It’s a June tradition here. Road repair season. Orange barrels, orange barrels, orange barrels, lining the sidewalks, blocking streets, ushering the massive crowds to their next rendezvous: The music venues, and food trucks, of the Rochester International Jazz Festival.
It was Friday evening, and opening night, of the nine-day event. The 20th edition. People everywhere. COVID? Jazz fest, it’s like you never left us.
And an opening night with the guitars of Pat Metheny at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater. Bathed in stalactite shades of turquoise, greens, deep blues, rust, and the occasional pink. All casting a mood of… coolness.
An already slim set of shows at Kodak Hall took a hit on Thursday, when Sunday’s concert by Omara Portuando, best known in this country for her role in the documentary “Buena Vista Social Club,” was cancelled due to what the festival said was visa issues. The Cuban government did not elaborate on what threat to its national security is posed by allowing the 92-year-old Cuban singer to travel abroad.
That left Kodak Hall’s Jazz Fest offerings as the opening night show of Metheny; Saturday with bluesman Keb’ Mo’; Monday’s free Jazz Scholarship Concert celebrating the late Chick Corea; and Tuesday’s sold-out show with Bonnie Raitt.
For Metheny, there was no time for pillow talk. Staring deep into the eyes of whatever guitar he had in hand at the moment, he drew a startling array of sounds from the instruments, including one shimmering beauty that appeared to have been created through a collaboration of wizards and warlocks.
His band, Side-Eye, is drummer Joe Dyson. And pianist Chris Fishman, surrounded by an array of keyboards fit for a prog-rock band. Yet Side-Eye is not a bang, but a co-conspiratorial whisper to Metheny’s spiraling inventiveness.
Metheny will rap on the side of his instrument for a percussive effect. But mostly he’s creating notes as clear as champagne in a glass, ranging from electric picking to a thunderous chiming. Progressive jazz, if we’re allowed to still use that term, for a world that’s lost its way.
That Cuban sound
Despite the loss of the Portuondo show, some Cuban representation remained in place at the festival, beyond musical influences enjoyed by bands such as Rochester’s Mambo Kings, who play June 28th at the pavilion at East Avenue and Chestnut Street. Keyboardist Manuel Valera, born and raised in Havana, played Temple Theater Friday night as part of the trio Steve Smith and Vital Information. Saxophonist Luis Deniz plays the Wilder Room on Wednesday. Pedrito Martinez, a percussionist and singer, opens for Trombone Shorty at 7 p.m. July 1, the festival’s final night, on Parcel 5.
But the Cuban standard for these nine days has already been set by OKAN, Friday at Montage Music Hall. A Canadian Afro-Cuban-Otherstuff quintet fronted by Cuban-born violinist and singer Elizabeth Rodriguez and percussionist Magdelys Savigne. Two women oozing personality and percussion.
There was never any question that the sold-out crowd would get into Montage for the first set; Some of our local hooligans had taken care of that by crashing their car through the front door several days earlier, something we’ve seen a lot of recently.
But plywood and paint heals all and, for the nine days of Jazz Fest, Montage surrenders its heavy-metal cred to jazz and excitable singers.
Singers such as Rodriguez, who led the five-piece band – keyboards, bass, drums and Savigne on yet more percussion – on music that ranged from furious vocals to sadness. With Rodriguez at one point describing how she missed Cuba, although her loss was clearly our gain.
Whatever your vision of Afro-Cuban music might be, OKAN re-arranged it. The clattering yet graceful opening to “Espiral” gave way to chattering percussion. It felt as if these songs would explode at any moment, with Rodriguez swinging her dozens of long, tight braids to the music.
The music was free and easy, with Rodriguez and Savigne, late in the show, engaging in a nearly impossible, twittering a cappella duet. This is why the caged bird sings.
“We have been living under a dictatorship for 63 years,” Rodriguez said, thinking of her native country. “But we do have music.”
Today’s jazz haiku
A Cuban songbird
brings out the island breezes
mad, frantic rhythms
The deadly Nellie McKay
Nellie McKay looks like such a sweet thing. Onstage at The Little Theater for the second of her two shows, wearing a pink dress, plinking away on her ukulele, and that little-girl voice…
Then she moves in for the kill.
“The best things in life are free,” she sings. And closes the song by announcing, “Health care for everyone!”
McKay is a collision of humor, politics, show-tune attitude and morbidity. Lamenting a lost boyfriend, “I just want to keep on drinking till I die… My baby’s with the angels in the sky.”
Do you take her seriously? Of course not. That’s the joke.
She does a Loretta Lynn song, “One’s on the Way,” about a woman who’s a baby-makin’ machine. Her lyrics bounce off abortion, gun control and vegetarianism. Then blatant goofy pop. A cover of The Cyrcle’s “Red Rubber Ball.” Herman Hermit’s “Mrs. Brown You Have a Lovely Daughter.”
All cloaked in faux innocence. Like getting in on the back of the head by a 2×4. It’s just like she sings in her own song, “Mother of Pearl,” declaring “feminists don’t have a sense of humor.” As McKay notes, “Can’t these chicks do anything but whine?”
The world’s all a joke, OK?
Jeff’s Jazz Fest Night 2 Picks | Saturday, June 24
Samara Joy, 6 and 9 p.m., Kilbourn Hall
A Grammy winner already for Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Recording, the 23-year-old Bronx native draws comparisons to classics such as Sarah Vaughan.
Gabrielle Cavassa, 8:30 and 10 p.m., Big Tent
Like Samara Joy, Cavassa is a winner of the International Sarah Vaughan Jazz Vocal Competition. She concedes her jazz owes a little to Italian opera.
VickiKristinaBarcelona, 7 and 9:15 p.m., Temple Theater
I love this trio’s Tom Waits interpretations so much, I might just go to both shows. If it weren’t for…
Bill Frisell, 6:30 and 8:30 p.m.
Theatre at Innovation Square. The guitarist’s past performances here have been without peer. (As the usually stoic critic Jeff Spevak has confessed, one show even brought him to tears.)
Jeff Spevak is senior arts writer for WXXI/CITY Magazine. He can be reached at jspevak@wxxi.org.
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2023.
