Hawaii ’05
Jesse Colin Young brings some old-time California spirit back from the islands.
Putting together a career retrospective is no easy task for Jesse Colin Young. The guitarist, singer and songwriter is in the midst of a musical odyssey that stretches back more than 40 years, to the ...
West Coast Girl
New York seduces, but can’t win Paula West.
Sometimes it seems like New York City is putting on a full-court charm offensive in a blatant attempt to coax Paula West from her San Francisco digs into an exclusive Gotham residency. The Big Apple’s ...
Southern Comfort
LA pianist George Kahn brings inspired jazz to Carmel this Saturday.
Los Angeles is often portrayed as a jazz wasteland, a huge, sprawling region where too many jazz musicians are looking for lucrative studio gigs rather than honing their sound. The truth is that LA boasts ...
A Brilliant Stew
Jazz singer Jenna Mammina succeeds with old classics and writes her own striking material.
Before Jenna Mammina started writing her own songs, she was turning the work of other artist’s into her personal property. Steeped in jazz, the self-invented song stylist has built a dedicated following in the Bay ...
Real Time Music
Sony Holland knows of what she sings.
Write what you know. It’s sound advice for tunesmiths as well as novelists. For vocalist Sony Holland and her songwriting husband Jerry, it’s been a winning formula since moving to San Francisco from Nashville about ...
A Different Voice
Giacomo Gates’ rendering of a rare jazz form is pitch perfect.
Larry Vuckovich, the dean of Northern California bebop pianists, vividly recalls the first time he played with Giacomo Gates. A master of the arcane art of vocalese, the jazz vocal style that involves setting lyrics ...
ONSTAGE:Living the Music
Pascal and Remy LeBeouf visit home from NYC.
Like countless seekers, strivers and ambitious young artists before them, Pascal and Remy LeBeouf arrived in New York City last August with big dreams and few connections. The Santa Cruz-raised identical twins are two of ...
Singing Smart
Julie Kelly delivers lessons in beauty at the microphone.
Jazz vocalist Julie Kelly comes to the Peninsula this week to teach at the Monterey Jazz Festival Jazz Camp, but for a real master class in the art of improvisation, the place to be is ...
Undersea Sounds
Charlap and Muldaur headline a brilliant program at this year’s Jazz at the Aquarium.
Every year some journalist raises a hue and cry about the impending demise of jazz. But when jazz mingles with the fishes in Monterey, it’s a sign of the music’s enduring vitality. Indeed, the annual ...
Movie Man’s Music
Steve Tyrell brings a lifetime in the arts to the standards.
It may sound strange, but the 1991 film Father of the Bride was the mother of Steve Tyrell’s singing career. With a voice as gravelly as Dr. John’s and a laid-back approach that mines Ray ...
Breathing Music
Virginia Mayhew brings her fine quartet to the Jazz & Blues Co. Saturday.
Saxophonist Virginia Mayhew knows that the essence of jazz is group interplay, which is why she’s been so successful at assembling a series of thrilling bands over the past decade. That’s not to imply that ...
Django’s spiritual sons converge for preview show at Monterey Live.
Guitar aficionados are in for a treat this week. British-born Robin Nolan, one of the top Gypsy jazz guitarists in the world, opens the Peninsula’s latest venue, Monterey Live, in two shows with his Amsterdam-based ...
Team Player
Mulgrew Miller, the supreme accompanist, plays a rare solo show at Jazz&Blues Co.
With his gentle smile and wide linebacker’s frame, Mulgrew Miller occupies a piano bench with quiet authority. When he starts playing, his big ringing sound leaves no doubt that his keyboard charisma is as powerful ...
Wind in the Pines
Jazz flute legend Kenny Stahl brings a powerhouse quartet to his hometown.
Kenny Stahl was a musical gypsy until he was seduced by Monterey. One of jazz’s finest flutists, Stahl spent two decades on the road, performing with pop and jazz stars such as Cal Tjader, Ira ...
Keeping It New
After more than 50 years as a somewhat controversial jazz icon, Dave Brubeck still brings fresh stuff to the mix.
At 84, Dave Brubeck still delights in the new. I was reminded of this enduring, perhaps defining quality of the legendary pianist and composer several years ago at the close of the prestigious Festival International ...
Jazz Kids
MJF’s Next Generation Festival brings star players into the limelight.
By any measure, the age of 35 is a little late for a coming out party. But no one is likely to hold that against the fresh-faced new version of the Monterey Jazz Festival’s venerable ...
Long Time Man
Andy Bey, maybe the best jazz singer alive, comes to Carmel.
Andy Bey was never stingy when it came to paying dues. As a child prodigy on piano and vocals growing up in World War II-era Newark, N.J., Bey probably could have become a star more ...
Collective Soul
Jazz all-stars, behind Hutcherson and Redman, meld timeless Coltrane standards with new stuff.
After two decades of running SFJAZZ, the nonprofit organization that produces the San Francisco Jazz Festival and its increasingly ambitious counterpart, the Spring Season concert series, Randall Kline has presented just about every living jazz ...
N’wahlins Nawth
Monterey Dixieland Festival brings top players for 25th season.
After polka, there’s probably no type of music that’s easier to stereotype as hopelessly unhip than Dixieland jazz. The rap on the style holds that it’s a refuge for amateur players with a truncated repertoire ...
Gypsy Junior
The John Jorgenson Quintet rekindles the spirit of Django Reinhardt’s Hot Club.
John Jorgenson has lived the rock and roll life, touring as Elton John’s lead guitarist for six years, leading the Desert Rose Band, and sharing front line duties in the Hellecasters. But when it comes ...
Taking Off
Globally-loved local pianist Weber Iago is set to fly.
Weber Iago is starting to break out of his gilded cage. Since arriving on the Peninsula in the early 1990s, the Brazilian pianist has become something of a local institution through his steady gigs at ...
Living History
The incomparable Jessica Williams brings a musical lifetime to her compositions and her playing.
When Jessica Williams takes the stage for a solo recital, she’s not alone. It’s not just that Williams, among the most lyrical and expressive pianists in jazz, draws inspiration from the music’s giants. It’s the ...
Beauty’s Voice
Jacqui Naylor puts a contemporary twist on the standards.
Jacqui Naylor is a chanteuse for the 21st Century. While she launched her career in the mid-’90s as a standards-crooning jazz singer, the restlessly creative vocalist has evolved into a startlingly effective pop/cabaret artist, influenced ...
Blue Chanteuse
Maria Muldaur has gone south since her ‘70s hits—to listeners’ delight.
You wouldn’t guess it to look at Maria Muldaur, but the chanteuse’s career touches on almost the entire span of 20th century American music. While she’s still best known for her 1970s FM radio hits ...
Heart and Soul
Tuck and Patti do the love-jazz duo.
After a quarter century together, Tuck and Patti are still a model of musical and connubial bliss. The husband and wife duo—Tuck Andress is a thrilling guitarist with a thick, ringing tone, and Patti Cathcart ...
Pretty Smart
Lynne Arriale’s clever improvisation forms the basis for her trio’s sound.
According to Thomas Edison, the quintessential American inventor, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99-percent perspiration.” Change the numbers a little bit and the formula works just as well as a description of the quintessential ...
El Pioneer
Latin jazz artist Michel Camilo visits Carmel.
Critics often claim that jazz has lacked a galvanizing movement or trailblazer since the death of John Coltrane in 1967. But when the history of the music’s past quarter century is written, there will be ...
String Trio Summit
Clarke, Di Meola and Ponty reunite in jazz supergroup The Rite of Strings
When The Rite of Strings project first surfaced, it seemed like jazz’s answer to MTV’s “Unplugged.” Featuring three icons of the jazz rock fusion movement—violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, guitarist Al Di Meola and bassist Stanley Clarke—the ...
Tierney Sutton and Roberta Gambarini at the Sunset.
Tierney Sutton and Roberta Gambarini, who open the Monterey Jazz Festival’s fall concert series at Sunset Center on Saturday, are a perfectly matched double bill, the jazz equivalent of fire and ice. The Italian-born Gambarini ...
A Player’s Player
Kenny Werner brings his hot trio to the new Jazz and Blues Co.
Even the best known jazz pianists face some resistance when looking for work with a trio. I hear it from club owners all the time, audiences want to hear groups with horns, and attendance often ...
Global Alliance
Regina Carter’s vision is cosmopolitan and collaborative.
With her luminous bandstand presence and exceptional chops, Regina Carter often draws attention as one of jazz’s most charismatic improvisers. But to really understand the violinist, you have to know about her as a bandleader. ...
Full Circle
Milton Fletcher, Jr. comes home to kick off the 2004 Monterey Jazz Festival.
A teacher’s most satisfying experience is often when a former student returns to express appreciation for valuable lessons learned. That’s what makes pianist Milton Fletcher, Jr.’s homecoming on Friday such a triumphant moment for Monterey. ...
Jazz, etc.
Two Movements: The local jazz scene gets hotter this fall.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Monterey Jazz Festival would sweep into town every third weekend in September to set out a sumptuous musical smorgasbord, only to depart after three days. But in recent ...
Seaside Swing
Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums headline dance party at Laguna Grande Park.
The neo-swing craze may have come and gone, but Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums continue to lay down a fat groove for dancers around the Bay Area, mining that rich seam of funk where ...
Rhythm Nation Builder
Legendary percussionist Airto Moreira appears at Esalen this week.
Before he agreed to lead this week’s “Samba for the Soul” workshop at Esalen Institute, Brazilian-percussionist Airto Moreira hesitated for a minute, leery about misplacing his late friend Babatundi Olatunji. But Airto knows the legendary ...
Star Still Rising
Two-time Grammy-winner Diane Schuur continues to be a pop jazz sensation.
In a conversation a few months back, Larry Coryell directed my ears to a singer I’ve had a tendency to overlook. “I rediscovered my passion for straight-ahead vocal jazz through Diane Schuur,” said the eclectic-minded ...
Phenom Grows Up
Taylor Eigsti returns to Jazz and Blues Co. with a solid trio.
Jazz pianist Taylor Eigsti knows the value of a formal education. But he says he’s learned his most important musical lessons on the bandstand rather than in the classroom. The teenaged prodigy, who has been ...
Conga Master at Sunset
Conga Master at Sunset
A bandleader who seems to have gracefully solved the problem of touring with a sizable ensemble is Poncho Sanchez, who brings his hard-working Latin jazz band into the Sunset Center on Friday, concluding the Monterey ...
Lions Young and Not
Winard Harper brings his Sextet to J& %s; Poncho plays the Sunset.
Back when the term had some commercial cache, drummer Winard Harper was the quintessential young lion. As co-leader of the potent neo-hard-bop band The Harper Brothers, Winard and his younger sibling Philip, a stalwart trumpeter, ...
Jazz Vocal Spirit
Jackie Ryan keeps the fire burning at J&B Co.
It’s no coincidence that musicians closely associated with Sarah Vaughan keep turning up around Jackie Ryan. Her full, lustrous voice and relentless sense of swing would have made comparisons to Vaughn inevitable, but the connection ...
MJF brings all-time jazz great and his hot new band to the Sunset.
For much of the 1990s it seemed that saxophonist Wayne Shorter, arguably the most influential jazz composer of the past four decades, had decided to fade away from the world of jazz. After the breakup ...
Ahmad Jamal, a piano innovator that even Miles could respect, brings his ‘small ensemble’ to the Sunset Center.
It’s hard to believe, but in the dozen years Tim Jackson has been running the Monterey Jazz Festival and the almost three decades that he’s directed Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center, he has never worked ...
JazzMasters Workshop brings two masters of the vibraphone to the Sunset Center.
Vibraphone virtuosos are one of jazz’s rarest breeds—they’re practically non-existent outside of America’s great indigenous art form—so the opportunity to catch two mallet masters at once is an occasion akin to a full lunar eclipse: ...
Ray Vega brings his horn and band to The World—with special guest Pete Escovedo.
If the prodigious Latin jazz trumpeter Ray Vega has the total package—a bright, beautiful tone, a gift for communicating with audiences, and a far-reaching command of the music’s history dating back to the early 1940s—it’s ...
Darol Anger breaks new ground—again.
After a quarter century in the string-band vanguard, fiddler Darol Anger isn’t about to stop his innovative ways. From his first major gig with mandolin master Dave Grisman in the mid-1970s, through his long tenure ...
A hunt for democratic values underlies Wynton Marsalis' rigorous commitment to the acoustic jazz tradition.
Photo by: Stuart Ramson. Blow That: Wynton Marsalis, who plays in Carmel Wednesday, has kept traditional jazz in the mainstream for years. Wynton Marsalis has created such a thick cloud of controversy around himself that ...
Renowned flutist and former Carmel Valley girl comes home.
Photo: Partners At Play: Ali Ryerson teams up with Joe Beck Saturday and Sunday in Carmel. Ali Ryerson may be one of jazz''s world-class flutists, but she''s subject to the same landscape-lust as the rest ...
The Brad Mehldau Trio brings a truly unique sound to Sunset Center.
Photo by: Michael Lewis: No Comparison: Brad Mehldau, who resists being compared with players from other generations, has invented a new way to perform in a trio setting. When Brad Mehldau wants to learn an ...
Global rhythms converge for Monterey World Music Festival.
Photo: Monster Mash: Davka performs its original score for The Golem, a 1920 expressionist film, at the Monterey World Music Festival. The world is once again beating a path to Monterey''s door. The 7th Annual ...
Jessica Williams and Peter Cincotti make separate visits to Carmel this week.
Vintage and Fresh: Legendary and soon-to-be legendary pianists Jessica Williams and Peter Cincotti promise to jazz it up in Carmel. What''s more exciting, experiencing a virtuoso at the peak of her power, or catching a ...
