Articles of Section 'Jazz Fest'.

Jazz Fest
Lionel Loueke embraces his African roots
By Alexander Varty
When Lionel Loueke and his trio auditioned for the Thelonious Monk Institute’s jazz-training program in 2001, they faced a daunting phalanx of judges: trumpeter Terence Blanchard, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and keyboardist Herbie Hancock. The panel’s decision was unanimous, though. Loueke and company were accepted into the academy-and the bandleader ended up with a job, too.
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Jazz Fest
Shanghai star Coco Zhao called "boy Billie Holiday"
By Tony Montague
When Coco Zhao started singing jazz standards in Shanghai in the mid ’90s, there were few experienced musicians to accompany him. But things have changed dramatically since that time, and the Chinese megacity boasts one of Asia’s fastest-growing jazz scenes-with Zhao as its brightest star.
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Jazz Fest
Melodrama seems to suit wide-ranging Ndidi Onukwulu
By Ken Eisner
Ndidi Onukwulu is somewhere in eastern Ontario, talking on her Vancouver cellphone while driving to a gig in Montreal. She has a bubbly, open spirit, even while thinking about gravestones.
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Jazz Fest
New York City life shaped punkish Ravens & Chimes
By Alexander Varty
What’s a nice indie-rock band like Ravens & Chimes doing at a jazz festival like Vancouver’s? Well, the simple answer is that the New York City sextet is opening for Edmonton dance-punk act Shout Out Out Out Out at the Commodore Ballroom.
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Jazz Fest
Hilario Durán's jazz incorporates disparate Cuban threads
By Tony Montague
To be a leading Cuban jazz pianist, you need to have taught yourself to play a range of contemporary postbop styles and you should have studied for many years at a rigorous classical-music conservatory. But what’s mandatory is that you feel the island nation’s traditional rhythms coursing through your veins.
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Jazz Fest
Satoko Fujii and Carla Kihlstedt find fast friendship in sound
By Alexander Varty
Improvising musicians are like kids: nothing’s more fun than a playdate with a new pal. And that’s exactly how Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii’s ongoing musical collaboration with Tin Hat Trio violinist Carla Kihlstedt came about, thanks to their mutual acquaintance Larry Ochs. The Bay Area bandleader wanted both of them to collaborate with his Rova Saxophone Quartet during its 25th-anniversary celebrations in 2002, and while he was at it, he also decided they should play a short set as a duo.
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Jazz Fest
Soul sensation Ryan Shaw has music in his blood
By Tony Montague
Singing has long been a crucial part of Ryan Shaw’s life. The 27-year-old soul sensation from Decatur, Georgia, grew up in a devoutly religious family, and before he was in grade school he was already an enthusiastic member of the children’s choir at his local Pentecostal church.
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Jazz Fest
Iro Haarla builds upon her late husband's legacy
By Alexander Varty
Edvard Vesala, the late drummer and composer, was never properly appreciated in the English-speaking world-although in terms of his influence on Finnish music, it’s possible to think of him as a combination of Duke Ellington and Frank Zappa. Still, his music was entirely his own: a provocative mix of rock-inflected energy, avant-garde exploration, and soaring, sweeping compositional statements.
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Jazz Fest
Jazz fest: Jones tops Peyroux in chops, charm
By Alexander Varty and Tony Montague
You can sell 35 million CDs, make the cover of every music mag under the sun, and have Hollywood courting you for major movie roles, but you're still not going to get people cheering for you every time you walk out on-stage. At least, not if you're Norah Jones, who opened for herself in an impromptu duet with songwriter M. Ward at the Orpheum on Thursday (June 28).
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Jazz Fest
Jazz fest: Jones tops Peyroux in chops, charm
By Alexander Varty and Tony Montague
You can sell 35 million CDs, make the cover of every music mag under the sun, and have Hollywood courting you for major movie roles, but you're still not going to get people cheering for you every time you walk out on-stage. At least, not if you're Norah Jones, who opened for herself in an impromptu duet with songwriter M. Ward at the Orpheum on Thursday (June 28).
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Homepage | Jazz Fest
June 28 - July 5, 2007

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Jazz Fest
Jazz Fest reviews
By Alexander Varty and Tony Montague
Sonny Rollins delivers a sax master class
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Jazz Fest
Jazz Fest reviews
By Alexander Varty and Tony Montague
Sonny Rollins delivers a sax master class
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Jazz Fest
Jazz Fest previews
Geoff Muldaur tells tales with his tunes
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Jazz Fest
ICP'S New Dutch Swing takes jazz past its roots
By Alexander Varty
The style isn't necessarily new. And it doesn't always swing, at least not in the classic Count Basie sense. But it is most definitely Dutch: a music that, though cosmopolitan, could not have evolved anywhere else in the world.
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Jazz Fest
In the Country makes a mark as indie jazz band
By Martin Turenne
You can call Norway's In the Country whatever you want, just don't call it a jazz trio. Helmed by piano-and-keyboard player Morten Qvenild, the Oslo-based three-piece (rounded out by bassist Roger Arntzen and drummer Pal Hausken) treats jazz as it does practically every other idiom within its reach–as a form it would as soon blaspheme as venerate.
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Jazz Fest
9/11 led Dhafer Youssef to Scandinavian success
By Alexander Varty
If there's something hauntingly spiritual about Dhafer Youssef's voice, that's not surprising: he received his early musical training while studying the Koran in his native Tunisia. He could easily have gone on to earn a living as a devotional singer. But Youssef has a different reason for his fond memories of his days as an apprentice muezzin: It was then, he says, that he first encountered electronic music.
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Jazz Fest
Guitar great Derek Trucks insists he's a jazzy guy
By Tony Montague
When the Straight tracks down slide-guitar virtuoso Derek Trucks at an L.A. hotel, he's just checked in for a few gigs with his wife, acclaimed blues vocalist Susan Tedeschi. They're four shows into their Soul Stew Revival tour, which sees the couple performing select tunes from their respective solo careers, but focusing mainly on newer material.
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Jazz Fest
Antibalas takes Afrobeat into a whole new domain
By Tony Montague
Brooklyn-based Antibalas has showcased its roisterous dance grooves in more than two dozen countries. But it's been a hard slog for the 12-piece ensemble to become North America's premier exporter of Afrobeat. Just a few years ago the musicians were flogging albums on the streets of London, sleeping rough on dressing-room floors, and travelling through Britain in a van with a radiator so clapped-out they had to feed it a raw egg every hour to plug the leaks.
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Jazz Fest
Brazilian singer connects with New York and London
By Tony Montague
After more than a decade of living and working in the heart of the Big Apple, silky-voiced Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto considers herself a true New Yorker. That doesn't entail any loss of her South American roots, however, or any weakening of her ties with London, where she lived for a time in the late '90s. On Gilberto's latest release, Momento, she celebrates her cosmopolitan identity with the breezy insouciance that's become her hallmark.
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Jazz Fest
Vijay Iyer dazzles by delivering many layers
By Alexander Varty
It might seem strange that Vijay Iyer gave up a promising career in physics to play jazz piano, but once you've heard his music, that decision makes perfect sense. Reimagining, his 2005 release on the Savoy label, offers up sonic landscapes that are as strange as string theory, melodies that seem dizzyingly weightless, and rhythms as complex as Einstein's math, but they all come together in viscerally pleasing form.
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Jazz Fest
Chris Botti charms his fans with Italian melodies
By Jennifer Van Evra
Chris Botti is not feeling smooth. Although the Portland-born trumpeter is known for a sound so polished you could almost skate on it, that's not how things are sounding inside his head.
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Jazz Fest
Three fresh takes on the evergreens
By Alexander Varty
Next time you're asked if there's life after death, here's your answer: Yes–so long as you're a legend of jazz.
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Jazz Fest
Sonny side up
By Alexander Varty
Titling his 1956 LP Saxophone Colossus was arguably an act of hubris on the part of Sonny Rollins. At the time, the emerging jazz star was a mere 25 years old, and although he'd already recorded with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and the Modern Jazz Quartet, he was not yet a household name.
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Jazz Fest
Funk straight outta Dunbar
By Sarah Rowland
Eleven isn't big enough, and 13 is unlucky. According to the founding members of Five Alarm Funk, that's why they chose to make their instrumental groove machine a 12-man operation””and that's with emphasis on the man.
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Articles of Section 'Jazz Fest'.

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