Local Players Enliven New Haven Jazz Festival
The newly revived New Haven Jazz Festival ended on a triumphant note Sunday evening on the New Haven Green. Onetime Elm City resident Wayne Escoffery blasted the blues away with a supercharged set featuring his Veneration ensemble.
Escoffery's authoritative tenor saxophonics provided some of the festival's most euphoric moments, especially when juxtaposed against the compelling vibraphone work of Joe Locke. Bassist Joe Martin and drummer Jonathan Blake anchored the band with their impeccable rhythmic interplay.
A fiercely swinging Escoffery arrangement of the standard “Love Walked In" opened the quartet's set. The tune appears on “Hopes and Dreams," the 33-year-old band leader's new release for Savant Records. “Gulf of Acaba," a mystical original which began with a stirring Locke solo, followed.
Escoffery exemplifies the festival's theme: “All great jazz is local." The reed player spent his formative years in New Haven; he studied at two of the city's respected arts schools. Although he and his wife, vocalist Carolyn Leonhart, now make their home in New York, Escoffery had nothing but praise for New Haven on Sunday; he fondly recalled some of the jazz legends he'd seen performing on the Green during his younger days.
Escoffery's authoritative tenor saxophonics provided some of the festival's most euphoric moments, especially when juxtaposed against the compelling vibraphone work of Joe Locke. Bassist Joe Martin and drummer Jonathan Blake anchored the band with their impeccable rhythmic interplay.
A fiercely swinging Escoffery arrangement of the standard “Love Walked In" opened the quartet's set. The tune appears on “Hopes and Dreams," the 33-year-old band leader's new release for Savant Records. “Gulf of Acaba," a mystical original which began with a stirring Locke solo, followed.
Escoffery exemplifies the festival's theme: “All great jazz is local." The reed player spent his formative years in New Haven; he studied at two of the city's respected arts schools. Although he and his wife, vocalist Carolyn Leonhart, now make their home in New York, Escoffery had nothing but praise for New Haven on Sunday; he fondly recalled some of the jazz legends he'd seen performing on the Green during his younger days.
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