Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
Keeping the Flame at Van Gelder Studio
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
Marcus Miller and band hold down the main stage at District Pier during this year’s DC Jazz Festival.
(Photo: Courtesy DC Jazz Festival)The DC Jazz Festival is now of legal drinking age. This year’s edition, running Aug. 27–31, was the 21st. Not the raise-the-banner stuff of last year’s 20th anniversary, of course — but you wouldn’t know that from the spectacular lineup and astounding music, in which the festival outdid itself.
There were reasons to be skeptical of a banger this year, first and foremost being the National Guard’s presence on the streets of Washington, which had been depressing the city’s nightlife and social-cultural activities since it began two weeks prior. At the festival’s signature two-day event at the Wharf in Southwest D.C., jazz fans packed the restaurants and bars and, just as fully, the multiple concert venues.
There was plenty of great music to be enjoyed early in the festival’s run. The Aug. 27 opening gala at downtown restaurant/music hall the Hamilton, featuring the DC Jazz All-Star big band, started off magnificently and only got better with the cameo appearances from harpist Brandee Younger and vocalist Christie Dashiell. The following night featured a Trio Exaltation, with multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich, bassist John Hebert and drummer Nasheet Waits, bringing wildly open and interactive music (opening and closing with compositions by Andrew Hill, in whose Point of Departure Sextet all three had played).
Still, it was the weekend at the Wharf that one would write home about. An unexpectedly tight contest at the DCJazzPrix, the festival’s battle of the bands (the ensemble led by pianist Jose Luis Martins was the ultimate winner), was prelude to a Saturday (Aug. 30) concert with the Sun Ra Arkestra where 101-year-old bandleader and saxophonist Marshall Allen held court; an appearance by Herbie Hancock Competition-winning pianist Jahari Stampley and his quartet; and a set by the Baylor Project, whose accessible jazz-imbued songcraft was punctuated by drummer Marcus Baylor’s exhortations to “let the church say amen!”
Then came an incendiary performance by the Branford Marsalis Quartet, who played a packed house at the Arena Stage adjacent to the Wharf. Marsalis is currently promoting an album that’s a track-for-track cover of Keith Jarrett’s 1974 album Belonging. But the band (with pianist Joey Calderrazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Justin Faulkner) only played one of those tunes, an unabashedly funky take of “‘Long As You Know You’re Living Yours.” The set’s real highlight was a workout on Fred Fisher’s “There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth The Salt Of My Tears” (a hit for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in 1928). The quartet’s reading was decidedly New Orleanian, although New Orleans native Marsalis’ stomping, almost cocky tenor solo was probably the least New Orleanian next to Calderrazzo’s rollicking bluesy improv, Revis’ rumbling singsong and a raw, muscular second-line solo from Faulkner.
“It ain’t getting better than that,” a friend shouted to me as we all filed out after the set. Ah, but wait for it.
Marcus Miller was holding down the main stage at District Pier once we emerged back onto the Wharf. I arrived in time to hear him introduce his tune “Mr. Pastorius,” which he played with Miles Davis on the trumpeter’s 1989 album Amandla; after an extended rendition with trumpet great Russell Gunn filling Davis’ shoes, Miller whipped out a bass clarinet and played a miraculous, sublime duo with pianist Xavier Gordon on D.C. legend Roberta Flack’s monster 1972 hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
Miller had an even more incisive D.C. homage in mind, though. “Do y’all remember Spike Lee’s movie School Daze?” he asked the crowd, walking them through the 1988 film’s famous pool-party scene. Every Washingtonian present likely guessed he was going to play E.U.’s go-go anthem “Da Butt,” which had soundtracked that scene. What they didn’t expect was for him to turn and ask, “Sugar Bear, you back there?” at which point E.U. lead singer Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliot swaggered onstage and led Miller’s band through the D.C. crowd favorite.
The cherry-on-top came at the night’s closer, a jam session led by bassist and DCJF artist-in-residence Corcoran Holt featuring a house band of tenor saxophonist Stacy Dillard, trumpeter Ashlin Parker, pianist Benito Gonzalez and drummer McClenty Hunter. But it didn’t peak there. By night’s end, a three-trumpet brigade with Gunn, Keyon Harrold and Melvin Smith had lined up, with less recognizable jammers behind, to devour a blues in F.
It was an exhilarating, exhausting high point for the festival, and it doesn’t even include the Sunday, Aug. 31, performances by pianist Dado Moroni, saxophonist Hiruy Tirfe (last year’s DCJazzPrix winner), drummer Jongkuk Kim, pianist Emmett Cohen and a return engagement by Holt, this time with an even more astonishing all-star band (pianist George Cables, saxophonist Billy Hart, trumpeter Sean Jones, trombonist Steve Turre and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts). Excuse me now; I’ve got to rest from my holiday weekend. DB
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