Sunday at Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival: A Youth Movement

This may be the youngest Jazz Festival line-up since Joey Alexander’s 13th birthday party onstage. (On July 16, he returns to Music Haven, where he’d played the summer before his SPAC show. But I digress.)

Some previous festivals featured longtime greats playing in distinguished, still-vigorous twilights. For example, Dave Brubeck still made the piano thunder, around 90; and Roy Haynes pounded his drums hard, deep into his 80s. Festival founder (in 1978) George Wein (now deceased, leaving the enterprise in Danny Melnick’s more-than-capable hands) played piano at the festival at 85 with an all-star band.

This year’s longevity awards go to pianist Chucho Valdes (81), saxophonist Stephen “Doc” Kupka (Tower of Power, 77) and his bandmates David Garibaldi (drums, 76) and Emilio Castillo (tenor saxophone, 72), also Bonnie Raitt (73) and Pat Metheny (68).

Meanwhile, singer Samara Joy is 23, pianist Emmett Cohen and singer Paul Janeway (St. Paul and the Broken Bones) are both 33, Melissa Aldana is a year older, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini is 40, drummer Mark Guiliana turns 44 this September, the cats in Snarky Puppy are all around that same age; pianist Hiromi, guitarist Cory Wong and trombonist-singer Glen David Andrews, too.

Prodigious pianist Hiromi was just 26 when she played her area debut at the Van Dyck in 2005 as her first album (of 12) “Another Brain” hit.

“I remember the club,” she said Wednesday night, citing its wooden construction and pronouncing the place beautiful. Phoning on a break from mixing a new album in a Virginia studio, she spoke of her new band, her preceding piano-and-strings quintet project and two departed mentors.

The pianist-composer has played here with several trios, most recently with drummer Simon Phillips and bassist Anthony Jackson at this same festival. As usual, she set speed records for phrasing and intelligence; her honest, questing spirit matching her energy and transparency of emotion. She was breathtaking, even in slower pieces infused with a gentle lyricism. She ranged from flower-petal-opening delicacy to Niagara Falls intensity.

Sunday, she brings Hiromi Sonicwonder, a hybrid electric band with Adam O’Farrill, trumpet; Hadrien Feraud, bass, and Gene Coye, drums – after recently wrapping up live dates with her Piano Quintet featuring PubliQUARTET.

Hiromi wrote and recorded her Silver Lining Suite during the Covid lockdown when her Trio Project band couldn’t join her in Tokyo and she couldn’t leave. Meeting up with violinist (and previous collaborator) Tatsuo Nishie, concertmaster of the New Japan Philharmonic, she found, “We just had a great chemistry and his sound was beautiful.” Trained in orchestration at Berklee in Boston, she said, “Okay, I’m just going to write music for the string quartet and piano that became the album, ‘The Silver Lining Suite.’”

Mike Hobart of Financial Times wrote that it “takes in the anxiety of an abruptly canceled U.S. tour and her experience of Seattle’s empty streets. It also includes the ‘silver lining’ of live-streaming solo performances from Tokyo’s Blue Note jazz club in autumn last year.”

Hiromi knew of mentor Ahmad Jamal’s 1997 album with the Assai String Quartet, but that didn’t influence her composing or arranging on “The Silver Lining Suite.” Moving on to her Sonicwonder band, however, she’s been inspired by Jamal’s valuable example.

Jamal, who died this year, said of Hiromi that “She is nothing short of amazing. Her music, together with her overwhelming charm and spirit, causes her to soar to unimaginable musical heights.”

Hiromi is grateful for Jamal’s introducing her to his own record label while still at Berklee and the ongoing guidance of his wisdom. She said, “He kind of opened up all my paths in the States to be a professional musician. He was always very encouraging, always told me, ‘You have to keep doing what you’re believing in, you know; what you do is great.’” She added, “He was always a big, big figure to me, and it’s still hard to kind of talk about.”

She said before she even met him “I thought his music was really cool, really unique, and he just sounded like Ahmad. It just didn’t sound like anything else.” She explained, “When I got to know him personally, I just really loved his idea of always looking ahead and not looking back, always looking forward to his future projects, always looking for new things, new discoveries.” In particular, she recalled when he was asked in an interview for his favorite work, “He said, ‘The next one’ – and that’s my favorite answer.”

With a soft, warm laugh, Hiromi said, “I want to be like him when I grow up. I always say that.”

When I asked about Chick Corea, Hiromi sadly answered, “You’re breaking my heart today!” Another mentor whom she met in Tokyo at 17, Corea collaborated with her on several albums in 2008 and 2009.

“You know, it’s just so hard to lose all these amazing musicians who at the same time were just amazing people, and I was really close to,” she said. “Chick was like a big music library to me.” Hailing his “endless knowledge,” she said, “It’s always amazed me how far he can go with his sound, and I feel I was really lucky to know him.”

Adding new volumes to her own musical library, Hiromi has played very few live shows yet with her fresh sonicwonder quartet. Looking out a those few shows, she said, “I see a lot of people smiling.”

She said, “I think you’re going to love each player in the band….Whenever I write music, I really want to write music to really shine each player.” She explained, “I am leading the band, but I don’t want to be like, ‘This is my band.’” She said, “That’s not how I want the music to sound like. I want everybody to shine on stage” – whether soloing or comping behind others’ solos. “I think we can shine each other.”

Sunday’s Festival Sets

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

Amphitheater Stage

12:45    Pat Metheny Side-eye. Having led his own bands and co-starred with top collaborators for decades, the veteran guitarist organized Side-Eye as a flexible trio with changeable membership; now it’s keyboardist Chris Fishman and drummer Joe Dyson. His 50-plus albums since 1976 have won more than 20 Grammys and he’s played just about everywhere hereabouts.
3    Hiromi: Sonicwonder*. Since her area debut at the Van Dyck, the fiery/lyrical pianist has led several trios, but brings a new quartet this time around.
5    St. Paul & the Broken Bones* The Alabama soul octet plays upbeat/backbeat rocking funk behind sing/shout specialist Paul Janeway.
7     Bonnie Raitt. With more lives than a herd of cats – first stardom 1970s, comeback 1: 1990s, comeback 2: now with Grammy-grabbing “Just Like That…” – Raitt rocks on, blues-style. She and maybe her best-ever band sounded extra cool at the Palace last year with NRBQ opening.

Charles R. Wood Jazz Discovery Stage

11:30    Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars Centennial Celebration of Wes Montgomery, Tito Puente & Dexter Gordon featuring Clay Jenkins, Jimmy Greene, Michael Dease, Dave Stryker, Bill Cunliffe, Todd Coolman and Dennis Mackrel. Those who teach also play, and well; paying tribute here to departed giants.
1    Melissa Aldana*. The Chilean tenor saxophonist showed brilliant vision and skills at A Place for Jazz some seasons ago.
2:25     Samara Joy. Does she live here now? The young Grammy-nominated singer starred at Albany’s Riverfront Jazz Festival last September and at Universal Preservation Hall thereafter.
3:50    Mark Guiliana*. Like Blackman Santana, he leads from his drum kit, jumps genres with the best of them and collaborates in all directions, sometimes with singer-wife Gretchen Parlato and son Marley.
5:20    Jupiter & Okwess*. In a Music Haven show driven into the Niskayuna High School auditorium by rainstorms, this funky band from the Democratic Republic of Congo just about levitated, or leveled, the place.