Newport Jazz Festival 2017

After 63 years of curating the Newport Jazz Festival - George Wein is still doing it right.  Although the line-up wasn't as consistently amazing as it was in some of the recent previous years, the festival did a better job of booking some well chosen cross-over artists and continued to try to bridge the gap between jazz and hip-hop (which I wrote about last year on my thoughts of the festival in 2016) as well as featured some of the most forward thinking and progressive jazz artists alive today.  

FRIDAY:  

(Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith performing some of their material off of their 2016 album "A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke)

The headliner on Friday was Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.  It was the original line-up - with the phenomenal harmonica player and pianist Howard Levy and they played a lot of their classic material from those early albums.  

(Bela Fleck & the Flecktones) 

SATURDAY: 

Vijay Iyer Sextet was the most exciting set of the weekend to me.  The sextet is comprised of Vijay Iyer (piano, Fender Rhodes), Graham Haynes (cornet, flugelhorn, electronics), Steve Lehman (alto saxophone), Mark Shim (tenor saxophone), Stephan Crump (bass), and Tyshawn Sorey (drums) - They played material off their upcoming album "Far From Over" which will be coming out August 25th on ECM - which I'm sure I'll be writing about in my top albums of 2017.  The compositions they played were groove centered and sounded rooted in the early M-Base music (such as the early funkier Steve Coleman releases) and melodically and rhythmically mind bending.  

DJ Project Logic (DJ Logic's jam band) was the biggest letdown of the festival.  DJ Logic is one of the musicians most credited to bringing jazz to hip-hop - and this ensemble is more or a less an improvisational collective.  A lot of jam oriented projects are pretty hit or miss - depending on how the jam is that set - but this project failed more often than not.  They showed up over a half hour late leaving keyboardist James Hurt to play solo for this time.  Once the rest of the band showed up, they spent 15 minutes playing in a way that sounded more like a soundcheck than a performance and then a lot of the times it just sounded dull and uninspired.  And the biggest bummer about it was African Kora player Foday Musa Suso (who was the player I was most excited about in this ensemble) was not even there for it.  DJ Logic is a great turntabilist - and it was cool being able to hear him play with the Philadelphia Experiment on Sunday - but he is completely incompetent as a bandleader if this set was any indication of his abilities as one.  

Another highlight for me on Saturday was Henry Threadgill's Zooid.  Threadgill is one of the most important composers in jazz history and at age 73 he's still one of the wildest around today.  It was a much more stripped down ensemble comparatively to his double up ensemble on “Odd Locks and Irregular Verbs” (which was in my top 10 albums of 2016).  The compositions played were like a hypnotic maze - melodically angular, and harmonically otherworldly.  

SUNDAY:

The fort stage on Sunday started out with the Maria Schnider Orchestra.  She played a lot of new material which was incredibly beautiful, often very cinematic, and in the case of one of her new compositions called "Singularity" quite apocalyptic.  

(Donny Mcaslin playing with the Maria Schnider Orchestra) 

Jason Moran's Fats Waller dance party was a lot of fun - he played mostly off his great 2014 album "ALL RISE: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller" as well as a reimagining of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" (which was played more in the style of Fats Waller) and a song called "All Rise" which was not on the album - but was one of my favorites of the set - it began very traditional harmonically and kept twisting rhythmically until it spiraled out into chaos, then coming back full circle.  

(Jason Moran as Fats Waller)

Bokante replaced Andra Day on the main stage in a last minute schedule change due to her being sick.  They are a new international ensemble featuring singer Malika Tirolien (from Guadeloupe), three guitarists from Snarky Puppy (Michael League, Chris McQueen, and Bob Lanzetti), lap steel virtuoso Roosevelt Collier and several percussionists - one of them being Jamey Haddad, one of the most inspiring teachers I had at Berklee who opened up my ears to music from many different countries.  I was surprised at how great this ensemble was since my expectations were low because of three members being from Snarky Puppy (whose music has become more accessible, generic, and dance oriented over the years) - But after seeing how other previous members of Snarky Puppy have left for other projects and it seems like these guitar players have been putting more energy into this project than they currently do with Snarky Puppy, it seems as though the success of that band has allowed them to pursue other projects with more creative freedom such as this band.  Bokante's set was incredibly groovy, psychedelic and fresh - looking forward to checking out their new album and to hearing where this ensemble goes.  

The Roots were the closing set of the Festival.  Unfortunately this set overlapped with Hudson (the supergroup featuring DeJohnette, Grenadier, Medeski & Scofield - I would have absolutely loved to see this as well since all these players are amazing - but since the album they put out was somewhat disappointing, and I hadn't seen The Roots in a decade and it seemed like the more important set in regards to a historic happening with the Newport Jazz Festival, I chose to see the Roots.

To be clear - the Roots are not jazz - but as the NJF have been trying to bridge the gap between jazz and hip-hop and book cross-over artists that are in this area - The Roots being a live-band hip-hop act were a logical choice to book for a headliner in this vein continue pushing the festival in this direction.  

Their set was extremely solid overall - consisting of a lot of their classic material from their older albums, a decent amount of covers/medleys, and solo-improvisations from different members of the group.  My biggest complaint was some of the covers didn't work quite as well - such as the cover of the Herbie Hancock song "Actual Proof" which fell flat, and "Sweet Child of Mine" (which although was fun and the crowd seemed to be excited about it - I couldn't help thinking about how many other things they could have been playing - and it wasn't the a pretty strange place to be playing in such a straight forward way at the NJF - even if it was only briefly in the context of a medley).  But the classic material they did play made up for this - the highlight for me being "Without a Doubt" into "Dynamite" off their masterpiece "Things Fall Apart".   Questlove's timing is remarkable and the Roots are truly great performers - they were able to put together a wildly entertaining production that was a great way to close out the festival.

This year was historic in regards to them booking a relatively straight-forward hip-hop act and I'm curious to see where the NJF will go from here - if they'll continue to book hip-hop artists to try to bridge the gap between these two communities - and if so who they will book.  I could see artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Erykah Badu, and Flying Lotus (given his lineage) going over relatively well.  I'm also curious if they will try to push to booking cross-over artists in other genres to draw more of an audience - such as artists in the jazz-influenced post-rock community such as Tortoise and The Sea and Cake.  The festival sold a little over 8,500 for the Saturday and Sunday - which is a little over two thirds full (when compared to the Newport Folk Festival which sells out the 12,000 person capacity before the line-up is even announced) - which I feel like is probably at least part of the reason for them booking acts in this category.  My biggest hope is that in doing so that festival goers who do come only to really see these headliners do get exposed to other acts and are turned on to them and that the festival continues to stay true to continuing to book the best and most progressive acts in jazz today.

Much love,
<3
Mike Sim