Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Blindfold Test: Ethan Iverson
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
Marcus Shelby, shown here leading his Bay Area-based big band, is the artistic director of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival.
(Photo: Courtesy Out of the Booth Cali)Before Marcus Shelby added Artistic Director of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival to his c.v. in 2021, he’d established a consequential cultural footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he’s functioned as a first-call freelance bassist since he moved there in 1996. Since 1998, he’s led the Marcus Shelby Big Band, whose book includes such Shelby-composed interdisciplinary deep dives into different aspects of African-American history — Harriet Tubman; Soul Of The Movement: Meditations On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Black Ball: The Negro League And The Blues; and Beyond The Blues: A Prison Oratorio — in which blues aesthetics are the default basis of operations.
Shelby has applied these principles in booking the 27th edition of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, which runs June 13–22 at eight venues in the Sonoma Valley town of 11,340 souls, which contains two Michelin-star restaurants, numerous vineyards and farms, and an affluent, highly educated local donor base with surplus disposable income sourced, in large part, from present or former ties to Big Tech. Taking advantage of the festival’s increased resources and expanded infrastructure, he’s put together a cohesive boutique pageant, mixing high-profile international artists and high-level Bay Area talent who represent various branches of the mainstem jazz tree.
“Our organization’s mission is to celebrate a broad range of this American art form,” says the festival’s executive director, Gayle Okumura Sullivan. “We’ve seen continually growing interest and support from our community in the last few years. We now have year-round educational programs. We’re in a turbulent time, and music is more and more important to the health and well-being of our communities and our society.”
The celebration opens at the Raven Theater on June 13 with a concert by pianist Kenny Barron’s trio joined by 25-year-old baritone singer Tyreek McDole, whose debut recording, Open Up Your Senses (on Artworks, Barron’s label) drops two weeks before the concert. As an aftershow, drummer Lorca Hart (whose father, drummer Billy Hart, presented four different bands at Healdsburg in 2016) presents his organ quartet at The Elephant in the Room, a capacious bar-and-grill that runs until the wee hours.
On the following afternoon, McDole presents his strong quintet (including pianist Victor Gould) to open the festival’s annual Juneteenth Celebration on the concert stage of Healdsburg Plaza. Second up is the Orrin Evans Trio with long-time Tarbaby partner Eric Revis on bass and drummer Tina Raymond, whose 2023 album, Divinations, Evans issued on his Imani imprint. Closing the proceedings is Bay Area singer Faye Carol, joined by her regular pianist, Joe Warner, Bandwagon bassist Tarus Mateen (like Evans, a Betty Carter alumnus and mentee), Los Angeles-based drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith and a string quartet. Bay Area tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley ends the evening at Elephant in the Room.
The next two days transpire in the courtyard of Bacchus Landing, a Tuscan-themed campus where eight smallish wine producers have tasting rooms in an oval structure that surrounds the listening area. On June 15, Jake Shimabukuro, “Big Daddy of the ukulele,” presents his singular pan-genre concept. On June 16, the 100-voice Glide Ensemble Choir and Change Band, from San Francisco’s Mission District, raises a joyful noise with eminent Bay Area-based singer Kenny Washington in an evening of gospel.
On June 17, Melba’s Kitchen, a crackling 14-piece all-woman unit that performs the charts of Melba Liston and Mary Lou Williams along with band originals, plays a free concert at Healdsburg Plaza. On June 18, bassist Amina Scott, an Oakland-born New Orleans resident who currently tours with Dee Dee Bridgewater and is Healdsburg Jazz’s 2025 Artist in Residence, leads a quintet at the Spoonbar at Hotel Healdsburg.
On June 19, guitarist Bruce Forman, Healdsburg Jazz’s 2025 Master Artist in Residence, brings a trio to Elephant in the Room, following a Duke Ellington tribute concert at Bacchus Landing by Jason Moran and the Marcus Shelby Orchestra with vocalist Darryn Dean. Moran will follow the orchestra’s opening set with a half-hour solo piano deconstruction before the orchestra returns to play his arrangements, which span Ellington’s half-century career.
On June 20, the protean vocalist (and NEA Jazz Master) Dianne Reeves performs the latest installment of her 30-year duo partnership with Brazilian guitar master Romero Lubambo. Later, Elephant in the Room hosts the Bay Area nuevo tango group Los Tangueros del Oeste, which earned a 2022 Latin Grammy nomination for the album Sos El Amor.
Drums are front and center on a June 21 double bill that opens with Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom Quartet, including Orrin Evans on piano and Nicole Glover on tenor saxophone. NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington follows with her “We Insist Now, 2025!” centennial homage to Max Roach (and Abbey Lincoln), featuring a formidable quintet with Milena Casado (trumpet and electronics), Simon Moullier (vibraphone), Matthew Stevens (guitar), Morgan Guerin (bass and woodwinds) and vocalist Christie Dashiell. Later, at the Healdsburg Hotel, another master drummer, Sylvia Cuenca, leads a world-class trio with bassist Essiet Okun Essiet and pianist Joe Gilman before hosting a jam session.
Three virtuoso instrumentalists perform at two separate events to climax the festival on June 22. Tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana plays a matinee with her quartet at Paul Mahder Gallery, a 175-seat space that has hosted an iconoclastic 2024–’25 series booked by Healdsburg Jazz founder Jessica Felix and was a key venue for the Healdsburg 2025 winter festival that presented Moran, Edward Simon and Sasha Berliner. In the evening, the action returns to Bacchus Landing, with a New Orleans-centric double bill featuring alto saxophonist (and NEA Jazz Master) Big Chief Donald Harrison’s quartet and trumpeter Nicholas Payton’s trio.
“When Jessica Felix retired, I told her that I’d remain faithful to the foundation she built of booking bands connected to classic jazz — the roots of blues and swing,” Shelby said. “We book Black American Music, and I try to promote its history and be inclusive. This year we added another day and another venue, so we added a gospel night, for example. We applied for some NEA grants that now may not satisfy the criteria of the new administration. That doesn’t feel good. I am always ready to listen and use our platform in a positive way. But we will never bend our values because we want to try to get a buck.” DB
“I’m certainly influenced by Geri Allen,” said Iverson, during a live Blindfold Test at the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival.
Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
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