When jazz takes new forms, it finds new life.
This bit of resurrection is allowing sax star Craig Handy to explore music he hasn't before.
And it is giving trumpeter Sean Jones the chance to test drummer Roger Humphries, “who is such a bad cat no one wants to challenge him,” Jones says.
It even is giving drummer Ginger Baker a new way to show off his explosive talent.
Put all of those musical events together, and it creates exciting possibilities for the year's Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival.
The fifth festival rolls out June 19 to 21 on the streets of the Cultural District, Downtown, offering mostly free concerts, as well as a Saturday night ticketed event with Ginger Baker, the 75-year-old drummer who was the heart of Cream and Blind Faith.
The festival has grown steadily each year, becoming its own event in 2014 when it branched off from the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival.
Cultural Trust figures report the festival attracted about 15,000 people last year, 52 percent from out of the area.
Performers at the festival reflect the evolving nature of their work and of the genre.
Joey DeFrancesco, for example, is well known as a Hammond B-3 organ player from the heritage of Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff. But, at the festival, he will be showing off a side not well known — that of a trumpet player leading a quartet.
“I really love the trumpet,” DeFrancesco says, “so I finally decided I really had to do this.”
Of course, he will be playing his B-3, but when he picks up his horn, he will add another player to the band — Mark Boone, who will add the bass lines DeFrancesco generally does with his pedals.
Meanwhile, sax player Handy and Latin percussionist Sammy Figueroa are bringing in bands that have been reshaped to allow them to take new looks at their music.
Figueroa, who has played with stars from Sonny Rollins to Mariah Carey, added some rock-flavored drumming to his band and changed the name a little. His former Latin Jazz Explosion now is the LJE.
“We are trying to take the music to a different level,” Figueroa says. “We are opening another door.”
Handy says he discovered a rhythmic connection between the funky organ music of Jimmy Smith and the strut-worthy drive of New Orleans Second Line music. Combining then, he built his band, Second Line Smith, around Kyle Koehler's work on organ and that of Clark Gayton on Sousaphone.
“It produces some post-modern bebop with a New Orleans flavor,” Handy says. “It's the perfect festival band.”
Some band are put together by musical buddies just for the summer-festival circuit. For example, pianist Geri Allen, director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh, will be appearing with saxophonist David Murray and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington.
“The thing about it is that is a bass-less trio,” she says. “That makes me explore the bass work on piano a bit more. It changes how the group approaches music.”
An event special to this festival is Sean Jones' “ ‘Song for My Father' Reimagined.” It is a modernization of the 1964 Horace Silver album that has been a landmark in the career of North Side drummer Roger Humphries.
“I want to recompose it, to change the groove, to give it some new vibrancy,” Jones says. “But ‘Song' is sort of sacred, so we can't change it too much.”
Like band leaders who are working with new settings, the restatement of the album is a major task for him and the festival.
He uses an expression Humphries often uses when he is getting control of a jam session. “This ain't no ‘Gong Show,' man,” he says.
The JazzLive Festival introduces fans to musicians who are early in their career.
Singer Somi, for instance, is trying to create a “more-nuanced outlook on African music.” She was born in Illinois, the daughter of a university professor there. When they moved to Zambia in her early years, she broadened her appreciation of the music of her heritage.
Somi says appearing in places she hasn't before is more of a benefit than it is a challenge.
She says trumpet star Hugh Masakela once told her these kinds of programs are beneficial because they are a “chance to reach out to an audience who hasn't heard you.”
Bob Karlovits is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at bkarlovits@tribweb.com or 412-320-7852.
A full plate of jazz
It's jazz week in Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh JazzLive International Festival June 19 to 21 certainly is the main musical event of the week, but, from clubs and concert halls to neighborhood tours, the week is full of ways of looking at jazz — and even at other music.
Trumpeter Sean Jones is going to be playing in a variety of settings, and says he is going to be offering even a little classical music at one.
“It's something I am trying to get back to,” he says. “I did a lot of it when I was in music school, but not a lot of people have heard it since.”
It also makes sense: the concert is sponsored by Chamber Music Pittsburgh.
Jones, who moved to the Northeastern Conservatory of Music in Boston in 2014 after 10 years at Duquesne University, will be performing with his quartet June 18 at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty.
He says he probably will offer parts of concertos by Franz Josef Haydn or Alexander Arutunian accompanied by a pianist.
Among events are:
• Screening of “Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band,” a documentary, at the Savoy Restaurant in the Strip District. 6 p.m. June 15. Free. Details: 412-281-0660
• The Pittsburgh Jazz Celebration, featuring the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Ramsey Lewis, Kurt Elling, Sean Jones and others. 8 p.m., June 16, Heinz Hall, Downtown. Admission: $24.75 to $79.75 or $250 with the pre-show gala. Details: 412-322-0800 or mcgjazz.org for gala tickets or 412-392-4900 or pittsburghsymphony.org for concert tickets
• Sean Jones Quartet, 7:30 p.m. June 18, Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, East Liberty. $24. Details: 412-624-4129 or chambermusicpittsburgh.org
• Screening of “Crossroads: The Culture, The Music, The Legacy,” an oral history of jazz in the Hill District. 2 p.m. June 19 at the Hill House. Free. Details: 412-392-4400 or hillhouse.org
• Jazz Tour of the Hill District. Molly's Trolleys will pick up participants at the Benedum Center, Downtown, 10 a.m. June 20 for a look at the sites where jazz thrived in the '40s and '50s. $15. Details: 412-392-4400 or hillhouse.org
