by Dan Lehner
At the close of his set at Newport, Brian Blade said of his last tune, an optimistic gospel piece entitled “Let Your Line Shine Through”, that it would hopefully make itself "true in spirit." He was alluding to some truly terrible weather (not just rainy like 2011’s NJF, but also cold) that plagued an otherwise wonderfully programmed and executed Saturday at the 61st Newport Jazz Festival.
Blade’s longstanding Fellowship Band, one of the first acts on Saturday, succeeded in setting a sunny disposition amongst the grey and wet environment of Fort Adams State Park, creating music worlds that were beautiful and accessible, but also mysterious. Pianist Jon Cowherd pushed through bright chord melodies with varying level of dissonance and reedists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler added as much texture as they did pyrotechnic soloing. There were shades of the very recently passed Charlie Haden in the woody and massive bass sounds of Chris Thomas, buoying the horns with his soulful force.
SF Jazz Collective also managed to honor both the living and the passed with a brief retrospective of their 10-year-long career, revisiting arrangements of tunes by the (also recently deceased) composer pianist Horace Silver, like “Song for My Father”. However, SFJC was a strong collective of composers itself, and that was evident in pieces like trombonist Robin Eubanks’s “More Than Meets the Ear”, where he brought his signature sloping, funky melodies in mixed meters with interlocking counterpoints. Miguel Zenon, the sole original member of the collective, had plenty of moments to shine, flying over driving pointillism and duo soloing with Avishai Cohen. One standout new member of the 2014 iteration of the group was drummer Obed Calvaire, who had extremely difficult task of supporting and reacting to the wildly different Cohen/Zenon trading, but never missed a single passing idea.
Newport has never been a strictly North American affair and when it comes to European acts, they always pick some good ones. The Stefano Bollani/Hamilton de Holanda duo, presented by Umbria Jazz, was a frenetic, potent cocktail of Keith Jarrett-style duo playing, French gypsy jazz, classical music and trans-European folk. The bandolin (Brazilian mandolin) and piano made for a fascinating combination of timbres with the combination of the piano’s rigid tuning and the bandolin's more bent, expressive sense of pitch and because of this, though the trading and supporting was great, the most sonically interesting parts came when they played almost exactly at the same time, especially with their more classical style runs.
The aforementioned Robin Eubanks is no stranger to these festivals, but Dave Holland’s Prism showed off another Eubanks brother of note, guitarist Kevin Eubanks, who’s been remaking his name recently in the jazz community. Holland, who has recently been bringing along denser, more chord driven sounds into the fold with his groups like the Overtone Quartet, wrote white-hot mixes of modern jazz and prog rock for Prism that gave Eubanks plenty of room (though occasionally, perhaps too much) for his blistering, virtuosic sense of soulful rock music. Holland’s music still had its trademark earworm basslines and building odd metrics, but some of it almost hearkened back to his days with electric Miles Davis, giving keyboardist Craig Taborn a chance to show off his melodic Rhodes and organ chops.
It’s incredible how much better and more like himself guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel has gotten over the years, considering his already insanely formidable talent and vision. At Newport, it was evident that he had been advancing every facet that has made him great and unique, including but not limited to his post-bop sensibilities, fiery and soulful rock inclinations, flamenco flourishes and experiments in effects and electronics. Not to push aside his other bandmates, of course, who have only gotten more unique in their navigation of Rosenwinkel mainstays like “Zhivago” and “Our Secret World”, especially pianist Aaron Goldberg. However, it was really Rosenwinkel’s lush experiments with guitar effects, his impeccable technique (he’s somehow gotten even faster) and his new added affinity for neo-soul elements that made this performance even better than previous one.
There was a brilliant moment at the Fort Stage during Trombone Shorty (nee Troy Andrews) and Orleans Avenue’s day-closing set: at a certain point during their musical revolving door of funk, rock and NOLA stomps, the sufficiently rained-on crowd re-purposed their umbrellas into parade parasols and started second-line marching around the fort grounds like they had somehow brought Mardi Gras to the gloomy Northeast. It was a testament to Andrews’ impeccable ability to go beyond simple “crowd-pleasing” and really get into the living heart of classic and contemporary New Orleans music. Much like Rosenwinkel, Andrews showed clear signs of growth, as per his trombone-based nom de musique but also in his trumpet playing and singing, and his band was impeccably funky. Orleans Avenue operates like a family unit to the audience’s great advantage, feeding their energy off each other. The energy culminated in a group drum kit solo, each member with sticks in hands and huge a huge smile on their faces.