The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz transforms Bushnell Park into a thriving fairground, bazaar, and concert site in mid-July.
Summer in Hartford just wouldn’t be the same without the sizzling sounds and celebratory mood generated by the Monday Night Jazz Series and the Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz, two free, major outdoor festivals that for decades have drawn tens of thousands to the city’s downtown Bushnell Park in July and August.
Serious fans of everything from mainstream to smooth to avant-garde jazz come, of course, strictly to hear the music, camping down with their blankets, lawn chairs and coolers up close to the park’s pavilion stage or wherever they feel the acoustics are best for savoring every nuance.
Many others, perhaps, come to the park not just for the free music, but also to picnic or party on the lawn, basking in the almost tactile communal vibe that has become one of the hallmarks and great traditions in Hartford’s free, jazz-in-the-park summer festivals.
An amiable spirit of loose and easy camaraderie has been as much a part of the annual festivals’ atmosphere as the park’s beautiful, after-dark scenic views of the Hartford skyline.
And they say nothing's going on in Hartford. #HartfordHasIt #Mondaynightjazz pic.twitter.com/mEm8yyONp9
— MECA/Hartford (@MECAHartford) August 6, 2013
Best of all the visual delights as night falls is the storybook vision of the illuminated, golden-domed State Capitol looking like a mythic, Gothic castle perched atop a hill that slopes down gently towards the festive crowds.
While financing such ambitious jazz events as these two Bushnell bashes is always a challenge for its non-profit presenters, both festivals are alive and well this summer and back in the park for yet another season, an urban tradition that many fans regard as one of the city’s most delightful annual rites of summer.
Monday Night Jazz in Bushnell Park opens its weekly series of six consecutive concerts on Monday, July 6, running through August 10. The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz, a weekend extravaganza whose aromatic food booths and big, bustling turnouts transform the park into a vibrantly thriving fairground, bazaar and concert site from Friday, July 17, through Sunday, July 19.
Monday Night Jazz opens with a double bill featuring the Connecticut-based vocalist Kitty Kathryn, a longtime Hartford favorite, as the opening act, followed by the New York-based trumpeter Eddie Allen and his band, Push, as the headliner.
Praised for his versatility and craftsmanship, Allen has recorded and performed with luminaries ranging from Louis Hayes and Vanessa Rubin to Lester Bowie and Muhal Richard Abrams. A musical shape-shifter, Allen easily fits his oversized but flexible talent comfortably into any style or configuration from combo to big band to symphonic orchestra.
Throughout the series, opening acts hit at 6:00 pm, with headliners taking the park pavilion stage at 7:30 pm.
Presented by the non-profit Hartford Jazz Society, Monday Night Jazz, as always, features top Connecticut and regional players as the opener, and nationally and internationally known performers as the headliner.
Stylistically, the wide-sweeping series ranges from the Latin jazz of percussionist Steven Kroon to the cutting-edge explorations of trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and Sicilian Defense to the soulful mixing and matching of genres by the rising, increasingly red-hot bassist/singer Mimi Jones.
Here’s the complete season schedule with the opening act listed first:
- July 6: Kitty Kathryn and Eddie Allen’s Push
- July 13: Samantha Gilbert Band and Ronnie Burrage and Band Burrage
- July 20: Trombeatz and the Steven Kroon Latin Jazz Sextet
- July 27: Ricky Alfonso Group and Jonathan Finlayson and Sicilian Defense
- August 3: Haneef Nelson and TBA
- August 10: Natalie Fernandez and Mimi Jones.
In case of rain, the concert takes sanctuary in the jazz friendly Asylum Hill Congregational Church, 814 Asylum Avenue, Hartford. Concerts are broadcast in their entirety on wwuh.org at 91.3 FM. Information: hartfordmondaynightjazz.com.
The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz opens in the park with the great, Jamaican-born pianist Monty Alexander as its headliner.
As it has over the years, the festival features a diverse musical menu, serving everything from funk and pop jazz to Latin and mainstream grooves.
Among the Connecticut favorites is the well-known percussionist/composer/bandleader Ed Fast with Conga Bop, his band blending bop and Latin jazz.
If you’re a mainstream jazz purist and your heart is set on hearing a hard-swinging, first-rate band, you’re in luck thanks to the explosive quartet that Dezron Douglas, a redoubtable double bassist and Hartford native, will lead. Douglas’s fellow collaborators are the powerhouse saxophonist Abraham Burton, a now top-ranked reed player with deep early roots in Hartford; dynamo pianist Anthony Wonsey, and master drummer Victor Lewis.
Along with its propulsive, soulful swing, the savvy quartet can express the entire range of emotions, making the mainstream sound new and free and a nurturing source of inspiration and invention.
You can hear Douglas and Burton cookin’ together on the legendary drummer Louis Hayes’s 2014 quintet recording (also featuring vibraphonist Steve Nelson and pianist David Bryant) on Return of the Jazz Communicators (Smoke Sessions Records). Burton’s warm tenor artistry is exhibited on the ballad "Portrait of Jennie." Both he and Douglas contribute an original tune to the CD’s dozen selections.
Hayes, a renowned drummer who has played with such giants as Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley, Oscar Peterson, Dexter Gordon and McCoy Tyner, gives this personal seal of approval to Douglas. “With his feeling and the kind of person he is, he helps me so much with the things that I want to do,” he said.
With its stress on genre diversity and accessible offerings, the non-profit festival has grown into what it proclaims is “the largest free jazz event in New England,” drawing an average weekend turnout of more than 55,000 fans. Last year’s attendance for the al fresco fest, which runs three nights and two days in the park, was estimated at more than 70,000 fans.
This season also features two ticketed special events at downtown Hartford’s Infinity Music Hall and Bistro. On Thursday, July 16, at 8:00 pm, the festival presents its kick-off celebration where you can meet the noted Latin musician/composer/producer Tony Succar and experience a sample of the Unity Latin tribute to Michael Jackson and enjoy salsa dancing. On Sunday, July 19, at 11:00 am the festival serves a jazz brunch featuring the jazz and classical flutist Kim Scott. Information and ticket prices for these two events can be found at hartfordjazz.com.
All other events are free and held in the park, with the sole exception of Ross Tucker’s Hot Cat Dixieland Jazz Band’s jazz mass on Sunday, July 19, at 10:00 am at Hartford’s Christ Church Cathedral. An annual tradition, Tucker’s performance is also free.
Here’s the lineup for free events on the park’s pavilion stage.
FRIDAY, JULY 17:
- 7:00 pm Tony Succar
- 8:30 pm Monty Alexander and Harlem Kingston Express
SATURDAY, JULY 18
- 1:00 pm Funky Dawgz Brass Band “walk thru New Orleans style”
- 4:30 pm Eric Leone
- 6:00 pm Ed Fast and Conga Bop
- 7:30 pm Jakiem Joyner
- 9:00 pm Nick Colionne and Maysa
- 11:00 pm Side Street, New England dance crew
- 11:10 pm Jus Us and “Old School/Motown/R&B”
SUNDAY, JULY 19
- 3:00 pm Destiny Africa Children’s Choir
- 4:30 pm Kim Scott
- 6:00 pm Dezron Douglas featuring Abraham Burton, Anthony Wonsey and Victor Lewis
- 7:30 pm Airmen of Note
Events go forward rain or shine. Information at hartfordjazz.com.
Parisian Washboard Wizard
Stephane Seva, the washboard virtuoso with the esteemed French traditional jazz band Paris Washboard, makes a rare Connecticut appearance as he performs with three noted Nutmeg trad practitioners on Sunday, July 5, at 7:30 pm at the VFW Hall, 104 Mill Road, Guilford.
Billed as the “Connecticut Washboard Players,” pianist Jeff Barnhart, reedman Noel Kaletsky and trombonist Craig Grant will jam with Seva in an evening of Parisian style hot jazz.
With his nimble, thimble-covered fingers, the French musician can pluck, scrape, rub and elegantly evoke a rich array of swinging sounds and beaucoup joie de vivre from his musical washboard. A corrugated metal percussion instrument, it has a horizontal undulating surface and several attachments that also produce a variety of percussive sounds.
Seva is "a new generation" washboard player who thrives on varied, genre-crossing musical encounters.
With Barnhart, a premier trad jazz pianist stoking the chord changes, and Seva unleashing his washboard rhythms, there’s no telling where Kaletsky’s famous flights -- particularly his jet-propelled, clarion call clarinet choruses -- might go.
Seva, who is not only a specialist on washboard but also an accomplished jazz crooner, has performed at festivals and venues in France, the United States and around the world, often with his own bands or as a versatile percussionist/accompanist.
Currently, he’s back in the States, playing primarily in New York City through July. His stateside gigs have included his June 27 appearance at the prestigious Django Reinhardt Festival at Birdland.
Although he began his career playing in clubs with his father, a traditional jazz saxophonist, and has gained recognition in Europe as the youngest member of the old-time Paris Washboard, he’s also “a new generation” washboard player who thrives on varied, genre-crossing musical encounters. Far beyond the realm of New Orleans jazz, he has, for example, accompanied Benin music and collaborated with a didgeridoo player in a modern day summit meeting of two ancient instruments.
Complementing his mastery of the washboard, he has also studied singing with the American jazz vocalist, Sarah Lazarus. As a singer, he has recorded an album called To Frank and Ray, his homage to two of his American idols, Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles.
The concert is presented by Jeff and Joel’s House Party, an increasingly popular major trad jazz event in Connecticut, organized by Barnhart and the banjo playing, singing entertainer and entrepreneur, Joel Schiavone. Tickets for the Connecticut washboard jam: $40.00. Call (203) 208-1481.
Sporting an array of top veteran and young trad jazz practitioners, Jeff and Joel’s House Party returns for another encore run on Columbus Day Weekend, October 9 through October 11, also at the Guilford VFW. For tickets and information, visit jeffandjoelshouseparty.com and the phone number above.
Jazz Holiday for Strings
Cutting-edge jazz honed by the acclaimed bassist/composer Joe Fonda, The Nu Band and special guest, German guitarist Erhard Hirt, fills the air with the sound of improvisational freedom and explosive fury on Friday, July 3, at 7:00 pm at Middletown’s The Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts and Cultural Center.
Fonda, a longtime Connecticut favorite and a globe-trotting luminary of the international avant-garde, and Hirt, who is one of Germany’s uber guitarists, might well transform the evening in the intimate venue into a searing string summit meeting, a kind of free-jazz holiday for strings.
But as much as this pairing of the American and German string heavyweights promises, the concert package also features The Nu Band, a crack avant-garde unit led by Fonda. A group of like-minded experimental music warriors, the band has crisscrossed Europe performing at top free-jazz venues and festivals while also making its own recordings. Individually as sidemen, band members have also played and recorded with a litany of creative music giants.
Besides Fonda, The Nu Band lineup features the German-born trumpeter Thomas Herberer and saxophonist Mark Whitecage.
Along with performing and recording with his own ensembles, Fonda is also an industrial strength sideman, who has played and recorded with numerous greats ranging alphabetically from Barry Altschul to Carlo Zingaro. His expansive resume includes work with a host of both cutting-edge heroes, including Bill Dixon and Han Bennink, and such mainstream worthies as Lou Donaldson and Curtis Fuller. One of Fonda’s fondest stints includes his long-running role as the bassist with the celebrated Anthony Braxton sextet, octet and tentet from 1984 to 1999.
Herberer, a native of Schleswig, Germany, has performed on more than 100 recordings, and been hailed by the great American trumpeter/innovator Dave Douglas as “a European master.”
Whitecage, a native of Litchfield, is highly regarded as both an innovative and extremely versatile instrumentalist. Over more than five decades in his productive career, the venerable artist, who was born in 1937, has explored everything from bop and post-bop and free-jazz to electronics and the creation of sound collages with homemade instruments—playing, he once said, in every type of band except klezmer.
Tickets: $10.00. Information: buttonwood.org and (860) 347-4957. The Buttonwood is at 605 Main Street, Middletown.
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