Festival Review:  Berkshire Jazz Festival 2003

In the middle of a very busy summer I managed to catch the Saturday performance of the Berkshire Jazz Festival in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This festival, long on great music and short on good food, has not really caught fire with regard to attendance, but has managed to sustain itself successfully enough to come back for a third time.

The Richie Hart Trio, with Giacomo Gates on vocals, was charged with waking up the noontime crowd, a task they rose to admirably. Gates, who is, hands down, my favorite male singer, demonstrated once again his adeptness as jazz historian/storyteller par excellence. His weaving of the history into his song intros captivated this audience on this hot July day. He previewed new material from a forthcoming CD, including a couple by Bobby Troup, a lazy amble down Route 66, and a romp through the more obscure but perfect Gates vehicle Hungry Man. Gates has a penchant for the humorous and ironic, always served up with class. Another of the new tunes was a Bobby Short Big Band arrangement of I Told You That I Love You, Now Go. He also included material from his two previous releases Blue Skies and Fly-Rite, ending the set with a skillful rendering of the classic Night in Tunisia.

Leader Richie Hart is a refreshingly innovative improviser on guitar, and was ably abetted by the great bass/drums team of Rick Petrone and Joe Corsello, who were with Gates the first time I saw him back about five years ago at Litchfield with the Joyce DiCamillo Trio.

Veteran tenor saxophonist Houston Person brought both the rhythm and the blues to a set so enjoyable that went by like fifteen minutes. Person is probably one of the last of the generation of players whose experience is informed by playing in gritty working class clubs in which people drank, danced, and clapped on two and four. His buttery ballads included Tenderly and The Way We Were rendered with romance and subtlety.

Art Blakey alum and alto saxophonist Donald Harrison delivered a set that began and ended disappointingly, with some fine musical moments in between. Drummer John Lamkin was nowhere to be found at the beginning of the set (we were told later that he had been delayed after locking his keys in the car, reminding me of the punchline to a drummer joke "and he had to break a window to get the bass player out") so Harrison announced that he would play drums until Lamkin arrived, and though he managed to get through the first couple of tunes, his performance on drums was not up to what the people had paid their money for, not to mention his absence in the front line. He ultimately recruited the great Steve Johns, (scheduled to appear next with Jimmy Heath’s band) strapped on his alto and took the music up several notches.

Worthy of mention are the other members of the quintet. Harrison’s young nephew and fellow New Orleanean, the trumpeter Christian Scott played with a tone and conviction that recalled "Pops" in his prime. As with so many New Orleans trumpeters, the Armstrong legacy on trumpet lives on generation after generation.

Zaccai and Luques Curtis, a nineteen and twenty year old "brother act" from Hartford Connecticut, held forth on piano and bass with all the aplomb of a latter day Messengers rhythm section. Zaccai, in particular, on piano nailed the percussive Bobby Timmons style on Moanin’ while simultaneously adding his own signature. The brothers play in their own Latin band together, and in their spare time are students at NEC and Berklee.

The downer at the end of the set was Harrison’s attempt at youth market relevance, when he took the audience hostage by subjecting us to something he calls nouveau swing. In this case nouveau swing (which is neither) amounted to an overt manipulation of the audience, in the form of a scat/hip-hop blend of mugging that did a disservice to both forms. As I looked around me, some of the audience were giving a half-baked response to the buffoonery, as Harrison exhorted them to" put your hands together" and "give it up for....," but essentially many more looked bored, embarrassed or insulted by the cheap display on stage. I found it ironic that Harrison, a neo-conservative jazzer in the Wynton Marsalis mold should include this fluff in his repertoire.

Next up, the Jimmy Heath Quartet. No posturing here, just a good honest set of music, the likes of which you’d expect from one so steeped in the history of jazz. I caught some of his set, but had to split my time in order to experience Charlie Persip’s workshop entitled "How Not to Play the Drums", the title from his new book. The veteran drummer of the great Dizzy Gillespie Big Band of the fifties, Persip is currently fronting an adventurous big band of his own, which was the Saturday festival closer this year.

Accompanied by the big band’s youthful rhythm section mates, Persip demonstrated the intricacies of trap set playing on Softly as in a Morning Sunrise and A Night in Tunisia, for a small audience, lacing his performance with upbeat banter and political asides. Persip comes across as a gentle soul with a zest for life and music, and possesses a drum sound as big as all outdoors.

I ended my festival day sitting in at the open jam session hosted by the Richie Hart Trio, and a chance opportunity to play with bass clarinetist and old friend Dick Murphy from Springfield, Massachusetts. Dick was a big hit with the jam session attendees on Body and Soul, and it made my day complete to see a very young reed player taking a keen interest in the bass clarinet, an instrument he’d apparently never seen or heard before. Another beautiful summer day well spent. I’m grateful once again to be a part of this music.

- Richard Mayer, July 2003

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