San Jose Jazz Summer Fest Feeds Music-Hungry Audiences

Live, Benny Green, Herbie Hancock, Delfeayo Marsalis, Angélique Kidjo

By Allen Morrison I Aug. 20, 2024

Benny Green gave a breathtaking solo performance at this year’s San Jose Jazz Summer Fest.
(Photo: Jim Orsetti Photography)

San Jose Jazz, a nonprofit, has been around since 1986 and produced its first jazz festival 34 years ago in 1990. It has grown steadily thanks to support from a handful of local companies and, importantly, from a music-hungry audience from all over the San Francisco Bay Area. When the pandemic hit, the organization had to drop its winter festival, but the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest remains a sprawling affair which, this year, took place Aug. 9–11 on nine stages, all within easy walking distance of each other.

While not nearly as well known as its neighbor to the south, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the three-day San Jose festival offers its own pleasures: a massive and eclectic lineup mixing jazz with R&B and Latin; a sunny climate with low humidity; great restaurants (this is the heart of Silicon Valley, and, of course, the tech execs have to eat); and a vibrant arts district known as SoFA (South First Area) with theaters, clubs, restaurants, museums and galleries.

Beyond running Summer Fest, the nonprofit is a force for good in the South Bay. During the pandemic, it raised money for struggling area jazz musicians. The fund is still going strong, but the focus has changed, according to Brendan Rawson, the organization’s executive director: Nowdays it awards commissioning grants to 20 Bay Area artists each year. Some of the commissioned works appear in an annual New Works Fest in February.

This year’s Summer Fest was held in and around SoFA at the Plaza de Cesar Chavez, an urban park dedicated to the civil rights leader and San Jose resident; it is the oldest public space in Northern California, dating back to 1797.

The variety of performers was fairly astounding: The roster included about 80 acts, featuring stars Herbie Hancock, Delfeayo Marsalis, Angélique Kidjo; top-shelf R&B, soul and funk acts including The Family Stone (minus the retired patriarch Sly), Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, the British jazz-funk outfit Incognito, and Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles; and Latin stars including the justly celebrated Spanish Harlem Orchestra and trombonist Jimmy Bosch and his Salsa Masters. Masters of straightahead jazz like Benny Green and Mike LeDonne were on hand; contemporary players from smooth jazz (David Benoit) to the experimental (Pascal Le Boeuf); veteran singers including Ms. Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton, Jane Monheit and Roberta Gambarini; up-and-comers like pianists Jahari Stampley and Sean Mason, organist Brian Ho, and the Brazilian duo of Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini; and many more. The roster was supplemented by dozens of local acts and high-quality student groups.

With so many stages and concurrent performances, the perennial problem, of course, was that it was possible to sample only a smattering of overlapping shows; difficult choices, reluctantly made, were the norm.

Benny Green’s set on Friday was an early highlight. The solo format brings his many virtues into high relief: his superb time and sublime swing, harmonic ingenuity and unstoppable rhythmic momentum. Solo piano offers great advantages to the improviser, notably the ability to follow one’s impulse with an unusual substitution that otherwise would have had to be rehearsed, to take a rubato detour or vary the tempo at will. But it poses unique challenges, too — no place to hide and the absolute necessity of maintaining a solid groove all by one’s lonesome.

Throughout a set that included tunes by Tadd Dameron, Horace Silver, Dr. Billy Taylor, Bobby Timmons and Oscar Peterson, Green was fearless, sometimes playing only with the right hand, sometimes only the left, dipping a toe into the overpowering river of rhythm that rolled on seemingly with him or without him. It was a breathtaking performance.

On Saturday, West African superstar Angélique Kidjo electrified the crowd with both her singing and her whirling dance steps. Her eclectic Afro-pop/jazz repertoire was brilliantly arranged for an extremely hardworking guitar-less quartet in which the keyboardist, in particular, accomplished Herculean feats. Kidjo is more than a singer; she is an icon of feminine strength and pride. She sang in English, French, Fon, Yorùbá and languages I’ve never heard of. Her set included tributes to two of her heroes, Talking Heads and Celia Cruz; she has recorded albums devoted to both. Her rendition of the former’s “Once In A Lifetime” proved to be a festival highlight.

Any appearance by Herbie Hancock, perhaps the music’s greatest living practitioner, is a must-see, and this was no exception. His highly anticipated Main Stage set on Saturday night featured his touring group of Lionel Loueke (guitar and voice), Terence Blanchard (trumpet), James Genus (five-string bass) and 25-year-old phenom Jaylen Petinaud (drums). Some of Herbie’s most compelling moments occurred in his little asides, in the interstices of the compositions. They included a career-reviewing “Overture”; his late best friend Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” in an arrangement by Blanchard; and his “Actual Proof” from The Headhunters’ Thrust album. As ever, he and his colleagues combined acoustic sounds with technology — from the master’s keyboards, to Loueke’s guitar synth and vocal harmonizer, to Blanchard’s chorus effects that made every note he played sound like a reverb-soaked trumpet chorale.

Also notable, primarily for the fun factor: The Family Stone and New Orleans trumpeter/singer Shamarr Allen. The former, led by saxophonist Jerry Martini and Phunne Stone (the daughter of Sly and original member Cynthia Robinson), spread joy with very credible readings of Sly classics like “Family Affair” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” The latter led a quartet that brought a down-home joy to tunes like “Sleep All Day, Party All Night” and even Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra blew in like a breath of fresh air on Sunday afternoon and reminded everybody why they love jazz and where the music comes from. Their life-affirming set was a celebration of tradition, minus any nostalgia or preciousness, yet with solos that embrace newer styles of playing. Their set inspired dancing and a rapturous response from the crowd. When singer Tonya Boyd-Cannon belted out “Jazz Party” (“We’re gonna have a jazz party all night long…”), San Jose Jazz Summer Fest became just that. DB