Charmaine Neville©Andrea Canter

While the stage is still smoldering at Mears Park in St Paul following the first weekend of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, mark your calendars for the remaining events across the river. Starting with Stride Piano Night at the Dakota Jazz Club on Tuesday, June 24th and concluding in the early evening on Sunday, June 29th on Peavey Plaza, there’s an unprecedented amount of music crammed into a few days, and much of it is free and outdoors. Headliners in Minneapolis include singers Charmain Neville, Connie Evingson and Moore By Four; B-3 organist Tony Monaco; and pianists Jon Weber and Amina Figarova. The student stage will be bursting with young talent, featuring several high school jazz bands, all-star ensembles, MacPhail faculty and the winners of the recent jazz piano scholarship competition. The Dakota Jazz Club hosts several special gigs as well, and for one night the festival travels to Bloomington. 

John Raymond©Andrea Canter

“The more I play and the more I think about my role as a performer and composer, the more I genuinely want everyone who hears us to experience something deeper with my music.” –John Raymond 
 

Over the past four years, young trumpeter John Raymond has played with the Jazz Is Now Orchestra, the Yohannes Tona Band, and Nachito Herrera; led his John Raymond Project in gigs at the Bryant Lake Bowl and Dakota Jazz Club; and released his first CD. Not a bad resume for a senior jazz student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. After a series of appearances on the Dakota’s Late Night series, the John Raymond Project debuted in prime time at the Dakota last November. Now he’s back on stage with a new edition of the JRP featuring Javier Santiago, Kevin Washington, and long-time UW-EC collaborators Aaron Hedenstrom and Jeremy Boettcher. 

Leader John Raymond has been studying trumpet since fifth grade, playing in school jazz ensembles since early junior high. The All-State Jazz Band Camp in Duluth during high school introduced him to UW-EC jazz instructor Robert Baca. Recalls John, “After the camp was the first time I really knew I had to practice to become a musician, and I had to practice a lot… so from that point on I was playing 3-5 hours a day on all sorts of classical, jazz, funk music - pretty much anything I could get my hands on.”  Through the summer camp, he also met young saxophonist Kristin Rarick and formed a group that performed as part of the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education “J-Train” series. At UW-EC, John has played in the top band and top jazz ensemble since his first semester, toured China in late 2006, and also had the opportunity to perform with the Jazz Is Now! Orchestra in Minneapolis and with Maria Schneider at the 2005 UW-EC Jazz Festival. While balancing classes and college bands, Raymond also found time to start his own band with cohorts from Eau Claire, The John Raymond Project, releasing a recording in spring 2006. Currently John plays with the UWEC jazz bands, his own ensemble, the Yohannes Tona Band and the Twin Cities Horns, an ensemble that frequently joins Nachito Herrera.  John has also toured with Darnell Davis and the Minneapolis-based gospel group, Remnant.  Says John, “Between playing with Nachito regularly, working with the horn section we've got going (the Twin Cities Horns) and putting together some other shows and gigs, things have been crazy busy for me! However tired I get, putting together my own shows and writing arrangements and tunes always is my most favorite thing to do.” 

Jerry Gonzalez

The 10th Annual Twin Cities Jazz Festival will again feature national and local talent over two June weekends. Officially, the festival begins on Thursday night, June 19th, with the reunion concert of 70s fusion band, Return to Forever, at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Minneapolis (click here for more about this concert). The next night, the free festival gets underway at Mears Park in St. Paul’s Lowertown with headliner Jerry Gonzales and the Fort Apache Band. Music continues Saturday afternoon and evening, ending with the annual festival jam a few blocks west at the Artists Quarter. Festival week continues with special performances in Minneapolis and Bloomington, culminating in the final weekend on Peavy Plaza in downtown Minneapolis, featuring headliners Charmaine Neville, Tony Monoco and the Heatin’ System, and Moore By Four, as well as the always popular student stage on Nicollet Mall. Notes Executive Director Steve Heckler, “Reaching the milestone of the ‘10th Annual’ is an achievement for any music festival, and we plan to celebrate in style with our most exciting line up yet.” Although most of the festival is free and outdoors, there are some significant ticketed events this year, starting with Return to Forever (June 19th) and continuing with special shows at the Artists Quarter and Dakota, and Downbeat’s Rising Stars showcase at Orchestra Hall on June 26th. 

Caribou Coffee (in conjunction with Northwestern Foods) again serves as the primary sponsor of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, along with the Harry and Adeline Silverman Foundation, Summit Brewing, St. Paul Star Program, Mercedes Benz, KBEM Jazz 88, Hot Springs Records (HSR), Sears Auto, Maplewood Imports, St. Paul Port Authority, Sun Country Airlines, Music Connection Pianos, the Minneapolis Downtown Council. Media partners in addition to Jazz 88 include The Rake, City Pages, KFAI radio and Air America Minnesota. The student stage is sponsored again by the MacPhail Center for Music and the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education. Other supporting sponsors include the Twin Cities Jazz Society, Jazz Police, Sky Point Communications, Creation Audio and Shakers Vodka. The Orpheum Theater, Minnesota Orchestra Hall, Dakota Jazz Club and Artists Quarter also serve as community partners, cosponsoring a variety of jazz events throughout the festival.  

One of the most acclaimed fusion bands of all time, Return to Forever has returned! Founded by keyboard legend Chick Corea, RTF’s first reunion tour in 25 years brings the classic quartet edition to the Orpheum in downtown Minneapolis on June 19th as a cosponsored event of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival. Featuring the classic RTF lineup of Corea on keyboards, Al DiMeola on guitar, Stanley Clarke on bass and Lenny White on drums, the evening promises to fill the hall with the hard jamming jazz-rock first ignited by the electric bands of Miles Davis in the late 60s. In conjunction with their summer 2008 tour, RTF has released a two-volume CD of music from the quartet’s seminal records, The Anthology (Concord). 

Bands exploiting the then-new sounds of Jazz/Rock Fusion included Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter’s Weather Report, in addition to Return to Forever. Having worked for Miles Davis through his first forays into fusion (In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew), Chick Corea founded avant garde quartet Circle (with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul).  In 1971, Seeking a band and sound that would attract a more popular following, he soon organized a quintet with Joe Farrell on flute and sax, Airto Moreira on drums, Flora Purim on vocals, and Stanley Clarke on bass. (Clarke would ultimately serve in all three editions of RTF.) Such tunes as “Sometime Ago” and “Crystal Silence” were featured on RTF’s recorded eponymous debut in 1972, followed by the acclaimed Light as a Feather which included Corea’s “Spain,” “500 Miles High,” and “Captain Marvel.” After Moreira, Purim and Farrell left the band a year later, Corea added electric guitar and electric keyboards, bringing on board guitarist Bill Connors for a year (including recording Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy) before filling the guitar chair with young Al DiMeola in 1974. When drummer Steve Gadd declined to tour, Corea brought in funkmaster Lenny White, a cohort from Bitches Brew. Considered the flagship RTF band, these four musicians released the popular LPs, Where Have I known You Before (1974), No Mystery (winner of a 1975 Grammy), and their final studio session, Romantic Warrior (1976). One final edition of RTF emerged, with Clarke remaining on electric bass, the return of Joe Farrell, and new drummer Gerry Brown and vocalist Gayle Moran. Musicmagic was recorded the 1977, followed by RTF Live, shortly before RTF disbanded. The band reunited for a quartet concert in 1983, and now have reconnected to tour in 2008. 

Patricia Barber©Clay Patrick McBride

In a sea of vocal jazz talent, Chicago-based Patricia Barber floats to the top due to her imaginative, often witty original lyrics, her hauntingly beautiful melodies, and her daring, topsy-turvy renovations of standards and pop covers. Armed with a Guggenheim—one of few given to jazz artists and the first ever given to a songwriter—Barber created a cycle of songs from the unlikely source of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the resulting Blue Note release, Mythologies, drew rave reviews as one of the top recordings of 2006; a new CD of reinventions of Cole Porter is do out this spring. With her working quartet of Neal Alger, Michael Arnopol and Eric Montzka, Barber will bring her sonic myths to the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis on June 18th.

A native of suburban Chicago, Barber was genetically predisposed to follow the jazz life; her father, Floyd “Shim” Barber, played sax with Glen Miller.  Studying psychology and classical music at the University of Iowa, she switched to jazz, later moving back to Chicago and literally launching her career in 1984 with a standing engagement (5 nights per week) at the famed Gold Star Sardine Bar. Her compositions as well as her performance chops proved popular, and in 1994, she moved her work to the epicenter of Chicago jazz, the Green Mill, where she still has a regular, and very popular, gig when not on tour. Wrote Chicago Magazine, in voting her "Best Torch Singer" in  1999, “You've got to love a singer who can deliver Paul Anka ("She's a Lady"), Jim Morrison ("Light My Fire"), and e.e. cummings ("Love, Put on Your Faces") in a single set... a songwriter who gets Pierre Boulez, Bill Gates, and Karl Marx into the same smart lyric and still manages to give it a sexy groove."

Taylor Eigsti©Devin Dehaven

He's the most amazing talent I've ever come across. Remember him." -- Dave Brubeck

From his earliest interest in the piano as a toddler to his public debut opening for David Benoit at age 8 and throughout his teens when he shared the stage with Diane Schuur and Dave Brubeck, Taylor Eigsti has been on a star trajectory, a path that too often ends when a “child prodigy” enters the more competitive, complex world of adult artist. But Taylor was already entering that more demanding world before high school graduation, releasing his first CD at 14, joining the Stanford Jazz Workshop faculty at 15, and opening for the likes of Diana Krall, Al Jarreau and Hank Jones. Since, he as twice appeared on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, was twice recognized by the DownBeat Critics’ Poll, and graced the covers of Jazziz and Keyboard Magazine. Celebrating the release of his sixth recording, Let It Come to You (Concord), 23-year-old Taylor Eigsti hopes he’s finally proven himself worthy of both praise and criticism on the basis of his music. “If someone dislikes my music, I would prefer that they not chalk it up to ‘age,’ and rather judge me on what I am offering within the music alone… I am going to be developing, learning, and growing older throughout my whole life, and I would never say that all of a sudden I'm at the age where I should be taken seriously, because I always took the music seriously myself.” On June 16th, Eigsti and his trio will seriously perform at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis with sets at 7 and 9:30 pm.