I've been going to the Newport Jazz Festival religiously every year now for the past eleven years. It has now become the only festival I reserve for only going to experience - rather than going to perform and help at.
This year was a good one. I started
Friday with catching a little bit of Danilo Perez, and then got to see Steve Coleman. The first time I saw him was a couple years ago at the 60th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival, which was one of the best shows I've ever seen in my entire life and nothing short of a transformative spiritual experience. His set that year was about two and a half hours - starting with his camouflage orchestration stuff with a larger ensemble and then with his sextet, the five elements - the later consisting primarily of spontaneous composition/collective improvisation and was extremely primal/tribal while still being cerebral/mathy. He was given an hour set this year and played with the Five Elements. There was only one break in the music, with the rest of the set being continuous, and although much of it still had elements of spontaneous composition, there was more of it that was pre-composed. It was more accessible and groove oriented than the previous set at the NJF as well as the previous two albums that he's released - but in my opinion had just as much depth as any of that material. A lot of the set had off-kilter poly-rhythmic/poly-meter funk grooves over parker-esque melodies and continuously shifted in a kaleidoscopic way.
From there I caught the tail end of Kneebody's set and then the first half of the Kamashi Washington set. Seeing Kamashi reaffirmed my thoughts that I expressed in my
dishonorable mentions of 2015. His playing sounded like a pale imitation of 70s Pharoh Sanders - over simple 4/4 grooves. His band was unnecessarily flashy, and as I mentioned in my review of his album "The Epic" - hiding the fact that the compositions have no substance. Musically, this man has absolutely NOTHING new to provide to the jazz community. However - I am happy that he is choosing to embrace the hip-hop community and thought he did a decent job in his playing on "To Pimp a Butterfly" and am happy the buzz around him brought that many more people to the jazz festival. When he played at the fort stage I had never seen so many people in that area in all the years that I have been attending the jazz festival - and I hope that these folks were also able to tune in and get turned on to more jazz artists that they wouldn't have otherwise heard.
After that I headed to Donny Mcaslin - who have been also getting a decent amount of buzz for their phenomenal job as the backing band on David Bowie's "Blackstar". They played one Bowie cover, one tune that was based on a track that didn't make the album, "Blackstar", some material of their record from last year "Fast Futures" (
which I mentioned in my top of 2015 list), as well as some new material from a record that will be released in October called "Beyond Now".
Saturday was definitely the weakest of the three days and by far the most crowded (thanks to Norah Jones selling out the festival for the first time since I've been attending) - but still had some great sets. I dug the John Scofield / Joe Lovano set much more than I had anticipated. Lovano often turns me off since his sound often feels too academic to me, but he bothered me less than he usually does since Sco comping for him made it feel that much better -and they played only two of Lovano's tunes and mostly Scofield tunes from albums he put out in the 90s which is a lot of my favorite material of his.
After that I caught Chick Corea's trio with Christian Mcbride and Brian Blade. They opened with "500 Miles High", which was the highlight of the set. Then played "All Blues" (written by Miles Davis), "Recorda Me" (written by Joe Henderson), and then closed with "Fingerprints" (which is a response to Shorter's "Footprints"). The set was way more traditional than I was anticipating, but overall was really solid.
The rest of the day on Saturday was relatively meh. I got to catch the last few tunes from Liebman (he closed with Coltrane's "India" which was the highlight from that), Stefon Harris (who was playing with Mike Moreno which I was excited about - until I saw that he was being under-utilized in favor of younger not as exciting musicians who seemed to be family friends of his or something like that), and Monty Alexander (a protege of Bob Marley from Jamaica). I was looking forward to Monty's set, especially once I found out about his ensemble having two bass players, two guitar players, two drummers, and another keyboard player - but this instrumentation was basically just used to switch from a group with a jazz feel to a group with a reggae feel during tunes - which initially was a really cool shift, but can only be done so many times until it feels like deja-vu. I feel like he could have done so much more with this instrumentation to create more complex grooves and layered parts - but I guess that's not really Monty's thing.
Sunday was my favorite of the three days. I got to see Nels Cline perform music from his upcoming album "Lovers" - which will be released later this week. It was a rather large ensemble (also including guitarist Julian Lage) and musically it ranged from standard oriented more traditional sounds, to dream-like beautiful chaos, to the emotive gorgeous post-rock sounding closer. Can't wait to hear the full double album on Friday.
From there I got to catch a bit of Jose Jame's set (whose more in the R&B realm than jazz - but Nate Smith was on drums who is always amazing to hear) and a bit of Kenny Barron's set. After that I saw Charles Loyd who played with Jason Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass and Eric Harland on drums. Charles Loyd is 78 years old and is still pushing into new musical territory. The man is like a old shaman who is able to summon some real powerful spiritual shit. He's the real deal. If you're new to him check out his great record from last year "Wild Man Dance" - or if that's too wild for you, check out his great record from this year, "I Long to See You", which is a bit more accessible and also really awesome.
I then saw the first half of the Robert Glasper Experiment's set (which interestingly enough was scheduled at the same time as the other jazz collaborator from Kendrick's "To Pimp a Butterfly" Kamashi Washington - which I'm unsure of why this was scheduled this way since it seems like Glasper's set would have been pretty perfect for the Kamashi Washington fans to see). The group sound checked with "A Love Supreme" which at first felt sacrilegious to me since this piece of music is so holy - but somehow it was actually kind of tight. The first thing that was really apparent to me is how much of a dickhead Robert Glasper is. When the radio dude who introduced him said Grammy Award winning artist, Glasper had to correct him and make sure everyone knew he had won MULTIPLE Grammys and was also nominated for others. He then reminded every one that last time he played at NJF he only played two songs because of the rain - and hinted/threatened that he might do the same this year if he wasn't feeling it. After he started playing he stopped a few minutes in and started making fun of the sound guy for not having the key-tar/vocoder loud enough and reminded the sound guy that he was a multi-Grammy winning artist. I can deal with musicians who have a huge ego - but when they start trashing on the sound guy that grinds my gears. I get it - he's coming from a sort of hip-hop mindset where you've got to big-up yourself to gain hype - but when it's putting other people down and bringing in negative energy, I can't stand behind that. And sure - there's plenty of MC's who trash talk in rhyme - I mean that's battle rap in a nut-shell, but in that moment and in that setting I felt like it was uncalled for. However, once they got up and running they sounded absolutely amazing - there was one section that was a reimagining of the Beatles "Blackbird" - which was really profound in reflecting on a lot of the events that have taken place recently. I am glad that he played with this group doing the more hip-hop oriented stuff for this audience to reach more people rather than his acoustic trio stuff. I am fully behind him looking to bridge the hip-hop and jazz community - and I think he did an amazing job in supporting Kendrick in orchestrating and playing on "To Pimp a Butterfly" - but feel like as a leader he hasn't created his own masterpiece, and his ego is probably the reason behind it.
The most exciting performance of the weekend was the debut of a supergroup consisting of Saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Dave Holland, guitarist Lionel Loueke, and drummer Eric Harland. They performed material that they recorded on a album that will be released in October. This group consists of half of the previous group Dave Holland was in, Prism (Holland and Harland) - but Loueke brings much more of a fresh sound with his West African style jazz guitar playing, and Chris Potter is probably my favorite tenor sax player around right now. Their compositional styles mixed really well together and the extended solos often served as mini-compositions within a larger whole. I think it is the strongest ensemble Holland has been a part of since the Dave Holland Quintet and I am so excited to see where this group will go. Seeing this group perform here felt like seeing history being made in the making. I'll wait to write more about their music until my top albums of the year list for this year since the compositions they performed will be on their upcoming album.
I'm really happy that the festival really recognized cross-over artists who are bridging the jazz and hip-hop community such as Robert Glasper as well as other cross-over artists such as Donny Mcaslin who are bringing together the rock/alternative and jazz community. Over the weekend I was struck by music's power to bring people together throughout history as these cross-over artists were showcased as well as in thinking about the rich history of the Newport Jazz Festival - like Ellington's in 56, Dylan's first electric performance (at the folk festival), or Coltrane's last public performance in 66. George Wein founded this festival 62 years ago, and at age 90 he's still doing a damn fine job of it. This weekend was supposedly his swan song in curating it, but I'm hoping it'll be passed off into good hands. There is a really powerful energy every year around this time of the year there at Fort Adams - and I think a lot of the performers can feel and channel that - and I feel so blessed to have been able to experience it for the years I've been able to.
(photo by Samantha Hale)
I then saw the first half of the Robert Glasper Experiment's set (which interestingly enough was scheduled at the same time as the other jazz collaborator from Kendrick's "To Pimp a Butterfly" Kamashi Washington - which I'm unsure of why this was scheduled this way since it seems like Glasper's set would have been pretty perfect for the Kamashi Washington fans to see). The group sound checked with "A Love Supreme" which at first felt sacrilegious to me since this piece of music is so holy - but somehow it was actually kind of tight. The first thing that was really apparent to me is how much of a dickhead Robert Glasper is. When the radio dude who introduced him said Grammy Award winning artist, Glasper had to correct him and make sure everyone knew he had won MULTIPLE Grammys and was also nominated for others. He then reminded every one that last time he played at NJF he only played two songs because of the rain - and hinted/threatened that he might do the same this year if he wasn't feeling it. After he started playing he stopped a few minutes in and started making fun of the sound guy for not having the key-tar/vocoder loud enough and reminded the sound guy that he was a multi-Grammy winning artist. I can deal with musicians who have a huge ego - but when they start trashing on the sound guy that grinds my gears. I get it - he's coming from a sort of hip-hop mindset where you've got to big-up yourself to gain hype - but when it's putting other people down and bringing in negative energy, I can't stand behind that. And sure - there's plenty of MC's who trash talk in rhyme - I mean that's battle rap in a nut-shell, but in that moment and in that setting I felt like it was uncalled for. However, once they got up and running they sounded absolutely amazing - there was one section that was a reimagining of the Beatles "Blackbird" - which was really profound in reflecting on a lot of the events that have taken place recently. I am glad that he played with this group doing the more hip-hop oriented stuff for this audience to reach more people rather than his acoustic trio stuff. I am fully behind him looking to bridge the hip-hop and jazz community - and I think he did an amazing job in supporting Kendrick in orchestrating and playing on "To Pimp a Butterfly" - but feel like as a leader he hasn't created his own masterpiece, and his ego is probably the reason behind it.
