Rochester Jazz Festival

We have been to every Rochester International Jazz Festival and I take a few notes on the acts we catch.

see Jazz Fest coverage over the years
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2009 • 2008 • 2007 • 2006 • 2005 • 2004 • 2003 • 2002

click on each year’s Jazz Pass for a personal tour

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BELOW IS A LIST OF THE ACTS WE CAUGHT AT THIS YEARLY FESTIVAL

We Vote With Our Feet

Paul Dodd – Guest Essayist Rochester Democrat & Chronicle June 20, 2015

The jazz fest is one of the best things to happen in Rochester in my lifetime.

The possibility of experiencing extraordinary music for nine days in a row is something that just doesn’t happen here the rest of the year. So I’ve bought Club Passes every year since the festival began in 2002.

Of course the jazz fest is a different experience for everyone. Kodak Hall is packed each night with a different big-name act and I rarely take in any of them.

There is the big tent with a monstrous sound system, the Americana venues and the big outdoor stages on the weekends. There are bands on Gibbs Street playing for free, but I usually scoot by, in a hurry to catch someone playing in a much smaller venue, one with minimal sound reinfor-cement, a stand-up bass, a natural-sounding drum kit and a piano or horns. This is what I love about the festival. Great players in an intimate setting.

“We love it when the music is open enough to allow interplay, a musical conversation…possibly a wild ride.”

I like Miles, Ornette, Dolphy, Monk, Art Ensemble and Sun Ra. Extremely creative people with their own sound, people who pushed boundaries. They are gone now, but their spirit lives on. I can think of five bands we saw at the jazz fest who fit this bill. Billy Bang, Blake Tartare, Sonny Fortune/Rashied Ali, Terje Rypdal and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. Their performances were so good, we saw both the early and late show of each.

As far as preparing for the festival, my wife and I generally wing it. We look at the lineup and listen to sound files for the artists performing that night. We have never heard of most of them, but in a few minutes we have a potential lineup for the evening. It is flexible enough to allow a miscue.

With the Club Pass we vote with our feet and leave if the music is not to our liking. There is most often something we like better in another venue nearby.

As musicians, we gravitate toward the unique, the unexpected. We love it when the music is open enough to allow interplay, a musical conversation and possibly a wild ride. That’s what we like, but I’m happy the festival is big enough to provide something for everybody.

Paul Dodd plays drums with the improvisational band, Margaret Explosion, and he keeps track of things at his blog, www.popwars.com

Paul Dodd Is Jazz Festival’s Cultural Curator

Jeff Spevak – Rochester Democrat & Chronicle June 5, 2011

We do not know if Paul Dodd was awarded any perfect attendance certificates while in elementary school. Knowing Dodd, the answer is: probably not.

But we have the evidence of his perfect attendance at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival. Photographs he’s taken, documenting every year of the event, now celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The evidence is loaded on the website that Dodd administers with his wife, Peggi Fournier. They’ve long been curators of the Rochester cultural scene. Years ago, they published a sheet of wandering social musings, The Refrigerator, that you could pick up at any countercultural stop in the city, particularly indie record stores. Now it’s on the Internet: therefrigerator.net.

The couple run a web-design business out of their Irondequoit home, but they have always been a big part of the music and arts scene themselves. In the 1980s, their poppy indie band, Personal Effects, was one of the most important groups in the city, even nudging its way onto MTV during its early days.

Now, they are a part of Margaret Explosion, the city’s premier ethereal, psychedelic, acid-jazz band. Perhaps the city’s only ethereal, psychedelic, acid-jazz band. Dodd’s the drummer and plays the silent parts with the same studied, deliberate manner as when he actually strikes his cymbals with a brush. Margaret Explosion resumes its frequent residency gigs at The Little Café in September.

Dodd is also a painter, often drawing his inspiration from the real world, such as portraits of what he calls “Local Crime Faces.” And he is a blogger. Typical:

Our teacher wanders from one painter to the next and looks at what each person is doing almost as if it was the first time he has seen the work. We can all hear the advice he gives each student and damn if it doesn’t always apply to all of us no matter what we’re working on. It’s the same guidance over and over. The woman next to me tonight was explaining what she had planned for her piece and Fred said, “I want you to learn to experience the possibilities rather than the inevitabilities.”

Dodd, as well, blogs as though it was the first time he has seen the world. You can find his blogs at popwars.com.

As for his jazz fest photos, click on the XRIJF icon on The Refrigerator home page, and you’ll find Dodd’s work, along with his musician’s-eye comments. The photos are often dark and atmospheric, as are the clubs themselves. Beneath a shot of Marian McPartland, he notes: “When was the last time you saw an 85-year-old woman bang on a piano with her elbow?”

We assume he means, on purpose.