June is always a busy month for international and roots music, and this weekend offers a number of exceptional choices.
Friday June 11
Salif Keita at 8 p.m. at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, 21st and H Streets NW. This veteran Malian singer has an awe-inspiring voice, and while some of the material on his new CD, [...]
You once knew it as the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. For all of its five years, in fact. No more.
Festival boss Charlie Fishman reports that there's been a dispute with the Ellington family over the rights to use the name of District jazz's favorite son. Henceforth, then, it shall be known as the DC Jazz [...]
DCist reported before this year's Duke Fest began that it had lost $200,000 in corporate sponsorships. Charlie Fishman also reminded me that with moving the festival from fall to early summer, the staff had only seven months to pull the whole thing together, including fundraising and booking. That meant that the festival lost some of [...]
Terence Blanchard. (Photo: Morrice Blackwell.)
1:00 PM
It was immediately clear that the Rebirth Brass Band would be a tough act to follow. Their lineup of three trumpets, tenor sax, trombone, sousaphone, and two drummers were working out their theme song, "Feel Like Funkin' It Up," demonstrating rather handily that hardcore funk is not so far removed [...]
The son of New Orleans jazz polymath Kidd, trumpeter Marlon Jordan works largely in mainstream post-bop — a glut of which has been heard by this second weekend of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. But Jordan rescued it from ennui at Twins Jazz Friday night with some of the most distinctive stylings the fest has [...]
Much fun as Yamomanem was, what would a jazz festival with a "Celebrating New Orleans" theme be without a real-deal traditional New Orleans jazz band? Fortunately, Dr. Michael White was at the French Embassy Wednesday night to keep anyone from having to answer that question.
White is a professor of New Orleans music and culture (and, [...]
Traditional jazz has become associated with corny trappings like straw hats—which meant that the yachting caps worn Tuesday night by four of the six members of Yamomanem was a bad sign indeed. But it was a ruse: traditional New Orleans jazz is the band's foundation, but they gleefully subvert it.
Lord knows Jelly Roll Morton [...]
Hey, kids! Been thinking that what's missing from today's jazz festivals is an act that combines a jam-band-lite sound with roots rock circa 1998-2000 (now in heavy rotation on Washington Sports Club's PA system)? The Revivalists might just be for you.
Yes, they've got all the trappings: ska, reggae, and funk grooves; furiously strummed acoustic guitars; [...]
The Symposium out of the way, the concert commenced: DC drummer, composer, and bandleader Nasar Abadey was premiering his three-part Diamond in the Rough Suite with a 12-member Supernova Chamber Orchestra. Included in the ensemble was a full string quartet — this was Abadey's first time writing for strings, he explained: "But be aware that [...]
The main event on the program was the premiere of Nasar Abadey's "Diamond in the Rough Suite," but the opening act was a panel symposium on "Technique vs. the Blues – Jazz on the Auction Block," moderated by jazz journalist and producer Willard Jenkins. He called on panelists to address two questions: What, in your [...]
