Ginger Baker - Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
By Bob Karlovits
Saturday, June 13, 2015, 7:57 p.m.
When jazz takes new forms, it finds new life.
This bit of resurrection is allowing sax star Craig Handy to explore music he hasn't before.
And it is giving trumpeter Sean Jones the chance to test drummer Roger Humphries, “who is such a bad cat no one wants to challenge him,” Jones says.
It even is giving drummer Ginger Baker a new way to show off his explosive talent.
Put all of those musical events together, and it creates exciting possibilities for the year's Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival.
The fifth festival rolls out June 19 to 21 on the streets of the Cultural District, Downtown, offering mostly free concerts, as well as a Saturday night ticketed event with Ginger Baker, the 75-year-old drummer who was the heart of Cream and Blind Faith.
The festival has grown steadily each year, becoming its own event in 2014 when it branched off from the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival.
Cultural Trust figures report the festival attracted about 15,000 people last year, 52 percent from out of the area.
Performers at the festival reflect the evolving nature of their work and of the genre.
Joey DeFrancesco, for example, is well known as a Hammond B-3 organ player from the heritage of Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff. But, at the festival, he will be showing off a side not well known — that of a trumpet player leading a quartet.
“I really love the trumpet,” DeFrancesco says, “so I finally decided I really had to do this.”
Of course, he will be playing his B-3, but when he picks up his horn, he will add another player to the band — Mark Boone, who will add the bass lines DeFrancesco generally does with his pedals.
Read more: http://triblive.com/aande/music/8442512-74/june-music-festival#ixzz3d5MKE79m
Follow us: @triblive on Twitter | triblive on Facebook
0 Comments:
Post a Comment