Mulgrew Miller©Andrea Canter

My friends Keith and Linda and I have this routine down cold. For Labor Day Weekend, we fly out of the South St. Paul airport on Friday morning in Keith’s 4-passenger Bonanza. We arrive at Willow Run airfield in Ypsilanti midday, rent a car, and take off for 3 ½ days of nonstop (really) jazz that runs the gamut from early swing to avant garde, with big helpings of Detroit-spiced bebop and sprinklings of Motown and soul. We stay through til at least the first part of the final big band set in the Carhartt Amphitheater on Hart Plaza and pack up for our flight home Tuesday morning. The Detroit Jazz Festival has become our annual pilgrimage to a city that manages to rise above its internal turmoil to welcome 750,000+ jazz fans and literally “put on a happy face.” 

This year we had to punt. High winds aloft. Icing at 4000 feet. Same forecast for Saturday made a minor one-day delay even iffy. So we did the unthinkable. We drove the 700 miles between Minneapolis and Detroit. What was officially an 11-hour trip took a good (or bad?) 14 hours, hitting the Chicago/Gary tollway maze on the late Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend. We arrived at our destination in Detroit around midnight, missing the festival’s opening sets with Take Six and Tower of Power with artistic director Mulgrew Miller. Fortunately, Miller appeared in a variety of other configurations throughout the weekend. 

Maria Schneider©Andrea Canter

And you don’t have to wander across a metro area, take a shuttle from one arena to another, catch a cab to the clubs where the “real” headliners are on stage, or even reserve a seat. Just show up. The three main stages are within a city block of each other; with staggered start times, it is possible to take in at least half of every set among the main stages. And there are three more music stages to catch up with high school and college bands, local up-and-comers, a “talk tent” to hear interviews and “blindfold test” with the visiting legends, a “Kid Bop” area to introduce the youngest fans to the music. And, of course, there’s the usual festival accoutrements of concessions, flea market merchandise, CD sales and T-shirts.  

Music Highlights

Terell Stafford©Andrea Canter

We heard pianist Mulgrew Miller with a student ensemble (including very fine vocalist Harrison Young) from William Paterson University, where Miller heads the jazz program; we heard Miller go head to head in a two-Steinway duet with the great Kenny Barron on such lovely standards as “Almost Like Being in Love” and “Up Jumped Spring”; he anchored under-rated bassist Robert Hurst’s Quartet and led his famed sextet, Wingspan, featuring vibes magician Steve Nelson and a hornline of Steve Nelson and Duane Eubanks. 

Roy Haynes©Andrea Canter

We heard perhaps the greatest composer of the past and present decade, Maria Schneider, and her own elegant orchestra, bringing a little Minnesota to Motor City with her “Tork’s Café” (in memory of small town waitress days) as well as enthralling the crowd with the stunning, soaring “Hang Gliding.” When a band includes tenorman Donny McCaslin, guitarist John Hart, trumpeter Greg Gisbert and pianist Frank Kimbrough, among others, your expectations have to be high. Schneider and company surpass expectations every time. And it’s as much a delight to watch her as to hear the sounds she elicits from her band. Schneider moves much like her music, gracefully, lightly, as if riding on one of the thermals beneath the hang glider. 

Terence Blanchard©Andrea Canter

We heard legends in the making: pianist Danilo Perez and his quintet featured the amazing saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa melding Indian raga forms to the blend of Latin and post bop that marks Perez’s new release, Providencia. Rudresh’s tragic reading of “Besame Mucho” was one of the single highlights of the weekend.  

Matt Wilson©Andrea Canter

One of the most interesting ensembles, visually as well as acoustically, was the Harlem Arts Ensemble led by multi-reedist Salim Washington, a protégé of flamekeepers Pharoah Saunders and Randy Weston and himself deeply emeshed in jazz education. It was fun to see young Twin Cities native Aaron James on bass. And violist Melanie Dyer was simply mesmerizing. 

Tia Fuller©Andrea Canter

We heard vocalists who are redefining jazz singing—Kurt Elling and Tierney Sutton, along with the master crooner, Freddy Cole. Cole was as engaging as ever, at the piano or microphone, charming us with “You’re Sensational” and “I Remember You.” We caught just the beginning of Tierney Sutton’s set, but the outdoor informality of the Pyramid Stage seemed to bring about a charming casual mood that elevated songs such as “Devil May Care” even higher than Sutton’s usual high artistry. A “devil may care” attitude also marked Kurt Elling’s playful set with his long-time collaborator, pianist/arranger Lawrence Hobgood, and recent recording/touring partner, sax great Ernie Watts. Adding relative newcomers Harish Raghavan on bass and Ulysses Owens on drums, Elling loosened his collar and his music as he covered “Into the Night,” “Dedicated to You,” and a particularly smoldering “Norweigian Wood” featuring guest guitarist John McLean. 

There were more tributes to master flamekeepers-- to Ray Brown, Clifford Brown, Pepper Adams, Betty Carter. We didn’t see it all. But we saw a few things we may never see or hear again—Christian McBride doing sound check on Roy Haynes’ drumkit; Gerald Wilson’s hat blowing off his head during his animated conducting of the Detroit Jazz Festival Orchestra; Allen Toussaint delivering solo piano while we ate shrimp jambalaya at the makeshift edition of the Dirty Dog, overlooking the Chase Stage. 

Would I drive 14 hours to the Detroit Jazz Festival again? Probably not in one day. But I am not sorry I did it last weekend. As for next year? Please, fly me to the Motor City moon. Or “Beam Me Up, Scottie.” Somehow, I’ll be there. 

This review is expanded from Andrea Canter’s blog at www.jazzink.blogspot.com Visit the Jazz Police photo gallery at http://www.jazzpolice.com/content/view/9229/79/ for more views of the DJF!
 

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites