Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival
Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Saratoga Springs, NY
June 25-26, 2011

This year's Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival, the 34th edition of the upstate New York event, featured a great touch when famed jazz impresario George Wein George Wein
b.1925
piano was awarded a star on the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Walk of Fame. Wein created the festival, fashioning it as an outdoor event in the mold of the iconic Newport Jazz Festival, and produced it until 2007, when he thought he was pulling out of the business.

He returned to run the Newport Jazz Festival in 2009, and still has a big place in his heart for Saratoga Springs. And vice versa.

But the cool thing extended further, as Wein also performed at the festival, as a pianist fronting his Newport All Stars that were a hit on the main stage of the two-stage Saratoga Performing Arts Center venue. It featured superb players like trumpeter Randy Brecker Randy Brecker
b.1945
trumpet , Anat Cohen Anat Cohen

sax, tenor on sax and clarinet, Lewis Nash Lewis Nash
b.1958
drums on drums, Peter Washington Peter Washington

bass on bass, Lew Tabackin Lew Tabackin
b.1940
sax, tenor on sax and flute and guitarist Howard Alden Howard Alden
b.1958
guitar . They wailed through a set of standards, with Cohen flexing her muscular chops on both instruments. She blazed on tenor through "Manha de Carnival," which also featured the always-excellent flute of Tabakin. Brecker's trumpet soared as it always does and the rhythm section was impeccable. Wein's 85 year-old fingers are nimble enough to provide many fun moments.

The star-studded band was emblematic of the festival put together by Wein protégé Danny Melnick of Absolutely Live Entertainment. It was two solid days of outstanding jazz on two stages. It featured the likes of Eliane Elias Eliane Elias
b.1960
piano , Jack DeJohnette Jack DeJohnette
b.1942
drums , The Bad Plus The Bad Plus

band/orchestra , Ben Allison Ben Allison
b.1966
bass, acoustic , Lionel Loueke Lionel Loueke
b.1973
guitar , Marcus Strickland Marcus Strickland

saxophone , Dee Dee Bridgewater Dee Dee Bridgewater
b.1950
vocal , David Binney David Binney
b.1961
saxophone , Hilary Kole Hilary Kole

vocal and more.

Elias' set was typically fine, full of energy and life. Her current band, touring in support of her new album Light My Fire (Concord, 2011) and she did an array of tunes from it, as well as gems from past albums like "So Danco Samba." The rhythm section, anchored by Marc Johnson Marc Johnson
b.1953
bass on bass, is energized by percussionist Marlvaldo dos Santos. High-energy tunes were balanced by softer things like "Rosa Morena," allowing Elias to display her attractive voice. She's become a strong singer, but don't go to sleep on her monster piano chops that propel the music.

"It's a very special album and it has an aspect to it that is different than the others," she said after her set. "It has some very sexy moments. It has moments that are very cool, vibey. But also a lot of rhythm, groove and romance. It has different things that worked so nice together ... I always brought different elements of Brazilian music, but I've done a lot of albums that were more instrumental. This is a vocal album that still has a lot of piano. But this album, with the vocals, has more of a variety of elements of Brazilian music than just the bossa nova. There's some music from the north of Brazil, from Bahia. And some Afro-Brazilian rhythms ... This album, from the very beginning, had a force of its own."

Jack DeJohnette

Among the best was the music of DeJohnette. His band featured young monster musicians who have melded together and play with passion, scorching the SPAC main stage with blistering improvisation. Of course, it was all fielded by the magnificent drumming of the leader, who got sound and feeling from a drum set that was staggering. George Colligan George Colligan
b.1969
keyboard 's keyboards were crazy good, and David Fiuczynski David Fiuczynski
b.1964
guitar 's hot guitar work created blissful moments. And DeJohnette has found a soul mate in Rudresh Mahanthappa Rudresh Mahanthappa
b.1971
sax, alto , who blew hot, cool and everything in between. Always pushing and exploring.

Marcus Strickland's recent albums are establishing him as a major saxophonist. With David Bryant David Bryant

piano on piano, Ben Williams Ben Williams

bass on bass and twin brother E.J. Strickland E.J. Strickland

drums on drums, the group mesmerized the gazebo stage audience. The band cooked, and then was tempered by a serene ballad that highlighted the soprano sax. Bassist Ben Allison's band had a similar effect, with sublime musicianship streaming from the bandstand, evoking a variety of moods while always maintaining intensity and interest. Guitarist Steve Cardenas Steve Cardenas

guitar had a rich sound and his melodic sense of invention was always pleasurable. Drummer Rudy Royston Rudy Royston

drums has really along in the last couple years as one of the very finest young drummers on the scene, and he drove the Allison unit in great fashion. Cardenas also played his own set as a trio with Allison and Royston, so he got to develop more musical ideas of his own and the interplay of that unit was what jazz is about.

The Bad Plus was working Never Stop (E1 Entertainment, 2010), its first all-original recording. They've been together a while now and the synergy among drummer David King David King
b.1965
guitar , bassist Reid Anderson Reid Anderson
b.1970
bass and pianist Ethan Iverson Ethan Iverson
was strong. They stretched the rubber band of the trio and it snapped back when they needed to. It was thoughtful music but still had a lot of guts.

On the other hand, Donald Harrison always plays with guts and feeling, but his set called A Night in Treme, after the HBO series, wasn't as exciting as when he carries his own band and plays what he calls "nouveau bop." This band, capturing some of the tradition of New Orleans, featured New Orleans Indians, from which Harrison is descended, and the singing of Cyril Neville Cyril Neville
. Entertaining in spots, it didn't always play out with anything that could be called special. More fun and funky was Brian Mitchell Brian Mitchell
, whose résumé includes playing piano with Levon Helm Levon Helm
b.1942
drums of The Band. The pianist had a sleek band with percussion, keyboards bass and trombone. They were full of blues and funk and swing.

Brian Mitchell

Mitchell called to mind Dr. John Dr. John
b.1940
piano , but without as much rasp in the voice. "Shake That Thing," and "Love Don't Mean That Much To Me" had toes tapping and heads bouncing.

Pedrito Martinez Pedrito Martinez
also knew how to get the feet moving, as most Latin bands seem to do. It was a small band though. Alvaro Benavides played percussion with the leader and they were joined by keyboard and bass. Everyone sang. But they cranked out high energy Latin music with not much jazz. Hips were shaking as well as heads.

Saxophonist Tia Fuller Tia Fuller

saxophone has been rising on the scene and with good reason. She's a smoking player with all the grasp of bebop and the heart to light it up. She always brings the fire. Her sister, Shamie Royston, is also a fine musician, playing remarkable piano, and Rudy Royston Rudy Royston

drums played superlative drums. The result was a tight, grooving, burning band.

Bringing a different kind of fire, more smoldering, was trumpeter Rebecca Coupe Franks Rebecca Coupe Franks
b.1961
trumpet , who played a set of interesting original material, like "Hugs From Heaven" (for her late father), that was marvelously carried out by Luis Perdomo Luis Perdomo
b.1971
piano on piano, Tani Tabbal Tani Tabbal
on drums and Lew Scott on bass. Perdomo's fleet fingers are always a treat; tasty and dazzling at the same time. Franks showed a nice tone and good chops on her straight-ahead jazz compositions. She also sang a couple numbers, which wasn't a good choice.

Luis Perdomo

Singing is the choice of Hilary Kole, and the New York City club star was in fine form, despite struggling with a cold. She has a style that straddles jazz and cabaret, but she's been doing an awful lot of jazz gigs and it shows. Her phrasing, and even her scatting, was as much jazz as just about anything else. She articulated and swung, and knew how to get feeling out of a song without being maudlin and without forcing it. It was a swinging set, as her voice ran like syrup over songs like "Better Than Anything," "Get Outta Town" and other standards. John Hart John Hart
b.1961
guitar 's sparkling guitar solos added a lot to the good feeling.

Hilary Kole and John Hart

A couple great jazz singers took the main stage during he weekend. Dee Dee Bridgewater Dee Dee Bridgewater
b.1950
vocal did a set of music honoring Billie Holiday Billie Holiday
1915 - 1959
vocal . Her voice is always on target, it seems, with a strength that kind of sneaks up on the listener. She has a strong stage presence and grabs the audience before opening them up to her stories.

Dianne Reeves Dianne Reeves
b.1956
vocal is another strong-voiced jazz singer, along the lines of Sarah Vaughan Sarah Vaughan
1924 - 1990
vocal , and was part of the Sing the Truth! act, along with Angelique Kidjo Angelique Kidjo
b.1960
vocal and Lizz Wright Lizz Wright
b.1980
vocal . Billed as a tribute to Odetta Odetta
1930 - 2008
guitar, acoustic , Miriam Makeba Miriam Makeba
1932 - 2008
vocal and Abbey Lincoln Abbey Lincoln
1930 - 2010
vocal , it was also a tribute to women in general, taking songs from a huge gamut of female singers like Joni Mitchell Joni Mitchell
b.1943
vocal , Nina Simone Nina Simone
1933 - 2003
piano , Tracy Chapman, Holiday and others. All three were in good voice in an uplifting performance. Reeves, particularly, was shining on "Throw It Away" of Lincoln's, whose popularity among jazz singers is because she was such a strong songwriter, and it's always a good thing when tribute is paid to this late, great artist. The band, featuring Geri Allen Geri Allen
b.1957
piano , bassist James Genus James Genus
b.1966
bass , drummer Terri Lyne Carrington Terri Lyne Carrington
b.1965
drums and guitarist Romero Lubambo Romero Lubambo

guitar , was top notch, providing a perfect platform for the vocalists.

The 34th edition of the festival had solid music throughout, some as blistering as the June sun. Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival remains one of the finest events in the northeast region of the U.S. and it could be argued that the festival stands on as good a ground as any. It will be typical that as the calendar turns into 2012, there will already be rumbling about what will be on the docket for festival number 35.

Photo Credit
All Photos: R.J. DeLuke

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