Jazz Festival Live: June 22

9:33 PM

Not many updates tonight, mostly because I’ve been venue hopping. Headhunters was wonderful and expected, jazz fusion and funk out of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I stayed for a bit, especially to enjoy the stylings of percussionist Bill Summers, but then moved on to enjoy a relatively uncrowded festival, due to the weather. The rain held out for a while, but then turned into a fine mist. Nothing too offending, and the Jazz Street stage kept on keeping on through it, featuring Eastman School of Music musicians for the scholarship concert. They were highly entertaining.

Bill Summers with Headhunters. Photo: Anna Reguero

I passed them on my way to The Duke to hear a bit of soul singer Joslyn and The Sweet Compression. Joslyn has a powerful voice, and that venue was also joyfully full for that kind of popular mixture.

Joslyn and The Sweet Compression. Photo: Anna Reguero

I left to head over to the Wegman’s Pavilion to enjoy some ice cream with my family, who came tonight for the Dave Stryker show. With the rain cover at the Pavilion, the band there had the largest crowd of the evening.

Stryker’s organ quartet, featuring saxophonist Troy Roberts, was great, and a needed variety for my ears. You know it’s good when a nine-year-old is enjoying the concert. There was an also good audience in the Theater at Innovation Square (which I’m in danger of continuing to call Xerox, but long time jazz fest goers will understand my difficulty here). However empty the streets felt with the rain, jazz fans were out tonight.

Dave Stryker Quartet. Photo: Anna Reguero

But I’m now in the best show of the night, the NYC All Stars Featuring Eric Alexander and Jeremy Pelt. They may be featured, but Luther Allison (piano), Joey Ranieri (bass), and Joe Farnsworth (drums) are all fabulous, too. It’s truly an all-star band. As I walked in, I was hit with a cacophony of sound, every single one of the players firing on all cylinders at once. It’s totally NYC insider jazz. And it’s great.

I don’t know if I’ll make it to another show tonight, but we’ll see. I’m not one to let good music pass me by, and this is one of those taste-testing nights for me that make this festival so unique.

6:54 PM

I’m in Kodak Hall right now for the Headhunters. I didn’t know if I’d make here tonight, but I suppose I couldn’t avoid it. With NEA Jazz Master alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, it was going to be hard to miss it. The band is the namesake of Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters album from 1973 that was one of the foundational albums of jazz fusion. It’s an album I teach in my Jazz Survey university course, to give you a sense of its importance. Herbie moved on, but the band arranged for the album has maintained. Today, it’s Bill Summers on percussion, who notably played a beer bottle on the original album, and also drummer Mike Clark.

I got out of Paul Cornish’s Hatch set a little while ago, and if he’s not a chameleon, his music certainly is. It’s always changing shape and colors. Great to hear him play some solo stuff, and then he brought his trio up to reprise some tunes he did yesterday, including the one based on Sonny Rollins’ St. Thomas. It was fun to get to hear his deconstruction of the tune again, to analyze how he takes apart different aspects of the main melody and then inspects it and turns over it. Such an original voice.