Articles by Josef Woodard
Vossa Jazz Festival at 52, with New Blood
by Josef Woodard
https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/2010/9509f2e2a3547fddb4d7263cf3eb6ff5.jpg Each year around Easter, the lovely and smallish lakeside city of Voss, Norway springs to musical life for a weekend. Voss is a go-to destination for skiers flocking to the snowy slopes high above the town, and host to an extreme sports festival come summer. But the legendary Vossa Jazz festival, which staged an especially luminous 52nd anniversary edition in April, is a well-known cultural treasure--especially as a showcase for Norwegian jazz and jazz- adjacent artists.
Continue ReadingCharles Lloyd, Enjoying the Comforts and Poetics of Home, at the Lobero
by Josef Woodard
Charles Lloyd Delta Trio Lobero Theatre Santa Barbara, CA March 14, 2025 Seasoned saxophonist Charles Lloyd, now 87 and alighting major stages, festivals and accolade zones around the world, is considered one of the last of the old school jazz legends standing--and going strong, in his mellowed, wise and distinctively voiced way. And yet, global and cosmic standing notwithstanding, some special alchemy settles in when Lloyd plays one of his long-standing “homecoming" gigs in the ...
Continue ReadingAt Monterey Jazz Festival 67, Jazz Gospel According to a New Head
by Josef Woodard
Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey, CA September 27-29, 2024 Getting a semblance of a summarizing angle on a densely-programmed jazz festival, which the 67th Monterey Jazz Festival most certainly was, can be tricky business. The equation gets more complex with a festival geared towards covering many genre and sub-genre bases within the rubric of jazz. But to these ears, one of the strongest memories came near the very end of the weekend-long feast on the ...
Continue ReadingAmbrose Akinmusire and Bill Frisell at The Theatre at Ace Hotel
by Josef Woodard
Ambrose Akinmusire and Bill FrisellThe Theatre at Ace HotelLos Angeles, California October 14, 2023 In playing the imaginary match game, in which we speculate on jazz musicians who would and should get along beautifully, the conjoining of Ambrose Akinmusire and Bill Frisell could seem like a no-brainer. Thankfully, this particular partnering fait accompli has recently been accomplished and is going public. Akinmusire is releasing his Owl Song project with Frisell on Nonesuch--his first for that ...
Continue ReadingFarewell to a Behind-the-Scenes Festival Legend, Monterey Jazz Festival at 66
by Josef Woodard
This year's model of the Monterey jazz festival, now up to its 66th annual, felt overall like one of the strongest and most balanced of the past decade. Salient highlights included a stunning African-flavored commissioned work, Isakoso Ara, from Ambrose Akinmusire--one of the proudest products of this festival over many years--along with a saucy and artful three-show focus on guitar great John Scofield, a strong Garden Stage set by lateral thinking pianist-composer Kris Davis, memorable sets from jazz chanteuse phenom ...
Continue ReadingCelebrating and Reflecting Back on Guelph Jazz Festival @ 30
by Josef Woodard
Guelph Jazz Festival Guelph Otario, Canada September 14-17, 2023 There are precious few jazz festivals in the Americas adhering to what could be called the Triple-A curatorial mandate: adventurous, avant-garde and art-centric. These special cases cling to a commercially fragile, demographically marginal--and also culturally vital--realm and mission. Such conditions make milestone in a left-leaning festival's life especially notable, as was the case with the Guelph Jazz Festival in its 30th anniversary edition. Although Guelph's ...
Continue ReadingRe-Convening The Convention: jazzahead's Bold Comeback Plan
by Josef Woodard
A delicate, operational balance between sophistication, jazz cultural advocacy and marketwise boosterism has been in place since the inception of the ambitious adventure known as jazzahead!. One can sense that balance in the convention/showcase festival's very branding, with its title stylized as in coolly lowercase composite word festooned with an emphatic exclamation point, and in the bold green arrow emblazoned on its logo. The mission and implications are all about moving jazz ahead, on various levels. Each spring, ...
Continue ReadingAhmad Jamal: In his Own Sense of Time and Place
by Josef Woodard
This interview first appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press on October 2005. The introduction has been updated. For the late, great and uniquely poetic pianist Ahmad Jamal, who passed on at age 92 on April 16, 2023, easy descriptors never sufficed in capturing his particular magic. He was a classicist, a modernist, a minimalist and a seeker on his own terms. “Poinciana," circa his classic 1957 live recording from the “hit" album Live at the Pershing: But Not ...
Continue ReadingVossa Jazz Going Strong and Poetic at 50
by Josef Woodard
Vossa Jazz Voss, Norway March 31-April 2, 2023 Origin stories in the still-young-ish wild frontier of jazz festival culture can be fascinating case studies in feisty pioneer spirit. Take the Western Norwegian Vossa Jazz Festival, an important stop in the storied Norwegian festival circuit, which celebrated its ripe old 50th birthday this year. Its humble origins date back to the dreaming and scheming of twentysomething jazz enthusiasts from Voss, Lars Mossefinn, Arild Wærness and Asle Haaland, ...
Continue ReadingThe Light Beyond: Frank Gambale, Stuart Hamm and Steve Smith
by Josef Woodard
Reports of fusion's death have been greatly exaggerated. The cultural phenomenon, by which jazz and rock made a potent alliance during the '70s, generally slipped out of the public ear and major label consciousness, as jazz as a whole retreated into a more historicist, unplugged attitude. But out of corporate sight only out of corporate mind, and musicians have been courting the fusion muse on indie labels and just beneath the surface of mainstream jazz marketing ever since its heyday. ...
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