bowed solo, his trio with tenor saxophonist Brian Settles and drummer Warren Trey Crode powered through a set that felt like a primer on the history of the black "avant-garde"- a rubato, Coltrane-esque melody, a 7/4 groove that harkened to Julius Hemphill, and an angular melody that conjured Henry Threadgill. All of the music felt very lived-in (a theme of the weekend); clearly this is music the band has developed together very deliberately. Settles was a revelation- he has a huge crystalline sound, and navigated the music fearlessly and intelligently.
I caught the tale end of Cisco Swank's set- I'd describe it as very happy fusion- catchy themes, bright tempos, major keys, and a super chopsy drummer. I think I dug it.
Anessa Strings (yes, that's her stage name)- see below.
The trumpeter formerly known as Christian Scott is now Chief Adjuah, leaning heavily on his New Orleans tribe/crew identity. To that end, he isn't playing trumpet these days, instead holding center stage with what I'd describe as an oversized mbira (thumb piano- please correct me) and singing. As with other sets I've heard him play over the years, it was built on heavy grooves and intense emotionality. I think I dug it.
The first and only big band of the festival (grr...) was the legendary Sun Ra Intergalactic Arkestra, led by 100 year old alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who sadly didn't make it to the stage today. When I was a kid there was one jazz DJ in Boston who used to play one Arkestra tune every other week, and it was really, really weird and made no sense to me. But now that I've dug into his catalog a little more (though I'm no expert), I think Ra's big band music basically splits into two categories. One is the "weird" tunes, usually vamp-based tunes with intergalactic lyrics, lots of synthesizers and a crazy free-jazz vibe. The others are pretty straight up 30s-style swing charts, where there is always one more thing happening in the chart than Fletcher Henderson or Count Basie would ever approve of, which makes it feel off kilter and weird (generally in a good way). It also helps that the band has always had, and still has, great soloists who live on the "out" side of the equation- original Ra tenorist John Gilmore was apparently a substantial influence on later Coltrane. And all of the above was at play in this set- it was high energy music with more than a little chaos, and a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, the band suffered from a terrible sound mix- I'm told that by the stage you couldn't hear the guitar at all, but where I was standing fifty yards away that's all you could hear. Soloists would get picked up halfway through their solos, vocals were inaudible, etc. Now admittedly, the Arkestra is a hard band to get right as a sound engineer due in no small part to the chaos that is their music, but this was really hard to handle, and severely impacted the quality of the set. (this is another theme...)
There were a handful of acts I was very excited to see, and the Bill Frisell Four (Frisell, Greg Tardy on reeds, Gerald Clayton on piano and Jonathan Blake on drums) was one of them. It's an unusual instrumentation, with two "comping" instruments and no bass, and I found their Blue Note release a little uneven. And the opener, a blues, was indeed uneven- brilliant moments mixed with messy negotiations. The set improved as it continued, featuring Frisell mainstay "Monroe", a lovely take on Strayhorn's "Isfahan", and a closer that I've heard Frisell play several times, and still and not sure if it's his or Monk's. The closer especially sparkled, with Blake absolutely on fire.
I caught a few minutes of Galactic with guest vocalist Irma Thomas- great New Orleans party music.
Next on the main stage was fusion wonderboy (now man, I guess) Cory Wong. His band- five or six horns and a rhythm section- were all wearing these brown one-piece uniforms that looked a little like prison gear. And the set felt unduly caged in by the conventions of the kind of athletic fusion Wong has built his career on- it was mostly fast, technically impressive, and emotionally lacking. The exception was when Wong brought out Jeff Coffin, saxophonist with Bela Fleck and Dave Matthews, and probably the best commercial saxophonist working right now. (and I say that with the utmost respect and zero shade- I've also heard him tear it up in free jazz contexts) His solo with Wong was beyond brilliant, and the highlight of an otherwise cotton candy set.
According to Christian McBride, slam poet and community organizer Aja Monet is the first spoken word artist to lead a group at Newport since Langston Hughes in 1960. Her band was also plagued with technical issues- the saxophonist was miked in a way that made him sound like he was playing from a mile away, which worked for some of the playing behind her poems, but made him inaudible when he soloed. As for Monet, when it comes to slam poetry I'm the wrong critic. (The same goes for Noname, who led a set on Sunday)
I had another obligation Friday night, so I missed the rest of the acts. I heard, unsurprisingly, that Kenny Barron was fantastic.
Saturday morning I was hung up in line despite trying to get there early (see footnote), so I only caught the tail end of trumpeter Riley Mulherker's set. I caught the end of a radical take on a Black American spiritual with a singer, where Riley was creating wild soundscapes behind her straight and powerful rendition of the song, followed by an abstracted, processed take on Gershwin's "Here Come da Honeyman". He has a powerful, versatile tone, able to project chaos in one moment and majesty in the next. He closed with a beautiful duet version of "Stardust", dedicate to his daughter on her 2nd birthday. It was a masterful set.
I popped over to another prolific trumpeter, Theo Crocker, who I learned only this weekend is the legendary Doc Cheatham's grandson. Crocker's set was heavy fusion, with a rhythmic tapestry of drums, bass and electronics that was fascinating and propulsive. That was the best thing about the set- the playing and the tunes were much less memorable.
I'd not heard vocalist Nicole Zuraitis before, but I was aware of her, as she seems to be the top call big band vocalist in New York right now. She showed why- she opened with a tune called "You're only Crazy in the Good Ways" ("a backhanded complement", she said) My complements of her singing are anything but backhanded- all her melodic choices were excellent, her scatting is elite, and her piano playing is more than solid. (though the piano was too hot in the mix). She followed that tune with a setting of Edna St. Vincent Milay called "Travels". The tune was much more in a pop songwriter vein, but she was equally as confident there, and the band was really, really tight.
This three hour stretch on Saturday was the best/worst I can remember, in terms of wanting to hear everything that was happening at the same time. One casualty for me was "Golden, Brown and Delicious", a trio of guitarist Mark Whitfield Sr., bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts. For younger readers, Hurst and Watts are possibly THE most important rhythm section o fthe 1980s, first with Wynton then with Branford Marsalis. (See Ethan Iverson's interview with Wynton if you want the details) I remember Whitfield as the quintessential "young lion", so to see him playing in a white tank top with two tattoo sleeves was a little disconcerting. But he sounds as good or better than he did then, and hearing Watts and Hurst lay it down, stretch it out and occasionally flip it into another dimension was a treat.
I only left this delight to hear another, a Wayne Shorter tribute set featuring former Wayne bandmates Danielo Perez and John Patatucci, augmented by drummer Terri Lynn Carrington and saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. (despite his last name, Ravi came up in a crew of musicians at CalArts, including pianist James Carney, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and bassist Scott Colley, among others- who were obsessed with Wayne. So this is a good fit.) The band reminded me of the early iteration of the last great Wayne quartet (with Perez, Patatucci and Brian Blade) who were mostly deconstructing some of Wayne's canonical gems. I walked into a reimagining of "Infant Eyes", and covers of "Miyako" and one of the other staples ofieter- but not as "without a net" (Wayne's term) as his last quartet came to embrace. The result was uneven- when the band settled into different grooves it was spectacular, especially in the interplay between Perez and Coltrane, but when they were dealing the tunes themselves it was more uneven. That said, it was a very satisfying set, and I'm sure Wayne would approve.
Overshadowed by this group was Jonathan Blake's Pentad, an all star group featuring Dezron Douglas on bass, David Varellis on piano, Joel Ross on bass and Immanuel Wilkins on saxophones. It was a fantastic set of what I think Blake would call "Black Art Music"- tunes that embrace all of black improvised music of the last 50 years, from Blakey to Coltrane to Threadgill to... When Joel Ross was playing a solo, everything seemed to dance once more, and on one tune Wilkins came in on soprano after Ross like a whirling dervish, sending the energy yet another level. As I've said before, Jonathan Blake is a national treasure, and should be treated as such.
I shifted back over to the main stage for Artemis, Blue Note's female supergroup. (And yes, I feel icky writing that.) Full disclosure- I consider their drummer Allison Miller a good friend, and she was the drummer on my last record, so I am biased towards them. That said, I heard an amazing set- it was mostly music from their second album, plus a refracted cover of Bacharach's "What the World Needs Now" and pianist Renee Rosnes' spectacular reimagining of Wayne's "Footprints". The band was tight, the solos were exceptional, the energy was captivating. A friend and her partner were there exclusively on my goading, and they grabbed me afterwards to say how much they loved it.
Former Artemis member Anat Cohen was playing at the same time on a smaller stage with her Quartetino. I didn't catch much of the set, but what I did hear was brilliant. Anat does things on the clarinet that maybe two or three people on the planet can do, and the music was warm and clever and exciting. The last tune I heard was her reimagining of Monk's "Trinkle Tinkle"; the arrangement was a little too cute for my ears, but maybe I'm quibbling...
I left Anat to hear Terrace Martin, the saxophonist/producer/wonderkind who works with everyone from Herbie Hancock to Kendrick Lamar. The band had serious Headhunters vibes, with anthemic themes, odd meters and brilliant solos across the board. I was all the way in... until Martin shifted to vocorder. There are a very few things I hold in real contempt in my life, but they include the New York Yankees, Donald Trump, and the vocorder. That said, up until then I thought it was great, and a lot of people I really respect loved the set...
I sprinted from the vocorder to the set of an actually stupendous vocalist, Grammy-winner Samara Joy. In last year's review, I asked where Joy would go after her meteoric success, comparing her to Cecile McLoren Salvant and Jazzmia Horn. And in one way that's not fair- Joy is only 23, and I imagine still trying to figure out how to ride her meteoric rise. But her current answer is to go all in on being a capital J Jazz singer, with a new band with four horns playing excellent, intricate arrangements, and brilliant virtuosic singing. Her set included jazz standards, an obscure but wonderful setting of Monk's "San Francisco Holiday", her now signature piece "Guess Who I Saw Today My Dear", and a Sun Ra influenced original. The band is tight, and I have to keep reminding myself that Joy, as brilliant as she is, is only 23, so hopefully there are many great things ahead from her.
I caught a little of Ghost Note, the relatively new project from the founders of Snarky Puppy. For a band named after a musical device that obscures the number of notes played, they played a hell of a lot of notes. To my ears, this band is a successor to 70s pop/fusion icons Tower of Power- brilliant technicians, high intensity playing, but not really that funky. I wasn't sold.
I was running out of steam, but I wanted to catch a little of "Acid Jazz is Dead", a DJ project of members of A Tribe Called Quest. Last year, they presented as "Jazz is Dead", with the two DJs teaming up with saxophone legend Gary Bartz and others to present a fascinating hybrid set of live and recorder music, which I am still kicking myself for missing. But this year, it was just those two DJs, trying to get the crowd to dance. Which, in another setting, I guess is cool. But this is the Newport Jazz Festival, the most iconic festival in the world (I think), which sold out months in advance. Can't we do a little better than a couple of middle aged dudes spinning records, no matter how cool those dudes or those records are? I was pretty disgusted that this took a spot that could have highlighted, you know, a few of the incredible live musicians whose careers could be catapulted by this festival. But I digress...
Finally for Saturday, I was really psyched to see Elvis Costello- he is full stop one of the great songwriters of his generation, and a musical omnivore. And to the question I posed at the beginning of the post (one he asked rhetorically onstage), he should absolutely be at Newport. He writes smart, sophisticated songs, he's collaborated with the Mingus Big Band, Ray Brown, Chet Baker, and, and... In terms of creating a set for the Newport Jazz Festival, he did not disappoint- he opened with his hit "Watching the Detectives", but then shifted to a bunch of deep cuts, including two songs from his (underrated) album with The Roots, his gut-wrentching collaboration with Burt Bacharach "I Still Have that Other Girl in My Head", and his little know but powerful antiwar ballad "Shipbuilding". And he brought a brilliant band that checked any possible jazz boxes, including Colbert bassist Adena Owens and now legendary saxophonist Donny McCaslin.
And all that said... the set was just not good. There were three main problems. One, once again the sound was a mess- at times Costello was inaudible, at others he was overwhelming. It was clear that the band on stage did not have a good mix. This isn't their fault, but it cast a pall on the set. Two, the music was clearly underprepared, though Costello said that they'd done a full day of rehearsals in Cambridge the day before the gig. There were just too many moments where Elvis was cuing a band that didn't expect the cure, or Adena and Donny were staring at each other trying to fill in some gap. (And to be clear, I'm not blaming them, I'm blaming the circumstances) It didn't help that Elvis chose to have a DJ instead of a drummer. He was effective on some of the tunes, but on others he was just laying out in moments where a smart human drummer could absolutely have salvaged some things. That was a real head scratcher.
And third, at this moment Elvis Costello is not in full voice. This was an ambitious program, and he simply couldn't execute it. There were many moments where he went for a note and just missed it badly. To call his pitch uneven is being kind. Folks more in the know than me said that he's still recovering from a run of serious health conditions, and I wish him all the best in his recovery. Because if he keeps sounding like he did on Saturday, there is a very painful reckoning coming. To call this set disappointing is a sad understatement.
At this point I was exhausted and sunburnt, so I left. Anyone who heard the Dinner Party set, please leave your opinions below. As long as they are coherent and not vulgar, I promise to highlight them...
Sunday morning I left early enough to (barely) make The Mezzthetics, a guitar trio featuring two thirds of the punk band Fugazi, and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. Unsurprisingly, the band had a hard edged, punky sound, reminiscent of some of the noisy 80s guitar trios like Power Tools. The tunes were varied, sometimes anthemic, sometimes twisty. On top of this Lewis was towering force, alternating sheets of sound and shreeks that called back Albert Ayler.
From there I ducked over to catch polymath Kassa Overall, who had a quartet featuring pianist Matt Wong and saxophoninst/percussionist/dervish Tomoki Sanders (child of Pharoah). The set was largely percussion driven, with Overall, Sanders and a third percussionist creating thick, dense grooved, punctuated by an instrumental solo or Overall rapping, and ending (or the part I heard) with a crowd sing-a-long. The set was tremendously exciting and engaging, and everything Overall does bears watching.
Across the way was 21 year old wunderkind pianist Julius Rodriguez and his quintet. This was a 21st century "Young Lions" band- thirty-five years ago, this band would've been in suits channeling Art Blakey; now they are in very trendy streetwear channeling Robert Glasper. Everyone in the band can play, a lot, but like a lot of those young bands I heard in my youth, it feels like they are still feeling out what it is they want to be. (And this is not a damning criticism, I'm nearly 50 and still feel that way often.) The last tune, dedicated to the recently passed Shaun Martin, was a party tune with the drummer playing a 5/4 tamborine pattern and a shifting bass vamp. It felt great.
Once upon a time now artistic director Christian McBride was part of another young lions superband with the likes of Roy Hargrove, so for the festival's 70th anniversary he convened a new all-star group. This band looked very different- it was half female, including bassist Adeena Strings and drummer Savannah Harris, with a guest appearance by vocalist Jazzmia Horn. I only caught Horn's portion of the set, which juxtoposed two standards- Monk's "Evidence" (with awful lyrics) and "Perdido", with Abbey Lincoln inspirational deep cut "Long as You're Living". Horn owned the stage when she sang, perhaps occasionally oversinging, and then sharing it with the horns on "Perdido". Everyone sounded great (though there were issues with saxophonist Braxton Cook's mic), but the standout was flutist Elena Pinderhughes- everything she played felt really amazing.
Next up on the main stage was Meshell N'Degeocello, fresh off of a glowing NY Times piece and the release of her new album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin. And with the exception of the encore "Virgo", the whole set was drawn from that record. The set was breathtaking- nothing overtly virtuosic, just intense grooves (Meshell, wearing a t-shirt saying "Meshell N'Degeocello is a Band", clearly owned that idea, playing bass for 90% of the set, sometimes leaving the front of the stage to sit with the drummer) and a purposefulness that stood out above almost every other thing I heard. I'd encourage you to check out her recent Tiny Desk- not quite the same, but pretty amazing.
There were a handful of acts, notably the aforementioned Aneesa Strings and Alex Isley (yes, that Isley), who had what I'd describe as jazz-adjacent singer-songwriter sets. Good bands, songs about love and heartbreak, lots of melismas. I jokingly called it the "Quiet Storm" portion of the festival. Definitely not my jams.
I don't want to end on an extended down note, but let me briefly say the last two sets, Laufey and Robert Glasper were letdowns. I've written at some length about Laufey before, and she did nothing to change my mind. She did have live strings on this set (though obviously augmented by synths), which added some heft to the sound of the band. She ran through some of her hits, leaning heavily on the heartbreak ballads. She is a good singer, but after following the likes of Nicole Zaritis and Samara Joy she paled by comparison.
I've seen Glasper before, but I don't think I've seen him as a leader, so I didn't know what to expect. I thought he mailed it in- the band noodled on snippets of "Gonna Be Alright", and Ms. Horn came out again and riffed on Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood" without ever singing the whole tune. The set lacked any sense of direction. Especially at a stage as big and storied as Newport, I expected much more.
(A friend just told me that Christian McBride's "Jam Jawn" this year was excellent- sorry I missed it!)
Two other quibbles- I can't prove this, but it felt like they upped the crowd capacity this year, which made almost everything feel crowded, and made all the lines longer. This inconvenience was compounded by the fact that security at the gates did checks on people and bags that were more thorough and invasive than any TSA search I've had in the last ten years. I don't want to make too much light of security issues, especially given the state of the world, but was there a threat made on Nils Rogers or Kamasi Washington that everyone had to stand in line for an extra half hour or more? I hope next year they will either up the number of security checkpoints, or tell the guards to chill the hell out, or both.
More important to the music, there were too many problems with the sound, especially on the main stage. The Sun Ra Arkestra, Elvis Costello, Braxton Cook and even the beginning of Meshell's set had issues. There were also smaller issues on the other stages that I noted above. In general, the sound on more conventional setups- Samara Joy, Artemis, etc- sounded amazing, but any curve ball seemed to mess with the sound engineering. I hope they can do better- these artists deserve that.
Back to my friend's question, who shouldn't have been here? I don't know- I could've used one less of the "quiet storm" singers, and I understand that to pay the bills it need acts like Laufey and Nils Rogers (who I missed- I chose to beat the traffic)- but for the most part the festival presented a strong cross-section of what's happening in the music today, and almost everyone really brought it. I still wish Christian would take a few more chances and book a few more up and coming and "weird" acts- Caroline Davis immediately springs to mind, with the really interesting stuff she's been doing lately. I also wish he'd keep the late George Wien's tradition of featuring more big bands (especially with the explosion of interesting young and not so young bandleaders in and out of New York- Miho Hazama, David Sanford, Jihey Lee, Ayn Inserto, and so on), and at least one "trad" unit. That said, there was a lot of great music, and a great time.
