David Gilmore from Rudresh Mahanthappa's Samdhi is all smiles at the Newport Jazz Festival.
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Pedrito Martinez Group performs on the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — John Ellis and Doublewide performs on the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Christian McBride and Inside Straight play on the Harbor Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Christian McBride and Inside Straight play on the Harbor Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Jack DeJohnette Group plays the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Bill Frisell Plays John Lennon on the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Bill Frisell Plays John Lennon on the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Bill Frisell Plays John Lennon on the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Dafnis Prieto Sextet plays the Harbor Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Dafnis Prieto Sextet plays the Harbor Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Dafnis Prieto Sextet plays the Harbor Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Darcy James Argue's Secret Society performs on the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Darcy James Argue's Secret Society performs on the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas Quintet: Soundprints performs on the Harbor Stageat the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas Quintet: Soundprints performs on the Harbor Stageat the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Jack Dejohnette All Stars play an interlude with Jason Moran on the piano at the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Jack Dejohnette All Stars play an interlude with Jason Moran on the piano at the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Jack Dejohnette All Stars performs on on the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Concert goers listen music outside the Fort Stage at Fort Adams State Park at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — Concert goers, including Corliss Wise of Columbia SC (Center), listen to music outside the Fort Stage at Fort Adams State Park at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Bad Plus with Bill Frisell play on the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Bad Plus with Bill Frisell play on the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The Bad Plus with Bill Frisell play on the Quad Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
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The reedy convocation billed as 3 Clarinets brought Ken Peplowski on stage with Evan Christopher and Anat Cohen (both not pictured). An able supporting cast included Howard Alden on guitar and Greg Cohen on bass.
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Before noon Saturday, the quartet led by charismatic conguero Pedrito Martinez had its audience gyrating to Afro-Cuban rhythms. Bassist Alfaro Benavides provides additional encouragement from the stage.
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Song titles like "Three-Legged Tango In Jackson Square" and "Zydeco Clowns On The Lam" clue us into the Southern Gothic imagination of saxophonist John Ellis and his band, Double-Wide. New Orleans resident Matt Perrine played sousaphone bass during the festival's first main-stage show.
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Vibraphonist Warren Wolf brought a crystalline resonance to bassist Christian McBride's band Inside Straight. His bandleader looked on approvingly.
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Christian McBride was all smiles while steering his quintet, Inside Straight. Hours later, he would jam with master drummer Jack DeJohnette during an all-star performance.
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Drummer Jack DeJohnette turns 70 the week following Newport 2012, and celebrated the birthday early by performing twice. His first set featured his working band, including microtonal and exotic guitar specialist Dave Fiuczynski.
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Violinist Jenny Scheinman performs with guitarist Bill Frisell's John Lennon tribute project on the Fort Stage. The following day, she and Frisell would also perform as a fiddle-and-guitar duo.
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Bill Frisell is known as an improviser, but at 61, he says Beatles songs were a huge part of his musical upbringing. It showed in his reinvention of classic John Lennon songs.
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Saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum also picked up the melodica during the riveting sextet set led by his colleague of many years, drummer Dafnis Prieto.
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The Cuban bassist Yunior Terry was happy to perform in the band of his countryman, drummer Dafnis Prieto.
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Sharply dressed for the occasion, composer Darcy James Argue led his 18-piece big band, Secret Society, at the main Fort Stage on Saturday.
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Darcy James Argue's Secret Society opened with a tribute to Argue's late mentor, the composer/arranger and trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, and gave us an extended peek at its upcoming recording Brooklyn Babylon.
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Two veteran bandleaders in their own right, saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas, teamed up this summer to co-lead a band they call Soundprints. They also offered roles to younger musicians like pianist Lawrence Fields and bassist Linda Oh.
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Pianist Jason Moran stepped up to the Quad Stage for a loose-limbed duet interlude with master drummer Jack DeJohnette. Moran also played later in the weekend with his own trio, the Bandwagon.
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Jack DeJohnette, shown here jamming with an all-star group, has a long history with Newport: He played in the Miles Davis Quintet when it came to the festival in 1969.
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Vocalists Kurt Elling (left) and Theo Bleckmann (center) were crucial to drummer John Hollenbeck's setting of the poems of Kenneth Patchen. Hollenbeck brought his unique Claudia Quintet, which was actually a sextet with the addition of a pianist.
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B.B. King's signature adorns a guitar, as seen behind the Fort Stage before the start of Sunday at the Newport Jazz Festival.
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Preparations are underway on the main Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival, overlooking the Pell Bridge and the pleasure craft of Narragansett Bay.
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Drummer Lewis Nash performed several times at Newport as a sideman, but was also given the opportunity to lead his own quintet during the first performance on Sunday morning. His frequent associate, Peter Washington, held down the bass chair ably.
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Rudresh Mahanthappa presented music from his album Samdhi with a quartet featuring bassist Rich Brown. The alto saxophonist told the audience he was inspired by doping at the 1996 Olympics ("Enhanced Performance") and the leader of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party ("breakfastlunchanddinner").
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Tabla player Dan Weiss was one of 24 musicians who appeared on stage for Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Centennial Project. Weiss would later play both tablas and drum set with Miguel Zenón and Laurent Coq's Rayuela Quartet.
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The legendary composer/arranger Gil Evans was never able to direct his own music at Newport. But Ryan Truesdell (left) has spent years researching and resurrecting lost Evans masterpieces; he presented some of his findings on the Fort Stage.
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Members of the Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Centennial Project, including David Peel on French horn and Ryan Keberle on trombone, hang out backstage at the Newport Jazz Festival.
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The siblings Yuval (left), Avishai (center) and Anat Cohen play the Fort Stage. As 3 Cohens, they've already released three albums; their Newport set was filled with originals and arrangements of classics by Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker.
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The folky singer-songwriter Becca Stevens was billed as a special guest with the duo of Lionel Loueke and Gretchen Parlato.
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Gretchen Parlato (right) and Lionel Loueke met in a prestigious graduate jazz program and have been performing together ever since. They've previously led their own bands at Newport, but on Sunday at the Harbor Stage, they were offered a more intimate billing.
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Kurt Elling offered twisty original lyrics and fresh re-scorings of pop songs during his set at the Quad Stage.
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The Berklee Global Jazz Ambassadors feature students from around the world, including saxophonists Lihi Haruvi (left) and Matthew Halpin (center) and violinist Alex Hargreaves. Professional drummer Adam Cruz anchored their Fort Stage performance.
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The husband-and-wife team of guitar hero Derek Trucks and mighty singer Susan Tedeschi perform on the Fort Stage. The 11-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band closed out Newport with a show which lasted nearly two hours.
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A large and relaxed crowd scattered about the Fort Stage plain for the closing Tedeschi Trucks Band performance.
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The Tedeschi Trucks Band inspired a few dancers as blue skies turned to misty twilight on Sunday of the 2012 Newport Jazz Festival.
'8/4/12 Newport, RI. — The 3 Clarinets: Ken Peplowski, Evan Christopher and Anat Cohen play on the Harbor Stage at the Newport Jazz Festival August 4, 2012. Photo by Erik Jacobs for NPR.'
Originally published on Tue September 18, 2012 5:13 pm
The tents have been collapsed, the fog has rolled in and the 2012 Newport Jazz Festival has come and gone — but not before photographer Erik Jacobs captured these brilliant images for us.
Saxophonists Lihi Haruvi (left) and Matthew Halpin (center) and violinist Alex Hargreaves (right) of The Berklee Global Jazz Ambassadors perform at the 2012 Newport Jazz Festival.
Boston's esteemed Berklee College of Music, just up the road from Newport, has produced top jazz musicians for decades. Driven by the leadership of Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez, the school has expanded its jazz vision internationally, developing an initiative to recruit from and bring on tour around the world. Berklee's current Global Jazz Ambassadors are joined here by professional musician Adam Cruz, whose shimmering 2011 debut album Milestone showed off his talent both in front of the band and behind the drum kit.
Jenny Scheinman And Bill Frisell Live From Newport
The violinist Jenny Scheinman and guitarist Bill Frisell have both developed reputations for flexibility — for being able to collaborate with any musicians from country rockers to straight-ahead swing barons. Appropriately, they've been working together in bands for quite a long time now, including in Frisell's John Lennon tribute earlier in the festival. This duo performance features the two alone together, working out stripped-down versions of Scheinman's fiddle tunes.
It may be billed as a gig for the alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, who is making his third Newport appearance in four years, but he would refuse complete credit. He teamed up with the French pianist Laurent Coq to co-write an album's worth of music inspired on the high-modernist Julio Cortázar novel Hopscotch — Rayuela, in the original Spanish. It calls for a cello and a trombone — Dana Leong plays both — and a drummer who can play tablas, so an obvious choice was Dan Weiss. Together, the quartet's literary and musical imagination runs wild.
What if there were lost big-band masterpieces by the great composer/arranger Gil Evans which never made it to record? In fact, there are plenty of them, according to composer/arranger Ryan Truesdell. He's culled, researched, transcribed and completed a handful of the best for Evans' 100th birthday anniversary. It helps that he's the lead copyist for composer Maria Schneider; he's borrowed much of her orchestra to record and now perform this rich, intensely-hued material.
Yuval (saxophone), Anat (reeds) and Avishai (trumpet) Cohen are siblings from Israel. They're also among the growing number of terrific jazz musicians from that country; Anat and Avishai have both had bookings for their own bands at Newport in recent years. Naturally, the three Cohens occasionally record and perform together as a band, whose original pieces and arrangements are supported by a rhythm section. It's a family reunion you won't secretly dread.
Set List
"Blues For Dandi's Orange Bull Chasing An Orange Sack"
Buoyed by a Guggenheim Fellowship, the alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa made an album in 2008 which integrated his love of South Asian music and funk and hip-hop and electronic music and kitchen sinks. He's finally getting to tour the music of the record Samdhi now, and with guitar (David Gilmore) and bass guitar (Rich Brown), it's electric, literally and figuratively.
Originally published on Wed September 19, 2012 3:12 pm
Drummer Lewis Nash is certainly no stranger to prestigious festival stages; he's served in bands led by Betty Carter, Branford Marsalis and Tommy Flanagan. (And that was relatively early in his career, too.) So it's a great move to give the supporting cast member, who truly innovates within jazz traditions, a share of the spotlight. One of the bands he leads features the front line of Jeremy Pelt (trumpet) and Jimmy Greene (tenor sax); it's a classic quintet lineup, and it's the first on stage on day two at the 2012 Newport Jazz Festival.
The drummer has had a busy year already, having accepted the NEA Jazz Masters award and having released a new album, Sound Travels. He continues his year-long 70th birthday celebration by assembling this ad hoc band of leading lights like guitarist Lionel Loueke and bassist Christian McBride, who are both leading their own gigs this year.
Since he came over from Cuba around the turn of the century, the phenomenally talented percussionist Pedrito Martinez has become the conguero of choice for scores of bands. And most weeks in New York City, you can see him with his own, gigging several nights a week at a Cuban restaurant south of Central Park. The Pedrito Martinez Group places him at the congas and behind a microphone, where he exhibits a certain natural charisma. And though we haven't yet heard a studio album from the band, we already know that it goes way beyond what you'd think of Afro-Cuban music and/or jazz.
