Category: Rochester Jazz Fest

A sort of ramdom roundup of the acts that we caught

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Xerography

Midtown Tower from Xerox Headquarters in Rochester, New York
Midtown Tower from Xerox Headquarters in Rochester, New York

After twelve years it finally happened. Not one of the big-ticket, Eastman Theater acts booked at the Rochester International Jazz Fest has anything to do with jazz, unless you count David Sanborn. I am certainly no purist but I drift toward the off beat while the festival goes mainstream and there wasn’t much to choose from last night.

We started with the French trio, Thiefs, at the Xerox Auditorium. While waiting in line I took this photo of the about to be renovated Midtown Tower and I was thinking about the early eighties Personal Effects gigs in the ballroom that juts out of the fourteenth floor. A security guard interrupted my drift with a stern warning, “This is private property and no photography is allowed.”

The Theifs were pretty cool but not quite ready for prime time. The drummer and lead singer was shy of all things. The trio of sax, bass and drums all had effects pedals. The tenor player had more effects boxes than Bob Martin and sampled a few loops to add to the rhythm guitar sounds the drummer was getting from the box on his floor tom.

We ran into our jazz buddy, Hal, on the street. He had already walked out of Kat Edmundson (“the girl with the squeaky voice”) at the Little, the replacement act at Christ Church and Patricia Barber when the fire alarm went off at Max’s. We were sort of at a loss as of what to do. The yee haw Hackensaw Boys, Quincy Jones Presents: Nikki Yanofsky, the comedy Trondheim Jazz Orchestra? We opted for Dr. John in the street. I felt sorry for him banging out his gris gris stuff at another festival.

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Emergency Phone

UofR emergency street phone
UofR emergency street phone

We thoroughly enjoyed all nine nights of the Jazz Fest but we’re ready for a break. It is such a kick to see and hear so many creative and incredible players in our town. It was a pleasure wearing ourselves down while taking it all in.

As we cut through the construction zone surrounding the Eastman Theater on way to the third group of the evening we paused at the emergency phone but we weren’t in that bad shape.

Lopsided reviews of the Jazz Fest acts we saw can be found over here.

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Belfiore Sardegna

Blue flowers in the marsh, late spring, Rochester, NY
Blue flowers in the marsh, late spring, Rochester, NY

The blue Spring flowers in the marsh are starting to give way to Summer and I have big plans for the summer. I’m going to clean out the garage.

Jeff Beck packed two shows at Kodak Hall last night and the streets were still packed with Jazz Fest goers. Downtown Rochester felt like a typical European city on most any night. We didn’t really find anything we liked in the clubs so we strolled the streets, found Deb Jones’ little party spot in the Harro Health Club parking lot and joined them for a bit and then checked out Booker T on East Ave. They had a big fat drummer that played just behind the beat enough to get a good groove on.

It’s hard to drive by Palermo’s Market without stopping in. Saturdays are always good even if you don’t need anything. The owner puts all sorts of cheese and olive samples out and everything always looks so good I walk out with a few bags full of stuff. I tried to pace myself with the Belfiore Sardegna cheese that I came home with but it’s gone already.

We had fallen so far behind with our 4D work that cancelled plans of watching the US in a pub downtown. Instead I kept a browser window open so I could follow the play by play at FIFA’s site. The US was robbed but how the heck did they get down 2-0 to begun with? Gome hell or highwater we’re going somewhere with ESPN for the US Alegeria game.

I’m keeping track of the Jazz Fest over here.

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Rebooting

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Henrietta NY
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Henrietta NY

We took a break from our web design work, put old clothes on and went out to work in the yard for an hour or so yesterday. We were expecting a few calls so we took our phone with us and set it down next to the brick walkway that we were relaying. Our 92 year old neighbor, Leo, stopped by to see what we were up to and and said, “If I set my phone down like that I would never see it again. I loose everything”. We laughed. We got a few calls and then came in to work. The phone rang again and we couldn’t find it. Still can’t.

Michael Greenberger came back into town to pick up his car. Remember, it broke down on the NYS Thruway near Henrietta as they were passing Rochester? He stayed at our place and we stayed up too late gabbing. He gave us a short stack of Duplex Planet magazines, a box of Ernest Brookings matches (in return for the Margo Explo matches we gave him) and a bunch of NRBQ releases. David did their artwork when they were a band and he does Terry Adam’s art now. We made plans to make plans to do a project together.

We took Anne Havens‘ computer apart to install more ram and now we’re updating her OS. Keep your fingers crossed that it reboots ok.

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Doris Day On Acid

Dave Liebman Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, NY
Dave Liebman Trio at the Bop Shop in Rochester, NY

Dave Liebman played sax on Miles Davis’s “On the Corner”, “Big Fun”, “Dark Magus”, and “Get Up With It”, my favorite Miles stuff. The guy is amazing. He’s been here twice at the Jazz Fest. We saw both shows at Montage last year and we bought his DVD. Last night he played at the Bop Shop in what was billed as a “classic organ trio setting”. Paul Smoker, Bill Dobbins and all the local jazz celebrities were out.

Phil Haynes, who we have heard a few times with Paul Smoker, played drums and Steve Adams played a Hammond B3. They played all standards and opened with “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes”. Dave was playing a wooden flute, The organ player held on extremely long fuzzy note and the drums sounded beautiful. Phil Haynes plays with his bare hands, he scratches the top surface of his cymbals with the butt end of his sticks and looks like he is conducting the music with his facial expressions and whole body. He plays “Ayotte” drums with wooden rims and they are the best sounding drums I have ever heard. They sounded especially nice in this bass player less setting.

Dave played one song that Doris Day had popularized and when someone snickered as he introduced it Dave said, “Don’t undercut Doris. She was right there with Sly back in the day.” we weren’t sure if we heard him right so after the show Peggi and I asked him after the show if said’ “Sly”. He said, Oh yeah. She was right there, hanging with Sly, doing LSD, the whole trip.

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Pa Ra Pa Pa Pum

Dead Snowmen in our front yard
Dead Snowmen in our front yard

Our snowmen gave up the ghost on Christmas day. I don’t blame them. I went to Sears yesterday looking for a teapot for Peggi’s mom (she melted the last one) and I was right in the thick of it, pawing through merchandise with all the other desperate souls. I felt patriotic shopping but not very religious. Maybe if I bought all that “End of Days” nonsense I would feel more religious.

Peggi’s mom walks so slowly these days, I carry my laptop and type as we go. We’re off to Christmas dinner (for 27) at my parents. The madder the better.

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You Think We Would Have Had Enough

Cyro Baptista on the street at the Rochester International Jazz Festival
Cyro Baptista on the street at the Rochester International Jazz Festival

We ran into my brother, Fran, and then Cyro Baptista on the street just after Cyro’s show at Montage. We were knocked out by the way this woman exhaled her cigarette smoke. It seems every time Cyro Baptista steps out of the house he is peforming with a new band under a new name. He has played with everyone from Paul Simon to Yo Yo Ma. Supergenerous featured Canadian guitarist Kevin Breit and Cyro with a new bass player. We were excited to see them because Cyro’s performance with Beat The Donkey in this same club (Montage) a few years back was sensational. This time around the band barely gelled. 

Carolyn Wonderland played the night before at Montage and we heard a few rave reviews from friends who caught her so we made a point to check her out when played for free on the street tonight. She was surrounded by the Headhunter’s trappings but all eyes were on her. She is cute and tough at the same time and an incredible guitarist with a great voice. What else is there? She plays without a pick and sings like Janis Joplin. If she is not already huge, she should be.

We walked down East Avenue to the Alexander Street stage to check out the scene and Medeski, Martin and Wood. They were pretty good but nothing to write home about. Wait, we are home, I almost forgot. We have seen and heard so many amazing groups in the last week, our heads are spinning. We stood in line for Catherine Russell but couldn’t get in. We talked to Tom Kohn, Frank DeBlase and Julia Fiqueres outside of Kilbourn while a fight broke out across the street. Frank said, Now it’s a real festival”. Julia had just interviewed Catherine Russell for WXXI’s Sound Stage. Now it’s over until next year. You’d think we would have had enough but we’re thinking of riding our bikes over to the soccer stadium hear Gato Barbieri open for The Roots this afternoon.

I’ve added my last batch of photos from this year’s Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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Tom Waits Translates

Billy's Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Billy’s Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

We were in line early for Billy’s Band at Max’s. Someone came by offering Chap Stick courtesy of Toyota and then free Vitamin water. It said “no sodium” but it tasted salty. Must have been the “natural flavoring”.

Billy’s Band looked like a bunch of hobos. In fact they were hard to photograph because they all huddled in circle like bums around a barrel of burning trash. The Saint Petersburg quartet sounded like Tom Waits but they sang Russian. Most of the material was Tom Waits’ too. Tom Waits is good so Billy’s Band was good. The guitar player looked like Abbie Hoffman or a miniature Armand Schaubroeck from the House of Guitars. The bass player worked the room with his broken English and they were very entertaining.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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Whistle While You Work

Blake Tartare performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Blake Tartare performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

The callous on the crouch of my left hand between my thumb and forefinger is starting to flake off. I haven’t painted or held my pallet in tat hand in a week. I did install the new Firefox browser and spent way too much time playing with the add-ons.

We didn’t find time yesterday to read the lineup for the Jazz Fest until we were in our seats at Kilbourn waiting for Joe Locke to start. The notes in the program guide said “Blake Tartare’s repertoire included works by Charles Mingus and Sun Ra” so we decided to leave and head over to Montage. Blake Tartare was loose, freewheeling and sensational like a wedding band after a break in the parking lot. They did a song from Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Rip, Rig & Panic” that lasted a half hour or so and they received a standing ovation. We made plans to come back for the second show.

Is there such a thing as punk jazz? If so these guys hold the crown. Not to imply any lack of musical ability, just to emphasize their wild streak. Michael Blake is the leader but he called a song, a cover of a Curtis Mayfield tune, which led to a few minutes of discussion amongst the band and then the decision to launch into a different song. Blake lives in New York and the other three live in Copenhagen. I can’t imagine how they pull this off. They did an encore of the Slickers’ “Johnny Too Bad” complete with an audience sing-a-long but that wasn’t enough. They stayed on stage and improvised a whistling (the piano player is playing the beer bottle) song with percussion that brought the house down again. They were the most exciting group of the festival so far.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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We R Lucky

David Murray performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival. David Murray's piano player and drummer before the show at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester.
David Murray performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival. David Murray’s piano player and drummer before the show at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester..

This Jazz Festival thing is taking over my blog. What else is there? I took our car in for an oil change and found out it was a few months past due on inspection. I talked my father through downloading a new driver for his Canon printer. And I helped our neighbor, Jared, straighten out some heavy metal forks for his tractor. At first he had me bang on them with a big hammer but that was going nowhere. So he suggested that I take them out in the yard where we laid them on a tree stump. I took a big sledge hammer to the two bent parts. Jerod pointed to the spot he wanted me to hit and I swung away. I only hit the target about fifty percent of the time so it  got worse a few times before it got better. I don’t think I did any 4D work today.

The line for David Murray was already halfway down Barrett Alley at 5:15. Murray’s bass player, Jaribu Shahid, is also the new bass with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He started a song called “Banished”, from the documentary of the same name, with a beautiful bowed intro. Murray switched to bass clarinet and the drummer played mallets. It was the stand out tune of the night. We tried to add the movie to our NetFlix queue but it has not been released yet.

We caught a few songs by the Jae Sinnett Quartet at Christ Church and Jae reminded us how lucky we are in Rochester to have jazz at our Jazz Fest. He said, “Compare yourselves to fifty other major cities and look at the line-up of their jazz festivals”. Here we were worried that the promoters were bringing in too many mainstream music acts. I guess we’re doing better than we knew. Thank John Nugent when you see him darting around.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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New Electric Chair

We spent the morning out at Monroe Wheelchair looking at chairs that take you from a reclining Lazy Boy position to almost upright in less than a minute. We bought the floor model for Peggi’s mom and the guy gave us a good deal on it. We expected the blue green color to be a problem but Peggi’s mom likes it so far.

Wildbird & Peacedrums performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Wildbird & Peacedrums performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

JazzFest Day 5: We passed John Nugent on the way into the Lutheran Church for Sweden’s Wildbird & Peacedrums last night. He said, “You won’t be disappointed. This is my favorite act of the whole festival”. They were pretty sensational. Mostly voice and drums, they managed to sound like they were playing folk songs from an undiscovered tribe. I have a recording of prison tunes from down south where the songs are all voice with foot stomping, banging or hand clapping accompaniment. Wildbird & Peacedrums kept reminding me of those blues based tunes but in this case they removed the swing like only the Europeans can. Vocalist Mariam Wallentin sang mostly in English, I think. But I could only catch phrases and imagine what she might be singing about. I really liked this aspect.

Doctor Lonnie Smith made a triumphant return to RIJF with two sets in the tent. He is from Buffalo and he used to play sock hops in this area way back in the day so he is a thoroughly seasoned entertainer. He did impressions of Stevie Wonder of Johnnie Mathis. He smiled a lot. He got down on his knees and crawled under his Aztec organ to do a bass solo on the foot pedals. The band got all revved up and muscular but I liked it when they got slow and groovy.

I’ve added some more photos from the Jazz Fest here. Click on 2008 Club Pass.

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You Tell Me

Dave Liebman Quartet performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Dave Liebman Quartet performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

The Dave Liebman Quartet was last here for the 2003 version of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. He tore it up then so we prepared ourselves for takeoff last night. We grabbed a table down front at Montage and sat with Rick and Monica. We ordered a Brooklyn Lager (one of the sponsors of the show) and the waitress asked for the cash up front. She explained that she had to buy the beer from the bartender. This club is on its last legs and I suspect they are already out of business. They still had the “STEEL” sign up on the wall from the days when they went metal and the barricade to keep the meatheads from diving on the stage.

The set was exhilarating. Dave is in complete command and he gets there every time. The group has been together for years and they play like a real band. They listen to and work with each other like pros. They did a tune from their new cd that was the slinkiest, low down, film noir track I have ever heard. Dave started it with a little wooden flute and he switched to soprano sax while the bass player strolled through some dark, swinging neighborhoods.

At the end of his set he told he crowd, “OK. You go see the rest of the bands. And you tell me.” Martin Edic had just chided us for darting around. He said, “You can’t just pop in for one or two songs and decide whether you like someone or not”. So we looked at each other and decided to just stay right here for the second set. It was equally good if that is possible. Dave did a song dedicated to an African pop singer who he heard everywhere while traveling to the Sahara for his sixtieth birthday. He played percussion in the intro and then some wildly exotic tenor. You rule Dave!

I’ve some more photos from the Jazz Fest here.

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Transportation Please

Crowd on Gibbs Street at the Rochester Internation Jazz Fest

The tabla player, Badal Roy, who was featured in the program as the key player in Dharma Jazz was a no show last night at Max’s. Dan Johnson sat in and did a pretty good job but he was filling some big shoes. The keyboardist, who did most of the talking, said this band is a collective but he acted like it was all his. He did have a better sense of rhythm than the two percussionists.

We hung around Gibbs Street, renamed “Jazz Street” for the week, until Kamakazie Jazz started. We skipped John Scofield at Kilbourn but kept our ears open for reviews from people who had seen the first show. Kathy Palokoff said she had “never seen a band that old playing rock and roll” and in this morning’s paper Jeff Spevak said “With John Scofield the Jazz Festival really felt like jazz”.

We stopped into RoCo where pieces continue to sell in the 6×6 show. There are over a thousand red dots on the wall now. And then we went next store to Christ Church for Yggdrasil who transported us to a Nordic seashore with a beautiful forty five minute piece.

I posted a bunch of photos from the jazz fest on the Refrigerator. You can get to this years batch by clicking on the 2008 Club Pass.

I kept thinking about the feature on Marlene Dumas in the Sunday Magazine Section of the NYTs. There is a major retrospective of her work opening at the LA County Museum next month and that show moves to MOMA in December. I know where I’ll be.

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Rock Stars of Jazz

Stephanie McKay performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Stephanie McKay performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

We started the night in line with Peter and Nancy for the Bad Plus at Kilbourn Hall. The Bad Plus are the rock stars of jazz, adored by their fans and the individual players seem to each have their own fan base, especially the drummer, David King. The bass player in the middle holds the wildly divergent classically tinged piano player on the left and the raucous angular drummer on the right at bay while tying it all together. But the three of them became a competent back up band for Wendy Lewis when she took the stage to sing beautiful versions of new standards by Nirvana, Pink Floyd, the Bee Gees, Bobby Vinton, U2 and Heart. This was their first gig with her, a preview of their upcoming cd.

We finished the night standing near Peter and Nancy, this time at the newly remodeled High Fidelity (they took the Labatts beer signs down). We thoroughly enjoyed Stephanie McKay, “Soul Sister Number One”. Her sincere, heartfelt songs deserved a real band, not the hot dogs (five string bass, one handed rolls with a goofy smile) she appeared with. She has one cd out in England and another on the way here. She took the stage like Sly Stone and came out in the crowd to dance and invited people back up on stage with her. She is a great entertainer.

On a tech note: A few days ago I was looking for a script that allow me to add rss feeds to a site and have them scroll. Dynamic Drive offered one and they had a live example that was pulling in current tech related feeds. One of the heads caught my eye. It was something about WordPress sites getting hacked. I followed the link and it had a few tips about settings that I was already using so I moved on. But when I checked in on my blog this morning I was alarmed by the fact that my recent posting were missing. I thought maybe it had been hacked so looked for articles but couldn’t find any. I suspected the server so I called the guy who rents the space from the guy who rents the space from the guy who owns the server in Las Vegas. Sure enough it was down yesterday and they installed a new drive and restored the sites with backups that were two days old. I back up my blog but in that space between backups it is worth noting that the only copy of this stuff is online. Unless you are in the habit of coping the entries to a text document before posting. I sometimes do this and so I found one the deleted entries there. I found the other entry in a Google cached version of that page. This was just two days ago and Google had a cached version of an entry that had gone down with an old server hard drive. Welcome to the modern world.

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Never Rehearse

Timo Lassy Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival
Timo Lassy Band performing at the 2008 Rochester International Jazz Festival

Helsinki must be a swinging city. I know I liked the section of Jim Jarmusch’s “Night On Earth” featuring that city the best. And Helsinki’s Timo Lassy Band at the Lutheran Church for the opening night of Rochester’s Jazz Fest was hot. They play jazz like it was played in America in the fifties and sixties and they manage to make it sound exciting and new. This is the third time we have seen Timo Lassy at the Jazz Fest and each time it was in a slightly different setting. Last night he switched from tenor to baritone for an afro centric, Pharoah Sanders like thing where the drummer played mallets and the percussion player dug a deep groove.

We started the night with the Al Foster Quartet. Al played drums on two of my favorite Miles albums, “Get Up With It” and “On The Corner”. We saw him a few years back at Art Park in Buffalo with Joe Henderson and we stopped in to see Sonny Rollins at the Eastman during the 2005 Jazz Fest to hear him play behind Sonny. He is loose with a master’s touch. Al started one song playing with his hands and liked to play the rim of his floor tom with the side of a stick. The band stayed in check and were the perfect foil for Al who took off at a moments notice but always returned with a soft landing.

We stopped in the Harro to see Ben Riley’s Monk Legacy. Riley played on some of Monk’s best work and still had the goods but the four horn players in the front line were too chart oriented for our tastes. There was a great quote in Frank DeBlase’s interview with Ben Riley where he talked about rehearsals with Monk. “We never rehearsed. If you rehearse you start playing things you know, and you don’t put anything creative in it.” The sound in this room though is problematic at best.

We finished the night in the Big Tent with the Spam All Stars while it poured outside. It was a new tent this year. No leaks and no poles to obstruct our view. A guy with a really short haircut stood behind two turntables and a sound generator of some sort kicking out contemporary bass and drum loops while three horn players and timbale player played along. The horns lines were kind of exotic and worldly. But having just seen two of the best drummers in the world the rhythmn section seemed pretty lame.

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