This year’s Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival may not have too
many hardcore jazz headliners. But the ClubPass venues are so full of
excellent acts, it’s going to be tough to choose what
to see on more than a few nights.
I’m going to start the festival Friday with one of my favorite artists from
two previous XRIJFs. Tessa Souter will bring her gorgeous voice and her
excellent band to the Montage on the heels of a great new album. Souter has
been writing lyrics to some of the greatest melodies Western civilization has
produced, tunes by Beethoven, Ravel, Chopin, and others. Strangely, they make
excellent jazz standards. Should be great to hear them live.
After all of that beauty I’ll need Get The
Blessing, at ChristChurch,
to jar me into the wilder side of jazz with a little Ornette Coleman-esque
sacrilegiousness.
I’ll end the night with arguably the best bassist in jazz, Christian
McBride, at Kilbourn Hall. His band isn’t called Inside Straight for nothing.
This quintet is composed of some of the finest straight-ahead players on the
jazz scene today.
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This article appears in Bye bye unions?.
