September 22, 2014 at 7:40 PM
MONTEREY, Calif. — When Tim Jackson took over the programming of the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1992, he assured its somewhat conservative patrons that he would introduce artistic changes gradually at the parklike Monterey Fairgrounds.
Jackson has kept his word, but the festival’s 57th edition this past weekend felt like a watershed. Saturday night’s arena headliner was a jazz-influenced hip-hop act, The Roots, which topped a thematic through-line of contemporary African-American music that placed the festival firmly in the present. It was a meaty, satisfying lineup.
With the star power of its current spot on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night TV show, The Roots drew a young, enthusiastic crowd, which danced in the aisles as many older fans exited. It was an exhilarating show, which combined the leaping choreography and zap!-pow! precision of James Brown with the percolating, layered rhythms of an African pop band.
At bottom, jazz is all about the groove, and the Robert Glasper Experiment, with Casey Benjamin’s voice wafting through an electronic Vocoder, nudged the crowd into the zone Saturday afternoon. Herbie Hancock, who delivered the same “greatest hits” set he played at Monterey in 2011 — from “Watermelon Man” to “Rockit” — really came to play this time, drilling down on acoustic piano, two electric keyboards and the slung-like-a-guitar keyboard called the key-tar, and squaring off with atmospheric African guitarist Lionel Loueke.
Several events commemorated the 75th anniversary of New York indie label Blue Note Records, including a memorable duet by Glasper and fellow Texan Jason Moran, who swapped bass and treble duties on the same piano bench in a deliciously abstracted celebration of the first Blue Note recording, by boogie-woogie pianists Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons, in 1939.
read more: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/soundposts/2014/09/22/even-at-57-monterey-jazz-festival-still-finding-new-levels-of-groove/?syndication=rss
0 Comments:
Post a Comment