Outstanding weather, a fantastic atmosphere, good reviews and plenty of happy audiences...
That the weather has been so kind to this year's festival has given a boost to the small clubs' evening concerts, with plenty of people in town each evening, as well as the many outdoor arrangements, like “Jazz By the Sea" at Kulturhuset Islands Brygge and the new venue at Ofelia Beach, both of which have drawn exceptionally large crowds. New initiatives at more secretive and less cultivated locations like the DSB grounds in outer Nørrebro and the red rooftop in DGI-byen have presented urban jazz--including jazz and street basket, jazz remixed and “Jazz For Kids"--and have also drawn big (and perhaps totally new) audiences.
The same can be said of this year's “Giant Jazz" concerts that got straight down to business with Herbie Hancock at Operaen and ended Friday evening with a magical presentation by Canadian singer Martha Wainwright and her fascinating interpretations of Edith Piaf songs. The audience simply didn't want the concert to end and Wainwright responded with a dazzling encore of “Stormy Weather." Two evenings earlier it was Marcus Miller who turned on the audience with an incredible power display where all funk preconceptions regarding the super bassist were definitively laid to rest.
Before Miller took the stage, bassist Esperanza Spalding proved that Miller need not worry about who will follow in his musical footsteps. The “Giant Jazz" program also included Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso, who, to the surprise of many, had rearranged his songs in a more “rocked-up" style. This was a conscious artistic choice and Veloso exuded the confidence necessary to win over his audience.
Major names performed at Copenhagen JazzHouse, thanks to a new, close partnership with the festival.
The public was offered an internationally oriented series of concerts that several jazz critics claim was the best line-up at JazzHouse in years. High points were the concert with the Vijay Iyer Trio, the two evenings with Joshua Redman's Double Trio and the next-to-last evening delicacy of a concert with American vocal discovery Gretchen Parlato and her fantastic sidemen.
“The goal was to put together a program that took the temperature of the international, modern jazz scene, and we feel we succeeded totally--to the great benefit of the festival, JazzHouse and clearly also the public," says the festival's musical consultant, Kenneth Hansen.
Complete on >> http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=60509
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