Newport Jazz Festival 2022 – JazzTimes

The 2022 Newport Jazz Festival’s three days of sunshine had been bracketed, roughly, by a pair of all-star ensemble jams that included Christian McBride. The second of them celebrated the person whom McBride succeeded because the pageant’s creative director, George Wein.

It was the pageant’s first version since Wein’s passing last September at 95. However he appeared current nonetheless, from the “Wein Machine” golf cart displayed in tribute all through to the star-studded set that wrapped up the music on Sunday.

McBride’s preliminary jam, the Newport Jawn, didn’t come up till late Friday afternoon, the penultimate Fort Stage efficiency of the day (earlier than headliner Norah Jones). The one-off ensemble included Chris Potter on tenor sax, Mike Stern on guitar, Vijay Iyer on piano, Brandee Youthful on harp, Makaya McCraven on drums, and McBride on bass. Ranging in age from McCraven’s 38 to Stern’s 69, they performed one of many day’s finest units, convincingly demonstrating that have can trump youth, even the place progressive jazz is anxious.

“What an honor,” McCraven would say of the expertise the following day. “Brandee being there was like a lifeline, as a result of we’re homies. We’re pals and we play collectively. Everybody else was … legends, an older era. I imply, Mike Stern: That was actually cool, enjoying with Mike Stern. The sweetest cat ever.”

Friday’s morning and early-afternoon highlights on the three levels, for these not caught in bumper-to-bumper visitors en path to pageant parking, included the Mingus Huge Band, Theon Cross, Nate Smith + Kinfolk, and Carlos Henriquez. The Nicholas Payton Trio, with Ben Williams on bass and Invoice Stewart on drums, performed a powerful set on the medium-sized Quad Stage, Payton at some factors enjoying his trumpet along with his proper hand whereas comping on keyboards along with his left. Thana Alexa went on on the smaller Harbor Stage because the Payton Trio ended, enjoying music from her Grammy-nominated Ona album, which she advised the viewers had been impressed by her having attended the 2017 Girls’s March on Washington. Her husband, Antonio Sánchez, backed her on drums; the following day she would return the favor, singing along with his Dangerous Hombre group in one other politically impressed set on the identical stage.

The progressive younger band from Canada BadBadNotGood carried out on the Fort Stage in mid-afternoon, incomes a heat reception from a large crowd, adopted by the Newport Jawn. There was simply sufficient time to slide over to the Harbor Stage to catch a little bit of Shabaka Hutchings and Terence Blanchard and the E-Collective, joined by the Turtle Island String Quartet, on the Quad Stage earlier than Norah Jones was totally underway. Hutchings performed music from his latest solo mission, Afrikan Tradition, unaccompanied on an array of wooden flutes and clarinet—significantly extra quiet and meditative stuff than the supercharged set he and his band Sons of Kemet would play on the Fort Stage the following day. Blanchard’s beefed-up ensemble carried out music from their latest Wayne Shorter tribute album for Wayne Shorter, Absence, with Blanchard and guitarist Charles Altura enjoying particularly resplendent solos.

Jones’ closing set on Friday was a crowd-pleaser, the star backing her unmistakable voice on piano primarily (although she switched to electrical guitar for one tune) via songs together with “One thing Is Calling You” (which she described as a Jesse Harris piece that was left off her 2002 debut album Come Away With Me however that she likes a lot she retains enjoying it in live performance), “Say No Extra,” and “To Dwell.” Whether or not she bought round to any of the Harris items that did make it onto her breakout album is understood solely by these keen to stay round for the entire set and threat getting caught in visitors afterward.

Saturday, too, was stuffed with highlights. Melanie Charles and Jazzmeia Horn opened the Quad and Fort levels, respectively, and trumpeter Giveton Gelin (a recent ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award winner) went on simply previous midday on the Harbor Stage.

Makaya McCraven led a stellar ensemble—himself on drums, Brandee Youthful on harp, Joel Ross on vibraphone, Marquis Hill on trumpet, Greg Ward on sax, Matt Gold on guitar, and Junius Paul on bass—via a superb Fort Stage set comprising music from his latest remix of classics from the Blue Observe vault, Deciphering the Message (the one he named from the stage was Hank Mobley’s “A Slice from the High”), and two prolonged items from his forthcoming album In These Occasions, due out in late September.

Sons of Kemet adopted McCraven onto the Fort Stage and delivered a ferocious program, with Theon Cross dancing onstage each second that he wasn’t blowing his tuba. Kemet chief Shabaka Hutchings later sat in on clarinet for one piece with Esperanza Spalding and her keyboard accompanist Leo Genovese. Spalding’s set skewed extra avant-garde than a lot of the Fort Stage fare, as she performed upright bass and made a number of passes at wordlessly singing alongside to the tough melody of Genovese’s “A Minor Complicated,” from his 2013 album Seeds. For essentially the most half, it got here throughout as an unusually informal grasp class in creativity, which Spalding’s star energy and ebullient character managed to make palatable to the viewers. She and Genovese did embrace no less than yet another pop-oriented piece, “Cinnamon Tree,” from Spalding’s 2012 album Radio Music Society.

The Fort units on both aspect of Spalding’s featured guitarist Cory Wong, each his personal and that of the day’s remaining act, Fearless Flyers—whose ranks additionally included Nate Smith on drums. There was wonderful music to be discovered on the smaller levels as properly. Across the nook from Spalding’s efficiency, her onetime employer and Berklee School of Music professor Joe Lovano led his Trio Tapestry unit with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi in a contemplative set on the Harbor Stage. Earlier standouts there included the heralded younger vocalist Samara Pleasure and pianist Sullivan Fortner.

Fortner additionally was within the band backing Cécile McLorin Salvant for her enthralling Quad Stage set. She was preceded there by a uncommon efficiency of the Maria Schneider Orchestra. McBride, in introducing her, referred to as Schneider “a pure treasure,” and he or she and the orchestra went on to show it. Her set started with a bit from her debut album of 30 years in the past, Evanescence, adopted by two others from her most up-to-date one, Data Lords: the dystopian title observe and “Sputnik.” Schneider wryly noticed that as of late it’s firms, quite than nations, which are competing to colonize outer house.

Yussef Dayes substituted for the Jack DeJohnette Quartet set scheduled for the Quad Stage, resulting in hypothesis within the press tent about whether or not DeJohnette or somebody in his band had examined optimistic for COVID. Equally, a Saturday tweet by Vijay Iyer saying that “circumstances [being] what they’re in 2022,” Tyshawn Sorey would get replaced on drums at Iyer’s trio set on Sunday by Jeremy Dutton appeared to insinuate that the coronavirus was concerned.

Iyer’s trio, additionally that includes Linda Could Han Oh on bass, nonetheless performed a powerful Harbor Stage set on Sunday, as did each Melissa Aldana’s group and the Emmet Cohen Trio. On the Quad Stage, rising British sax star Nubya Garcia made her Newport debut; bassist Daniel Casimir and drummer Sam Jones from her debut album Supply backed her up, with Greg Spero subbing admirably for Joe Armon-Jones on keyboards. They performed a mixture of songs from the album and new materials, Garcia chatting up the appreciative viewers between tunes and dancing throughout bandmates’ solos.

The Ron Carter Quartet was a half-hour late opening the Fort Stage that morning, resulting in a shortened efficiency. Likewise, the group billed as Jazz Is Dead—which included Gary Bartz—was nonetheless fumbling via its Quad Stage soundcheck 20 minutes previous its posted begin time, presumably inflicting that set to be truncated as properly.

A few of us gave up ready to search out out when Bartz and JID would begin and scurried to the Fort Stage to catch Jason Moran & the Bandwagon as an alternative. That proved a good selection, because the Moran set proved to be a excessive level of the pageant. He, bassist Tarus Mateen, and drummer Nasheet Waits roared via a few of their very own materials and covers of Geri Allen (“Feed the Fireplace”), Wes Montgomery (“4 on Six”), Fat Waller (“Sheik of Araby”), and Thelonious Monk (“Thelonious”). “For us it’s all a household,” Moran advised the viewers throughout a break. Later got here a number of items by James Reese Europe, described by Moran as “the large bang of every little thing that’s taking place right here.” He went on to sketch out for the viewers why Europe is of such vital significance to each the music and civil rights. He added that the trio, now getting into its third decade collectively, will likely be recording an album of Europe’s music subsequent month for launch in 2023.

Moran ended his set by main the viewers in a sing-along. That type of interplay was outstanding with the opposite Fort Stage teams that day as properly, with the Soul Rebels, Digable Planets, and Angélique Kidjo particularly getting the group up and dancing.

However the largest crowd-pleaser of all was the closing tribute to Wein, the pageant’s longtime driving pressure. The set featured each beforehand introduced and shock all-stars. It started with a jam that includes Randy Brecker and Jon Faddis on trumpet, Lew Tabackin on tenor sax, Anat Cohen on clarinet, Christian Sands on piano, McBride on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums.

Cécile McLorin Salvant emerged from the wings afterward to sing a quantity, with Jay Leonhart now on bass. Piano virtuoso Hiromi got here out to play a blinding solo piece, mugging on the viewers often whereas blazing via phenomenally tough passages. She and Faddis then performed a beautiful “Over the Rainbow” collectively. Trombone Shorty sang and performed “On the Sunny Aspect of the Avenue” and “St. James Infirmary,” the previous blowing trumpet quite than his namesake instrument. Cohen got here out afterward for a model of “Jitterbug Waltz.”

Wein, who had championed these artists (and these songs) via the years, would have beloved all of it.

Photo Gallery: Scenes from the 2022 Newport Jazz Festival