Concert Review: Freihofers Saratoga Jazz Festival (Day 2) @ SPAC, 06/25/2023

No umbrellas, no problem.

Sunday’s second half of the 46th Freihofers Saratoga Jazz Festival felt as warm-summery as Saturday felt cool-swampy, when fans dodged puddles deep enough to swim across. No, no, I’m goofing, and with relief.

“That was better than coffee,” proclaimed Todd Coolman after his Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All Stars played tribute to Wes Montgomery with the guitarist’s caffeinated “Four On Six” at what he called the “ungodly hour” of 11:30 a.m.

Bonnie Raitt closed the festival before 8:30 p.m., the time shows once started at Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Fans left happy, but questions lingered: “What is jazz?” “Who should play jazz festivals?” “Why can’t I shoot phone photos and videos?”

Raitt steamrolled all that with top quality, heartfelt music, demonstrating perfectly the need to invite non-jazz-purists into the fold to ensure such events continue.

Before that twilight hour rang with Raitt’s blues, rock and soul, Sunday seemed a sort of miniature of Saturday events. Sunday was nine hours of music in nine performances versus ten and half hours of music in 12 performances Saturday; and symmetrical moments emerged.

Main stage shows arguably peaked, jazz-wise, in ultra high-energy sets by women: drummer Cindy Blackman Santana Saturday and keyboardist Hiromi Sunday.

Another: a Joy and a joy played at the same time: Samara Joy sang in the Charles R. Wood “Jazz Discovery” Stage while Hiromi literally levitated with joy on the Amphitheater stage. (Hereafter, it’s the JDS and the main.)

Yet another: both Saturday and Sunday shows climaxed with dance-y exuberance. On Saturday, trombonist and singer Glen David Andrews led a New Orleans Second Line around the JDS and revved everybody into an arm-waving, everybody-jump-up frenzy. Sunday, that last slot belonged to Jupiter and Okwess from the Democratic Republic of Congo who did the same, maybe even better.

Before that exultant ending on the JDS and the rock and roll one-two punch of St. Paul and the Broken Bones and Bonnie Raitt, a bunch of actual jazz happened.

The Skidmore cats paid tribute to Wes Montgomery, Tito Puente and Dexter Gordon, opening the action on the JDS in big-band fashion. Skidmore Jazz Institute kids up front cheered their teachers on. Coolman hailed them as the future of jazz, then the band played musical snapshots of greats they should study. Montgomery’s “Four on Six” starred guitarist Dave Stryker, then came Puente’s tribute in “Morning.” In maybe the best-known Latin riff in jazz, a relaxed salsa groove, Stryker again soloed strong, trumpeter Clay Jenkins and pianist Bill Cunliffe also got some. “Fried Bananas” was the first Dexter Gordon salute, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene and trombonist Michael Dease co-starring with Cunliffe here.

Coolman’s intros imparted wry lessons in jazz-band dynamics; he credited drummer Dennis Mackrel for making the band’s work easy. It was also kinetic, cohesive and entertaining.

Down on the main came a long wait before guitarist Pat Metheny’s Side Eye began. First set for 12:45, it was moved up to 12:15 then slid back to 12:45. Running through 2 p.m., it completely eclipsed saxophonist Melissa Aldana’s set on JDS; for a star of Metheny’s magnitude, opening seemed odd.

Side Eye features the veteran guitarist of a silver-chaos hairdo and distinctive round-note tones with two kids: drummer Joe Dyson and keyboardist Chris Fishman who also played keyboard bass but seemed most at home at the Steinway.

Since crafting his trademark sound, Metheny’s innovations have mainly come as much via technology as as by band re-shaping. Taking the stage alone, he played a solo suite on a custom 42-string, three-necked Picasso acoustic guitar before summoning the band aboard his early hit “Bright Size Life.”

Thereafter, he mixed familiar (or not) songs from his 50-plus albums with tunes made for this band. He took most of the solos himself, aggressive fluent cascades of sound in familiar melodic and harmonic shapes. Some songs built up in the classical momentum-adding style of Ravel’s “Bolero” or Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.” Things went up, then came down, with surprising detours. Others simply set moods as Metheny mutated his sound by alternating at his familiar fat-bodied Gibson or a guitar-synthesizer that made trumpet-sounding tones.

Giving him room and support, Fishman played bass lines and/or soloed at synthesizers or went all Chick Corea at the Steinway while Dyson set the groove mostly New Orleans-style. Everything was expert, at least; at its best, the music hit highs of imagination and excitement. Another innovation emerged late as the Orchestrion was uncovered and activated, A sort of AI/analog percussion array mainly to add texture to already dense music, it surprisingly didn’t feel gimmicky much at all.

Metheny ended alone, as he’d begun, this time finger-picking an acoustic six-string in an encore cast as a fluid medley wandering among mostly slow tunes including “Are You Going With Me?” and “Last Train Home.” Then, waving one finger to signify “one more,” he brought back Fishman and Dyson for a guitar-synthesizer Latin-rock ramble.

A giant, star-buzzed crowd greeted singer Samara Joy on the JDS. Many saw her at Albany’s Riverfront Jazz Festival or Universal Preservation Hall, meanwhile she won two Grammys for “Linger A While.”

Her confident elegance and clear emotional investment even in obscure songs generations older than she is engaged immediately. She kept the crowd in her pocket from the fun hesitation bop of her opener, Sam Jones’s “If You Never Fall in Love With Me.” When a breathtaking vocal swoop brought an awed audience whoop, Joy gave a warm glance in response, and the set felt highly interactive. Some of that flowed from her enjoyment in her trio: pianist Luther Allison, drummer Evan Sherman and bassist Mike Migliore.

After a brilliant “Stardust,” I headed back to the main for Hiromi, consoling myself that I’d seen Joy in Albany and Aldana at A Place for Jazz.

Joy erupted on the main stage where Hiromi introduced her new band sonicwonder and tunes from an album due in October.

Her forceful, precise playing has impressed here since her 2005 debut at the Van Dyck, and sonicwonder frames her strength and skill in novel sonic explorations with electronic effects on Adam O’Farrill’s trumpet and new own keyboards. She also plays pristine on her Yamaha grand and bassist Hadrien Feraud and drummer Gene Coye also play it straight, but as brilliantly as Hiromi and O’Farrill, her melody partner.

As usual, she electrified with blinding-fast runs as cleanly articulated as her ballad stylings were accessibly heartfelt. Going uptempo is her natural habitat. She sprang up to play standing up or danced around the stage in joyous, infectious abandon. It was as personal as it was powerful as her song “Polaris” maybe best demonstrated. She announced it as a trumpet feature, her soft synthesizer-with-piano vamp under a serene statement from O’Farrill. Mutual exploration flowed, alternating variations in a thrilling build-up that brought her to her feet in a fiery staccato riffing. She took her foot off the gas and everybody settled back into an inside-out reversal of the intro.

This followed a zippy pulsating romp, all funk clusters and playful trumpet electronics, resolved as Hiromi swapped fours with O’Farrill; and it preceded a spacey roll, also funky, with surprise stop-and-go drama, all smiles and sizzle.

“I think we can shine each other,” she said in our interview last week about her ambition for this new band. They did that, time after time, Hiromi dancing her delight whenever anybody hit a particularly bright passage. She saved her most traditional-sounding tune for her jaunty ragtime encore that left the crowd on its feet clapping and cheering in awe.

In picture-perfect contrast, drummer Mark Guiliana’s quartet cast a sweet, slow spell when I caught up with them on the JDS. Tenor saxophonist Jason Rigby was all sweet grace in a languid ballad ornamented by Jason Lindner’s pointillist piano, discrete bass thumps from Chris Morrissey, and, underneath, gently pushing it all, Guiliana’s drums. As usual, a small kit meant a big percussive imagination, and Guliana played deliciously tasty fills as Rigby sang affection through his horn.

Guliana announced the song was Bob Marley’s “Johnny Was,” surprising considering the reggae giant’s usual fire, but a masterpiece of feeling in their hands.

A big noise erupted on the main as St. Paul and the Broken Bones rocked the place hard, southern-friend style. Thick, meaty beats thumped under short bursts from three horns. Then singer Paul Janeway joined them to take everybody to church, or the funnest dive around.

With his gigantic church-trained voice, Janeway wielded fantastic emotional power, and it took a big band to keep up with him: trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, keyboard, guitar, bass and drums.

In “Sanctify,” Janeway left the stage to “come see you a little bit” and sang his way through the amphitheater, out the back and across the lawn, up the balcony ramp and to the balcony edge, across to the inside stairway down and back to the stage. Janeway’s voice carries his band’s conventional southern rock to something earthy and celestial at once.

Jupiter and Okwess were in full flight on the JDS, ten minutes into an exuberant Afro-pop blast of unanimous communal bounce and glide. Jupiter Bokondji and his drummer – both with BMI around zero – sang in non-English. Few understood what they sang, but everybody felt what they meant.

Folks jumped in with both feet, even four guys who walked to the front with canes. Really, I counted. Most often, bands keep people dancing by playing long songs, but these guys have a lot to say so they played short songs with different messages but similar irresistible beats. Just as they express pan-African post-colonial angst and hopes for self-guided futures, their sound stretches across the continent from Nigerian nightclub-thumping high-life lift to Malian treble-guitar zing. It felt as joyous as Hiromi.

Bonnie Raitt brought maybe her best-ever band to the festival, with a strong batch of songs inspired in part by the death-by-Covid of friend and songwriting mentor John Prine. After 50 years onstage as a dedicated proponent of Black blues, R&B and folk-influenced pop, and kinfolk in the crowd, she knew what to do.

The mid-tempo rocker “Made Up Mind” opened, both her voice and slide-guitar playing impressively strong; and she stayed for a while with straight-ahead rock tunes, including new ones from 2022’s “Just Like That” album, before digging later back into blues and R&B.

On tour most of a year since the Covid eclipse, her band is pros and pals: guitarist Duke Levine, keyboardist Glen Patscha, drummer Ricky Fataar and bassist Hutch Hutchinson, with an occasional offstage percussion assist.

Everything was polished and properly punchy, or soothing. Raitt concentrated more on playing lots of songs than stretching them out. Her slide guitar breaks and solos by Levine and Patscha made their point quickly; then they were on to the next.

After the contemporary “Made Up Mind” came the older “Used to Rule the World” and John Hiatt’s “No Business,” then “Blame It On Me,” her favorite from “Just Like That,” the hit “Nick of Time,” and a Bobby Rush deep blues “A Million Miles.” These were fine, but things got more serious with “Just Like That.” a Grammy Song of the Year winner inspired by Prine and telling a mother’s tale of her late son’s donated heart saving a life.

Now she was deep, and life-or-death tunes stood tall among hit crowd-pleasers, the rollicking vintage “Something to Talk About” setting up the somber, percolating new “Ones Who Didn’t Make It,” for example.

She rode the reggae bounce of “Have a Heart” with an extra fine slide solo, then made it through Prine’s heartbreaking “Angel From Montgomery,” a staple of her shows since 1971.

Unlike a night-time show, Raitt could actually see her audience, and this seemed to inspire and empower her. The skill impressed, but the feel was real, and that mattered more.

All the artists playing the main on Sunday required that fans not take phone photos or videos, prompting some grumbles on-site and online. Though I’ve photographed shows for decades myself for publications and websites, I’m with the artists here: Who wants to look out at an audience and see a sea of cell phones blocking faces?

As to “What’s jazz?” and “Who should play jazz festivals?” my short answer is “Anybody who’s good enough.” This festival flew by on the wings of top talent. My faves: Emmet Cohen, Cory Wong, Hiromi’s Sonicwonder, Samara Joy, Jupiter Okwess, and Bonnie Raitt. Yeah, Bonnie Raitt.

The 2024 Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival is June 29 and 30, the last full weekend in the month.

Photo Gallery by Rudy Lu