A hypnotic beat, clings and clangs on the drums, and an urgent voice in a parlando of social calls all came from the voice of Brittany Davis, the blind, non-binary Seattle singer, at Montage Music Hall on Friday night. The first stop on my daily jazz festival trek was an intense hour spent listening to the result of Davis’s last album, a fully improvised, 48-hour studio experiment for the singer. Davis was escorted to the piano at the start of the show because they couldn’t see it. But their ‘Black Thunder’ (the name of their latest release) came through Gospel-like, speech-sung lyrics over drones, with touches of bravura on the piano and the occasional belted lick. The singer mostly kept things contained for an anxious effect. It was a touch of Nina Simone, with some Max Roach experimentalism and Gospel intonation.
You don’t see many pianists who can play Beethoven sonatas wearing a swanky, multicolored, vertically striped suit, yellow socks, and white tennis shoes. But the New Orleans entertainer Roussel, in music and style, demonstrated a cultivated proficiency by inserting parts of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and “Für Elise” into one of his tunes. Roussel’s style of New Orleans music takes the second-line march beats and adds more contemporary chords and grooves. And he does it with undeniable skill, honed through classical piano studies and exposure to Black church music from a young age. He brought singer Erica Falls on stage for the second half of the set, who veered the concert into more pop/R&B territory. Falls’s showy voice was a counterpoint to the quieter lullabies of singer Sasha Dobson, a collaborator of Norah Jones’s, whom I heard briefly earlier in the evening at the Inn on Broadway. (See top photo.)
The one thing our jazz festival has been missing in recent years is the experimental edge that was often the domain of the Nordic Now series. You always knew you’d hear something unexpectedly out there from those artists. Enter pianist Orrin Evans and his trio this year, who I wouldn’t completely characterize as avant-garde, but who do head into experimental meanderings and have a generally progressive and quirky way of approaching jazz. His trio is made up of longtime musical friends who found their way back together following the pandemic, including Matthew Parrish on bass and Byron Landham on drums. They named their trio “Trash Gadget,” which drummer Landham longwindedly explained meant “something you never give up on.” They opened with a pulsating version of the children’s tune “Frère Jacques,” and then went into a series of original compositions, with one they said, “you’ll know it when you hear it.” For what it’s worth, I did not catch the tune in their tinkering.
We have one more night of the nine-day Rochester International Jazz Festival marathon. While I’m looking forward to a little more sleep, I’m also feeling a bit forlorn at the thought that the best week+ of the year in Rochester will be over so soon.
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My night will be spent mostly outside the club venues.
I’m headed to the venerable Count Basie Orchestra tonight to review it. My first experience with Count Basie’s music was when I dove into learning swing dance in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and his music is quintessential to the swing dance and Lindy Hop community. The band, however, is not simply a museum piece; they’ve continued to play and record, collecting Grammy nominations leading up to and beyond their 90th anniversary in 2025. Additionally, Eastman School of Music alumnus and trombonist Isrea Butler plays in the band (and who knows if there are other Eastman alumni, which is always likely in an 18-piece professional jazz ensemble), which is another reason to go and support this historical ensemble.
Several artists from Friday night have encore performances tonight, including Sasha Dobson (Max of Eastman Place), Kyle Roussel (playing solo piano in Hatch Recital Hall), and clarinetist Dorreen Ketchens (Theater at Innovation Square), so if you didn’t catch them on Friday, you can tonight.
The wonderfully smooth, swinging Canadian vocalist Holly Cole performs tonight at Kilbourn Hall, as well. Her reputation rose in the 1990s, a time that also coincided with my swing dance habit. The sheen she brings to standards helped me feel that both the music and the dance could be timeless. This is probably the club show to peak my head into, if I’m able.
But the show of the evening is going to be Trombone Shorty, marking his 10th performance at this festival at Parcel 5. He’s gone from an unknown performer in the casual Big Tent to closing out the festival in the biggest show of the festival’s nine days. He’s simply a dynamic performer who knows how to get a crowd worked up. Parcel 5 will be a party tonight, and I’m hoping to catch some of it after the Count Basie Orchestra.
Enjoy the final night of the festival, everyone, and see you on Jazz Street!
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All photos: Anna Reguero
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