Iowa City Jazz Festival©Andrea Canter

Just about anywhere you live in the Midwest, you are less than a day away from one of the nation’s best-kept cultural secrets—the Iowa City Jazz Festival. Taking place annually over the first weekend of July, the Iowa City Jazz Festival celebrates its 17th on July 3-5. Held on the famed (and shaded!) “Pentacrest” of the University of Iowa, this festival has grown in stature and musical offerings to be one of the best of the free outdoor festivals in the nation, and is now a major component of the Iowa City Summer of the Arts program.  

With major sponsorship from Toyota-Scion of Iowa City, headliners this year represent one of the strongest line-ups in festival history, including David Sanchez, Trombone Shorty, Lionel Loueke, Chris Potter’s Underground, the Bill Frisell Quartet, and the Dave Holland Quintet. Interspersed among the national headliners will be the best of local and regional jazz, as well as youth and college band stages promoting the future of jazz in Iowa and beyond. Jams at the nearby Sheraton Hotel and area music bars ensure many hours of jazz for those who just can not get enough. Concessions across from the Pentacrest will keep the crowds fueled throughout the weekend, and feature such nonstandard Iowa fare as gourmet delights from the cuisines of India, Africa, Greece and Asia, along with “state fair” staples like corn dogs and ice cream.   

David Sanchez

JazzSet (National Public Radio) has recognized the Iowa City Jazz Festival by recording the festival four times.  

Main Stage Schedule: Friday, July 3

• 6:00 pm, Des Moines Big Band. For 40 years, the Des Moines Big Band has performed bossa nova, fusion, Afro-Cuban and post-bop, now under the direction of trumpeter Jim Oatts.

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  Trombone Shorty©Jane Richey
  8:00 pm, David Sanchez Quartet. The Grammy-winning tenor saxophonist leads a volcanic band with Thelonious Monk competition winner, Lage Lund, on guitar, Orlando Le Fleming on bass, and Henry Cole on the drums. A native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sanchez was influenced early on by the rhythms of his homeland, Cuba and Brazil as well as American jazz masters John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins. He came to the US to study at Rutgers University and went on to play with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Haden, Eddie Palmieri and more.  He’s garnered multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations, winning the 2005 Latin Grammy for his recording, Coral. His 2007 release, Cultural Survival, was on many Top Ten lists.

Main Stage Schedule, Saturday, July 4

• 2:00 pm, Diplomats of Solid Sound. A big helping of Memphis soul in the heart of Iowa? Instrumental quartet with three vocalists takes you down the Mississippi for some southern hospitality.

• 4:00 pm, Orquestra Alto Maiz. For more than 20 years, this 11-piece Latin jazz band has tackled merengue, samba, cha-cha-cha, salsa, calypso and boleros. Dancing will seem mandatory.

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  Lionel Loueke©Andrea Canter
  6:00, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue. Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews was leading bands at the tender age of six in his native New Orleans. Graduating from the prestigious New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, Shorty has appeared with Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Lenny Kravitz, U-2 and rapper Juvenile, and his band Orleans Avenue has been named Best R&B/Funk band for two consecutive years by New Orleans’ Offbeat magazine. Equally skilled on trombone and trumpet, Shorty won Offbeat’s Best Trumpet and Best Performer awards as well. This past spring, he became the youngest musician to be featured on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival poster. Pop, funk, hip-hop—there’s lots of fun and energy with this 23-year-old brassman.

• 8:00 pm, Lionel Loueke Trio. Winner of the 2008 Downbeat Rising Star Guitar (Critics’ Poll), Lionel Loueke brings more than guitar chops to his music—he sings and simultaneously produces clicking mouth percussion over his syncopated chords. The native of Benin in West Africa did not pick up guitar until he was 17, although he grew up listening to his older brother play. But a George Benson CD steered him away from reliance on the Afro-pop music he heard growing up, and he soon worked his way into a jazz program in Paris, then earned a scholarship to Berklee in Boston. After Berklee he was accepted in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles; mentors included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Terence Blanchard, with whom he began touring. His most recently release (Karibu) includes both Hancock and Shorter.

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  Chris Potter©Andrea Canter
  9:30 pm, City Fireworks! Iowa City’s annual fireworks display launches from the west side of Old Capitol at Hubbard Park.

Main Stage Schedule, Sunday, July 5

• 2:00 pm, Bob Levy and the J.O Trio. On faculty at Lawrence (WI) University, trumpeter/composer Bob Levy has performed with the Gunther Schuller Big Band, Bobby Shew, Eddie Daniels, Clark Terry, Stan Getz and John Medeskii,earning such accolades as "highly energized trumpet jazz," "able to switch styles with ease and comfortable in all of them" and "wonderfully and lovingly precise." Levy promotes the music of Alec Wilder through his Wilder Duo, brass music with his brass quintet, and new music through hundreds of premiers as performer and conductor. He also performs improvisational music on conch shells, garden hose and various horns with the Flex Ensemble.The J.O.Trio features Mark Martin, keyboard; Andy Merten, bass and vocals; and Mike Underwood, drums.

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  Bill Frisell
  4:00 pm, Chris Potter’s Underground. Winner of the IAJE Young Talent award for saxophone at age 12, a protégé of Marian McPartland by 15, a member of the Red Rodney band while still in his teens, and with a long list of recordings as both leader and sideman while in his 20s, Chris Potter is one prodigy who has lived up to his early billing. Familiar to jazz audiences through his performances with Dave Holland (Quintet and Big Band) and the Dave Douglas Quintet, Potter leads one of the most incendiary ensembles in modern jazz, the Underground Quartet featuring dazzling improviser Craig Taborn on acoustic and electric keyboards, sublime guitarist Adam Rogers, and powerful drummer Nate Smith. Potter’s notes that his goal for the “Underground” band  was to draw upon “funk rhythmic language” while keeping the music “as free as the freest jazz conception…a big inspiration for this has been Wayne Shorter’s quartet …basically it’s spontaneous group composition.” The quartet has now released two recordings and frequently tours Europe as well as jazz festivals and clubs throughout the world.

• 6:00 pm, Bill Frisell Quartet. One of the working legends of modern jazz guitar, Bill Frisell is steeped in country, bules, and rock. Known for using a wide range of special effects to create unique sounds, he’s performed or recorded with Kenny Wheeler, Paul Motian, Dave Holland, Elvin Jones, Don Byron, Fred Hersch, and Jim Hall, among many others. Here he will perform with his quartet--Ron Miles, trumpet; Tony Scherr, bass; and Rudy Royston, drums.

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  Dave Holland
  8 pm, Dave Holland Quintet. Native Brit Dave Holland is a largely self-taught musician. He picked up the ukulele at age 4, then guitar at 10 and moved on to the bass guitar and local bands at 13. Two years after quitting school to become a professional musician, a 17-year –old Holland read about Ray Brown in Down Beat and within a week traded in his bass guitar for the upright double bass. Holland first became an active bassist in the London jazz community, playing at Ronnie Scott's and touring with Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, and Joe Henderson. A gig with Bill Evans in 1968 attracted the attention of Miles Davis. Soon Holland was in New York touring and recording with Davis, including participating in the In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew sessions. The following decades saw Holland teamed with Chick Corea, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Betty Carter, Sam Rivers, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker and more, and in the 90s and 00s, leading poll-topping quintets and big bands. His long-standing cohorts include Chris Potter, tenor sax; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Steve Nelson, vibes; and Nate Smith, drums.

 Named among the “Top 10 Festivals in the Nation” by Downbeat magazine, the Iowa City Jazz Festival always features strong mainstream performers as well as genre-stretching innovators. Check your map—Iowa City is located in eastern Iowa right on Interstate 80, about half way between Minneapolis and St. Louis, Omaha and Chicago. Lodging is inexpensive and the music is free. And it boasts one of the best collection of national talents you’ll find at any free festival this summer. There’s no better way to celebrate the holiday  -- the fireworks are on the Pentacrest in Iowa City, July 3-5. 

For full schedule and more information, visit http://www.summerofthearts.org. Andrea Canter blogs on jazz at www.jazzink.blogspot.com. See her Lead Sheet every Friday for Twin CIties jazz picks for the coming week. 

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