The Boston Symphony Orchestra will present its annual Labor Day Weekend Tanglewood Jazz Festival to be held September 2-4 at the orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshire Mountains in Lenox, Mass. Jazz greats highlighting this year’s festival include Tony Bennett with the Count Basie Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, Madeleine Peyroux, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Werner, Oscar Castro-Neves, Airto, Marian McPartland, Chris Botti, the Yellowjackets, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Jay Leonhart, and Diane Schuur and the Caribbean Jazz Project.
A new addition to the jazz festival this year is the Tanglewood Jazz Cafe, an informal venue for new artists who will perform before each concert. Rising stars appearing this year include Esperanza, the Andy Ezrin Trio, the Marta Topferova Trio, and the Taylor Eigsti-Julian Lagos Duo. Food and beverages will be available in both the Hawthorne Tent and the Party Tent. Admission to the Tanglewood Jazz Café is free for ticketholders for that day’s performance.
The festival opens Friday, September 2, at 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall with a performance by Diane Schuur and the Caribbean Jazz Project featuring Dave Samuels. Her latest release, Schuur Fire (Concord Picante Records), was recorded with the Grammy-winning Caribbean Jazz Project, led by vibraphonist and marimba player Dave Samuels, with the world-renowned Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves as producer and arranger. The Caribbean Jazz Project has become the gold standard of today’s dynamic Latin jazz movement. The CJP’s cohesive quality has become one of its most bankable trademarks. Four of the current principals – Samuels, drummer Mark Walker, pianist Dario Eskenazi, and bassist Oscar Stagnaro – are charter members of the band. Today’s CJP also includes Diego Urrcola on trumpet and flugelhorn and percussionist Robert Quintero.
Toots Thilelmans’ sweet and truly unique jazz harmonica sound will follow Diane Schuur and the Caribbean Jazz Project with a performance by the Toots Thielemans Quartet, featuring pianist Kenny Werner, Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves, and percussionist Airto.
Pianist Kenny Werner has performed with such jazz dignitaries as Ron Carter, Joe Williams, Lee Konitz, Billy Hart, John Scofield, Charlie Haden, and dozens of others. Werner has composed music for and produced the Brussels Jazz Orchestra and is accompanist to vocalist Betty Buckley.
Brazilian-born guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves is one of the founders of the Bossa Nova movement along with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto. In 1962 Oscar came to New York to appear at the first Bossa Nova concert in America at Carnegie Hall. He toured with his own quartet, as well as with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet, the Stan Getz Quartet, and the Lalo Schiffren Trio.
Friday night’s concert will be broadcast live on WGBH-FM in Boston, WBGO in Newark, and National Public Radio stations across the country and will be available for rebroadcast to NPR stations nationwide throughout Labor Day Weekend.
Saturday’s lineup will kick off at 12 noon with The Legends Trio featuring Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, and Jay Leonhart on the Theatre Stage. Pianist and conductor Skitch Henderson was the music director for NBC Television in its early days and later The Tonight Show with Steve Allen and Johnny Carson. In 1983 Henderson founded the New York Pops to share his passion for music by bringing the more accessible symphonic pops fare to a broader audience.
Bucky Pizzarelli has been a part of the fraternity of musicians who have kept mainstream and traditional jazz alive for more than half a century. The list of big bands and vocalists with whom Bucky has performed and recorded reads like a Who’s Who of Jazz. He has played and toured with Benny Goodman and led his own trio and recorded duos with Zoot Sims, Bud Freeman, Stephane Grappelli, and his son, guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli.
Bassist Jay Leonhart has played with dozens of the great jazz musicians, big bands, and singers such as Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Tony Bennett, Marian McPartland, and Jim Hall. Between 1975 and 1995 he was named The Most Valuable Bassist in the recording industry three times by the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences
On Saturday, September 3, at 3 p.m. at Ozawa Hall Marian McPartland will celebrate her fourth anniversary at Tanglewood to record a live performance for NPR’s “Piano Jazz.” Her guest for this year’s taping is vocalist Madeleine Peyroux. Since 1978, Ms. McPartland has interviewed over 500 musicians and performers including Norah Jones (recorded live at Tanglewood), Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Rosemary Clooney, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Brad Mehldau, Ray Charles, Carmen McRae, and even William F. Buckley.
Madeleine Peyroux’s meteoric rise to the top of the jazz charts has been stunning. Her second CD, Careless Love (Rounder Records), skyrocketed to number three on the Billboard Chart earlier this year. Peyroux (pronounced like the country “Peru”), was born in Athens, Ga., and grew up in Brooklyn, Southern California, and Paris. She started as a street musician in Paris 1989 and joined the Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band, which toured around Europe for several years. She burst onto the recording scene in 1996 with her debut album Dreamland selling over 200,000 copies worldwide.
Headlining the festival on Saturday, September 3, at 8 p.m., Tony Bennett will take the stage at the 5,100-seat Koussevitzky Music Shed performing with the Count Basie Orchestra in a much anticipated and rare reunion to celebrate their landmark 1959 Capitol recording Basie & Bennett. Bennett has sold over 50 million records worldwide and has platinum and gold albums to his credit as well as 12 Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
In the 1930s, the Count Basie Orchestra created what would be known forever as swing. Today the musical joy that Count Basie himself created lives on through the superb orchestra that bears his name, directed by Bill Hughes. Despite half a century of changing tastes in popular music, the endurance of the Count Basie Orchestra confirms the genius of his earliest musical instincts.
On Sunday, September 4, at 2 p.m., jazz giant and “saxophone colossus” Sonny Rollins returns to Tanglewood for his first performance since 2001. Rollins has played for nearly a half century and today remains one of the few surviving icons from a golden era of jazz that will probably never be equaled. Rollins first recorded in 1949 and today – over 50 years later – remains the most formidable of all jazz improvisers, a living inspiration to musicians and listeners worldwide.
The Yellowjackets will perform material from their new CD Altered States (Heads Up Records) on Sunday, September 4, at 8 p.m. at Ozawa Hall. One of the most popular American jazz ensembles of the past 20 years, the Yellowjackets include keyboardist Russell Ferrante, saxophonist Bob Mintzer, Bassist Jimmy Haslip, and drummer Marcus Baylor.
Following the Yellowjackets at Ozawa Hall on Sunday evening will be trumpeter Chris Botti, a gifted composer and instrumentalist and a charismatic performer who has created a series of recordings that have made him a virtual genre-of-one in the realm of contemporary jazz.
All programs and artists are subject to change. Tickets for the 2005 Tanglewood Jazz Festival are on sale now through SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200 or online through the BSO’s website, www.tanglewood.org, powered by EMC Corporation. Tickets are also available in person at the Tanglewood Box Office in Lenox. All ticket prices include a $1 Tanglewood Grounds Maintenance Fee. For further information, please call the Boston Symphony Orchestra at 617-266-1492.
Press contacts:
Dawn Singh, Dawn Singh Publicity ([email protected])
857-544-0739
www.dawnsinghpublicity.com
Sean Kerrigan, BSO Associate Director of Media Relations
413-637-5286
For more information contact All About Jazz.
