Selected Highlights

The final “jazz in the library” performance on festival eve day (6/28) featured the Jack Brass Band’s horn play outside the staid façade of the Central Library off Rice Park. These (relatively young) purveyors of the sounds of New Orleans have so much enthusiasm for the music that you almost overlook the fact that they are each masters of their instrument and rock solid as an ensemble. And what a way to spend your lunch break on a pleasant summer day!

 

Headlining Jazz Night Out (6/28), the weekly summertime Music at Mears event teamed with the jazz festival for a three-hour “best of PipJazz” revue, hosted by popular vocalist Pippi Ardennia. Taking some fan favorites from her monthly PipJazz Sundays concerts (held at Landmark Center), Pippi featured her house band (Peter Schimke, Billy Peterson, Brian Nielsen, Glenn Swanson); upcoming guests Dean Magraw and Jason Richards; recent guests, saxophonist Jason DeLaire and the great blues singer Barbara Leshoure; and a handful of ridiculously talented youth artists. The songs kept flowing, the guests rotating, the crowd growing throughout the evening. Lots of music was scheduled in lots of venues throughout downtown and Lowertown and beyond for this evening, but Pippi and company gave the Mears crowd plenty of reason to just stay put til dark.

 

For at least seven or eight festivals now, Jon Weber has turned up at one venue or another, sometimes serving as the “house pianist” and usually hosting sets and jams at the Artists Quarter. His shows are always entertaining on many levels, particularly his solo sets where he invites not only requests but the specific keys and styles, and always coating each tune with a smattering of trivia –birthdates, hometowns, odd facts. Jon started his 2012 stint solo Thursday night at the AQ while awaiting bassist Billy Peterson’s delayed arrival from Mears Park; he shifted gears easily to accompany Connie Evingson through her set featuring songs from her new Sweet Happy Life; he led the trio (Peterson, Joe Pulice) into the late evening. On Friday he joined Maud Hixson to reprise some of their recent New York experiences, took his solo/trio turn and orchestrated a jam featuring festival artists who were still in performance mode. Saturday he again entertained in solo and trio mode, and backed more of the festival’s roster throughout the night. Each night, the AQ was packed like New Year’s Eve, without the hats.

 

Francisco Mela had a busy Friday, starting with a clinic at McNally Smith, his Cuban Safari gig at Mears Park, and afterhours jam at the Artists Quarter. No one in St. Paul last weekend had a bigger smile or bigger heart than drummer Mela. Best known (so far) as one of the drumming pair of Joe Lovano’s Us Five band, Mela has been building his credentials since relocating to the U.S. from his native Cuba. He’s been to the Twin Cities a few times in recent years with Us Five, most recently last spring at the Hopkins Center for the Arts and two years ago at this festival. Francisco shared his own history and basics of Cuban vs American jazz drumming at the public clinic at McNally Smith Friday morning, hours before his Cuban Safari revved up the jazz engines on the Mears Park main stage. The beats make you want to dance, the energy sufficiently contagious to take you through the night. Which was a good thing, because the best came last, when Mela and some of his bandmates turned up to jam at the Artists Quarter. Somehow the vibe of the after-hours crowd and the heat from pianist Jon Weber’s earlier sets ignited Mela and company to a more free-wheeling act of spontaneous combustion on the AQ stage. And always that smile!

 

I only got to a part of Todd Clouser’s A Love Electric set at Studio Z Friday night, but it was killing. Studio Z first came on board as a festival venue last year, and despite the competition from Mears Park headliners, the intimate performance space attracted good crowds throughout the festival. There were no empty seats for A Love Electric, and Clouser and company appeared to be “in the zone” that imaginative artists find when feeding off the collaborative energy of improvisation.

 

Of course Delfeayo Marsalis was Friday’s “big name” act, but beyond the trombonist/composer himself, a few other factors made this set even more special than expected: Drummer Winard Harper, long a personal favorite for his graceful exuberance behind the trapset; bari saxophonist Lauren Sevien, who may be the first to break the Marsalis family glass ceiling; and most special of all, seeing our home boy Chris Thomson blowing his tenor sax with the band. (Someone noted that Thomson’s feet never touched the stage floor.) I didn’t last long enough, but I hear Delfeayo turned up well past midnight at the AQ and wasn’t ready to quit when the club closed at 2.

 

No second bananas, the line-up on Sixth Street “side stage” Saturday (6/30) could fuel any festival, anywhere: Lucia Newell came with one of her finest bands ever with Phil Aaron, Gordy Johnson and Phil Hey joined by Dean Magraw and Dave Karr, followed by an hour with the always killing Phil Hey Quartet, followed by a return from one of last year’s festival surprises, trumpeter Marquis Hill and his red hot Chicago-based quartet, followed by one of the most exciting young bands in the Midwest, Iowa City’s Koplant No. (They’ve been at the AQ in the past year or so, and hopefully will find more reasons to drive up I-35.)

 

The Twin Cities Jazz Festival has long boasted a roster of young artists. Walker West Music Academy always brings a pair of ensembles to open the Mears Park Stage on the final festival day, and the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education Youth Stage has long hosted an afternoon of youth ensembles (6/30). This was the second year that the Youth Stage was set up on Prince Street by the Black Dog, and the six bands (big bands and combos) drew steady and strong crowds of family, friends, and curious fans. The skills of these young artists, and the difficulty of their music (including original student works), was truly inspiring.

 

I’m not sure if Luca Ciarla was the first violinist on the festival schedule (actually,17-year-old Zosha Warpeha may have earned that honor with PipJazz on Thursday night?), but the Italian wizard certainly made a good case for more strings at Mears on Saturday night. With a quartet that included accordion, guitar and drums, the music at times resembled the gypsy swing of western and central Europe, but not quite, and Ciarla was as much a joy to watch as to hear as he danced his violin around the stage.

 

Much anticipated for months since the line-up was first announced, the rare collaboration of The Bad Plus and Joshua Redman (there’s only one other gig scheduled in North America—at the Toronto Jazz Festival) brought out the best in each musician and drew the biggest single act crowd in festival history. Not only were there no escape routes between the stage and sound booth, there literally was no room to move within the square block of Mears Park. But generally the crowd was enthused, not rowdy. And with good reason. In a set fully devoted to the original music of Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and Dave King, the addition of Joshua Redman reinvented each composition. And in the artistic presence of Iverson, Anderson and King, Joshua Redman reinvented himself. After six TBP favorites (including King’s “Thriftstore Jewelry” and Anderson’s “Big Eater”) ending with Reid’s “Silence Is the Question,” the crowd demanded even more. The quartet obliged with King’s “Layin’ a Strip for the Higher-Self State Line” (possibly the longest title of the festival); clearly no one was ready to leave so a second encore followed, this time Anderson’s iconic “Dirty Blonde.” City ordinance prevailed or there might have been more music well into Sunday.

 

One could not have asked for a better, more Good Plus finale.

 

Mark your calendars now for the 15th Twin Cities Jazz Festival, June 27-29, 2013.