Maria Schneider.

PRELUDE
Dee Dee Bridgewater was wearing a cowboy hat. If she explained this, I missed it.

ANNE DRUMMOND
Drummond, a flutist, began by duetting with bassist Brandi Disterheft on her original “Swing Thing,” then brought out her quartet (Klaus Mueller on piano, Mauricio Zotarelli on drums) for the Brazilian standard “Melancia.” The band has a clear division of labor. Disterheft is an extremely percussive bassist, her fingers striking the strings like hammers (a la Jimmy Blanton); Mueller’s piano playing is surprisingly flutelike and often doubled with Drummond (who herself took over piano for her piece “Elan”).

Drummond was a solid flute player, with excellent technique and musical logic on the undervalued-in-jazz instrument (and enough zeal that she could be heard humming along with herself); on the eighty-eights, she was perhaps even more interesting than Mueller, albeit with less skill. This critic would have liked to hear some less conventional note choices on the reed, but this critic is also a sucker for jazz flute and forgives the small stuff.
Read More “Women in Jazz Festival: Day 3″ »

Dee Dee Bridgewater.

HAILEY NISWANGER
Winner of last year’s Women in Jazz Festival Competition, Hailey Niswanger is an alto saxophonist—19 years old and a student at Berklee. She thus walks a fine line: How much do you criticize a kid who’s still learning the basics? Is her position one where criticism is more important or more irrelevant than it’ll ever be again?

But it turns out there’s not much to criticize. Niswanger is a gifted and very skilled saxophonist who’s working to develop her own sound. Her tone is hard as sheet metal, but with a softer, piccolo-like whine at the edges; in soloing, she’s awfully reliant on bebop devices, but that’s to be expected from a young student. She audibly strives to break out of them when she can, and it helps that Niswanger chooses quirky tunes like Monk’s “Four in One” and Kenny Dorham’s “Page One,” along with a neat original blues called “Confeddie.” The only substantive critique to make is that she seems afraid to leave spaces in her solos—a sign of insecurity—but that, too, will dissolve as she develops. This kid’s got a very bright future.
Read More “Women in Jazz Festival: Day 2″ »

Esperanza Spalding.

PRELUDE
Host Dee Dee Bridgewater is probably the world’s sexiest 59-year-old bald woman.

ACT ONE
24-year-old Esperanza Spalding’s star is rising—she’s the youngest-ever instructor at Berklee; has appeared on Letterman and Kimmel; and played the White House twice this year. It’s not hard to see why, since she’s even more talented than she is charming and self-confident.

But she’s also callow. Spalding’s dexterous bass playing was completely overshadowed last night by her singing (probably deliberately so, since both acoustic and electric bass were terribly miked), challenging her own statement that bass is her focus and singing is a lark. Unfortunately, her singing needs work; she subserviated it so much to the rhythm, reciting fast and indistinctly, that the lyrics lost too much meaning. She’s also too absorbed in her own material: Spalding’s imaginative 5/4 arrangement of “Body & Soul” was the highlight of her set, and one of only two non-originals. She could use more apprenticeship in the standard repertoire, along with some artistic restraint. But that’s okay…a Women in Jazz Festival should be about potential, too.
Read More “Women in Jazz Festival: Day 1″ »

Mary Lou Williams cut an enormous figure in jazz history. From 1924, when she began playing piano in public (at the age of 14) to her Carnegie Hall duet with avant-garde titan Cecil Taylor in 1977, Williams was involved in every development in the music. She was a pioneering broadcaster, one of jazz’s most sought-after composers and arrangers, and finished her career as a musical educator at Duke University.

But Williams’ name is not well known outside of the jazz aficionados, in large part because jazz isn’t popularly associated with women.

How better to combat that than with the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival, which the Kennedy Center has held every May since 1996? Tellingly, its founder — jazz director Dr. Billy Taylor — had a tough time getting it started, telling City Paper earlier this year that “when I told them I wanted to do a women’s jazz festival, they didn’t believe I’d find enough women to justify a big feature. I was able to immediately give them a list of 100 women.”

Since then, however, it’s become a major event in the institution’s calendar, a regular showcase for innovators and virtuosi like bandleader Maria Schneider, clarinetist Anat Cohen, and young bassist Esperanza Spaulding, all of whom are on this year’s schedule.

That schedule, by the way, starts tonight, and continues to Saturday. It’ll be recapped here by yours truly.