charlie parker jazz festival 2017 - NYC, sunday, aug 27
- photography by © Clara Pereira / text by Filipe Freitas
The culmination of this year’s Charlie Parker Jazz Festival took place at Manhattan’s Tomkins Park on Sunday, August 27th, with shows that made fans of both traditional and modern jazz overjoyed.
Vocalist Alicia Olatuja was the first to step on stage but we missed her show. By the time we arrived the audience seemed happy with her performance.
TIA FULLER
Saxophonist Tia Fuller returned to New York, where she studied before moving to Boston, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her Angelic Warrior album. Pianist Shamie Royston, who played on the cited album, bassist James Genus, and drummer Clarence Penn provided a competent rhythm section.
The opening tune, “Ralphie’s Groove”, flew with an easygoing disposition, followed by a bombastic post-bop stretch entitled “Breakthrough”, where Fuller employed extensive timbral variations in her musculated phrases, with frequent use of rapid runs and frenzied trills. Things calmed down with the lullaby “Lil Les” and a smooth, soul-funk rendition of “Body and Soul”, which she fearlessly sang.
LOU DONALDSON
The first big attraction of the afternoon was the legendary saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who not only enchanted the audience with his groovy bop licks, but also entertained with his stories and jocular posture. Guitarist Eric Johnson, drummer Joe Farnsworth, and Japanese organist Akiko Tsuruga composed his stirring quartet.
The recognizable sultry melody of “Blues Walk” delighted the people in the audience which found Donaldson, in an impressive top form, quoting the melody of “Summertime” between the lines of his improvisation. Charlie Parker’s fervent “Wee”, played uptempo, gave its place to a mellow rendition of “What a Wonderful World”, a tune that Donaldson sang in the last chorus with a raucous voice, homaging Louis Armstrong.
On “Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman”, a blues in its most traditional conception that first appeared in 1981, we could hear him singing again: “she’s a whiskey drinkin’ woman / she drinks whiskey all the time / yes, but I love that woman / because she’s mine, all mine, all mine”. As he explained, in North Carolina, where he came from, the blues is often called ‘suffering music’. The concert ended with his celebrated blues-drenched original “Alligator Boogaloo”.
JOSHUA REDMAN QUARTET
The CP Jazz Festival 2017 closed in big with the Joshua Redman Quartet, featuring Aaron Goldberg on piano, Reuben Rogers on acoustic bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums, filling in for the habitual Greg Hutchinson.
The revered saxophonist, demonstrating the power of his technique and language, started with three originals very disparate in nature. If “Vast” scintillated with a gentle lyricism that progressively expanded horizons, gaining considerably more muscle to hold the mind-blowing improvisations by the bandleader and the rhythmically daring Goldberg, “How We Do” swung hard during the solos after the steep rhythmic accentuations present in the theme’s melodic statement. In turn, “Borrowed Eyes”, boasting a graceful melody over unclouded chords, brought expressive tones of balladic quietude, even if played at a nonchalant mid tempo.
Before closing with another impactful original that blends tense postbop and bewitching soul, Redman tackled impeccable renditions of Parker’s “Bloomdido”, slightly modified to fit his own vision, and the jazz standard “Stardust”, where he killed it with a smashing improvisation.