Saturday at Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival: Guitar Town

Some summers, late June’s Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival has as many pianos as in a Steinway shop. The next year might feature enough singers for a choir, or teem with trumpets or saxophones like a college marching band.

With apologies to Steve Earle for snaffling his album title, Saturday is Guitar Town.

In fact, both Saturday and Sunday at the festival in Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the stages are full of guitar players.

Saturday, there’s Cory Wong, two guys in Snarky Puppy, also Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Carolyn Wonderland.

On Sunday, there’s Bonnie Raitt and Pat Metheny, both on the main stage, and guitarist Dave Stryker is featured in the Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars, opening the action on the Charles R. Wood Jazz Discovery Stage.

Wong stands out among these fret-masters for playing with more bands than anybody, generally, and leading a bigger band than most in his dinner-time set Saturday on the main stage. He also excels through a singular approach to playing.

“The guitar can cover so much ground as an instrument,” mused Wong in an email interview that began before he played Bonnaroo recently. “I think people have really focused on making LEAD guitar the main thing that we do on the instrument… but I’m trying to take the rhythm and bring it to the front.”  Wong said, “I often think of myself as a ‘lead-rhythm guitarist.’ Oftentimes that means that the guitar is not the focal point. I don’t need to be the lead instrument all of the time.”

Playing in multiple bands enables a kaleidoscopic view of his role; as does the inescapable inspiration of Prince in Wong’s hometown of Minneapolis.

“I have a lot of projects that I’m a part of,” Wong said, underestimating a good deal. He said, “Cory Wong (the big band he leads Saturday at the festival), the Fearless Flyers*, and Vulfpeck** all require different things of me as a musician. In some cases, I am the leader and the vision head of the thing, and in others, I’m a member of the band.” 

He said, “I’ve always thought of creativity as a vine that blossoms rather than a gas tank that empties. The more creative people I surround myself with and the more creative projects I’m a part of…I find myself free to be even more creative!”

Let’s take a minute to count the cats surrounding Wong at SPAC Saturday: Wong, guitar; Yohannes Tona, bass; Kevin Gastonguay, keyboards; Petar Janjic, drums; Alex Bone; alto and soprano saxophone; Kenni Holmen, tenor and soprano saxophone, flute; Jake Botts, baritone saxophone and bass clarinet; Jay Webb, trumpet and flugelhorn; Michael Nelson, trombone; and Antwaun Stanley, vocals.

They’ll play tunes from recent albums plus “a few brand new ones that have been really fun to jam at festival sets!”

How they play is as important as what songs they’ll perform.

“I like to work with large bands,” said Wong, “because it broadens the color palate I can choose from.”

He said, “My music is highly arranged and meticulous until it isn’t!” Adding, “Hahaha,” he explained, “I like to have things very tight, and then we have jumping points in the songs where things can go ANYWHERE.” Going deeper and wider, he said, “The fun thing about this type of music is that we allow ourselves the exploration and the space to discover something new in the music each night, but we put it in the context of highly-arranged things; so that way it’s sometimes unclear to the listener on what’s planned and what’s not.” 

This is a learning experience on both sides of the stage. “The more we do this sort of thing, the more the explorations start to feel like they’re just a part of the song. Part of the reason that it works that way is because we also have landing points where we know that things will come back to when the time comes. It makes it really exciting for us as well. No two shows are the exact same.”

This arranged-but-free approach echoes Prince’s style of funk, intricate yet organic. Prince stands tall among Wong’s guitar influences on a list with George Benson, Pat Metheny (playing the festival Sunday), John Mayer (here with the Dead & Co. last weekend), Dave Williams, and Paul Jackson, Jr. “The thread that ties them together is that they’ve all figured out how to do something iconic,” said Wong.

Wong wrote laughter into his reply to my noting, “Back here, Minneapolis seems a place where Prince is big as the sky overhead and deep as the big lakes: How did that feel there?”

Turning serious, he said, “In some ways, it just felt like he was another cat in the scene.” Wong said, “When I was cutting my teeth in the scene, it seemed like most of the musicians I was playing with were Prince alumni. He had a strong presence even peripherally just because of the fact that so many of the musicians he used were from Minneapolis.” He added, “There really is a Minneapolis SOUND, and it’s great to be able to continue that legacy and be a part of it because I was around and in that scene for so long.”

Prince famously changed up his band often, but Wong takes a simultaneous approach, working with several at once, changing his role from context to context. He operates as writer, arranger and producer as much as player. When I suggested his secret weapon is organizing bands, getting them excited and leading them, he replied, “I think that’s probably true.” 

He said, “I do know that I have a very specific fingerprint and recognizable sound on the guitar; but I think it’s the way that it fits in the contexts I put it in that makes it that way as well.” He also said he doesn’t care “if I’m the lead instrument all of the time. Oftentimes I hear instrumental music where it’s just SOOO much of one specific voice or thing. I, as a leader, don’t really care if the guitar is the lead thing all of the time. If it feels like the right thing, I’ll do it, but if not…I don’t care! hahaha!”

As a player with a signature sound on his instrument, he creates the context around it as well.

“I get excited about putting things together and finding ways to create big powerful and unique sounds. That’s how I approach my albums (where he often also plays bass) and it’s how I approach my live shows. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoy making and performing it!”

* A recent gig venue post explains, “The Fearless Flyers are a quartet of some of the United States’ grooviest virtuosos, including Joe Dart on bass, Nate Smith on drums, and Cory Wong and Mark Lettieri on guitars. Most of the group are members of Jack Stratton’s funk band Vulfpeck, excluding Lettieri, who plays for the Grammy-winning jazz fusion ensemble Snarky Puppy.”

** The band’s website summarizes, “Founding members are Jack Stratton on keyboards, drums and guitar; Theo Katzman on guitar, drums and vocals; Woody Goss on keyboards; and Joe Dart on bass. Touring partners and frequent collaborators are Antwaun Stanley, Joey Dosik, and Corey Wong.”

Saturday’s Festival Sets, June 24

The timing is usually prompt, though schedules may change. *** indicates the debut here of the project listed, though the artists may have played here previously with different line-ups.

Amphitheater Stage:

12 Cindy Blackman Santana Band***. “Versatile” doesn’t come close: her credits stretch from rocker Lenny Kravitz to a deep-jazz all-star Miles tribute. “Powerful” feels too weak: I sat so close at her Van Dyck debut that her drums were in stereo and seemed to fill the world. 

1:45 Chucho Valdes Quartet. The pianist-composer leads or stars in Cuba’s leading jazz groups, including Irakere, Orquestra Cubana De Musica Moderna, and his own Afro-Cuban Messengers. 

3:30 Tower of Power. These Oakland funksters still rock 55 years after they first poured their patented “East Bay Grease” (debut album title) on rocking stutter-step boogie.

5:15 Cory Wong*** Sure, he’s a guitar player, but his big band bristles with horns, too.

7 Angelique Kidjo. The leading Afro-pop singer on record (five Grammys) and onstage, the Benin-born artist sings in several languages and is persuasively emotional in all of them. 

8:55 Snarky Puppy. Organized in Texas (Univ. of North Texas), this NYC-based collective brings the funk every time, lending it at times to ace collaborators including David Crosby, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, and D’Angelo.

Charles R. Wood Jazz Discovery Stage:

11 Nduduzo Makhathini. The young South African pianist/composer has collaborated with African-and-beyond jazz heroes, including Wynton Marsalis, and released six albums in just two years.

12:20 Kurt Rosenwinkel Quintet. One of MANY guitarists onstage this year, he also plays piano; in addition to a dozen albums as leader or co-leader, his more than 100 collaborations include the Brian Blade Fellowship and Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival.

1:40 Emmet Cohen Trio*** Finalist in the 2011 Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition, he plays in Christian McBride’s trio. He live-streamed from home during Covid and co-stars with eminent bassist Ron Carter in a versatile trio.

3 Claudia Acuna***. The Chilean singer sat in with touring giants in Santiago before moving to New York where she collaborated with bassist Avishai Cohen on her debut album (of five to date), “The Wind from the South” (2000). Like Emmet Cohen, she makes music of spiritual intent and content.

4:20 Carolyn Wonderland***. A Texas blues guitarist and singer, she lived in her van while playing 300 live shows a year and has played on Austin City Limits and with bands including the Imperial Monkeys (five albums together) and British bluesman John Mayall’s band before launching a string of seven albums as a leader.

5:40 Glen David Andrews***. Cousin to Trombone Shorty, a street-parade trombone blaster since childhood, Andrews is a Jazz Fest (New Orleans) perennial and ball of energy at the horn or the mic. 

FESTIVAL NEWS

This year brings a welcome shift in set start times at Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival. This allows those of us who want to taste everything to, well, taste everything. At earlier festivals, sets overlapped on the two stages, forcing difficult/impossible choices between simultaneous cool things.

Hat’s off to the Festival’s impresario presenting team of SPAC President and CEO Elizabeth Sobol and Danny Melnick, festival producer and president of Absolutely Live Entertainment, for fixing this. “All of the amphitheater (main stage) groups will perform longer sets,” said Melnick in the Festival news release. “And we’ve built in more time in between sets to allow the audience to go from stage to stage more easily.”

My phone tells me ping-ponging between the Amphitheater (main stage) and the Charles R. Wood Discovery (formerly the Gazebo) Stage adds up to 10,000 to 12,000 usually hasty steps, though that includes food and drink runs.

Admission ranges from free lawn tickets for fans 12 and under to varying prices for older fans:

Amphitheater – from $165 (regular), $90 (students) $89 (12 and under) up front, lower level; to $116 (regular), $71 (students) and $51 (12 and under) in the balcony

Lawn – $90 (regular), $34 (students)

www.spac.org