Monterey Jazz Festival: Superb lineup, crackling energy

MONTEREY, Calif. — A fat, full moon peered over the packed fairgrounds here last weekend, seeming to pull both romance and a touch of wildness from a powerhouse lineup that was extraordinary even by Monterey Jazz Festival standards.

Branford Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, Tony Bennett, Carla Bley, John Scofield — wherever you turned, some first-rate performance was getting under way.

Promethean tenor saxophonist Rollins delivered a devastatingly tender set, strutting about the stage in bright red pants, caressing and questioning the ballads "I Want To Talk About You" and "They Say It's Wonderful," which really made you want to fall in love.

Bennett, with casino volume down and jazz chops up, was clearly delighted to be making his Monterey debut. The expansive crooner scatted a chorus on "The Lady's In Love With You," sang his own lyrics to Django Reinhardt's "Nuages" and, amazingly, sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" with absolute conviction.

John Handy, the great Bay Area alto saxophonist, offered his own brand of rapturous romance, with an excellent — and updated — reprise of his legendary 1965 Monterey performance of "Spanish Lady," plus new music as well, featuring the warm-toned, swinging violinist, Carlos Reyes. (Oddly, Handy also offered a guest vocal slot to blues/rock guitarist Steve Miller, who was fine, if a little out of place.)

Out on the fairgrounds, in the intimate confines of the Night Club, Chilean vocalist Claudia Acuña enchanted the crowd with her swooning sustains and rhythmic elasticity.

Moonlight worked magic in other ways on saxophonist Marsalis, this year's Artist-in-Residence. The bobbing New Orleanian launched his set in the obsessive high gear of the late John Coltrane, then soared to a wild, wonderful, percussive, outside-the-lines piece, "Black Elks Speaks," composed by bassist Eric Revis, who grunted as he slapped the wood of his bass and violently thrummed the strings.

Marsalis was ubiquitous, guesting with the all-star high-school kids he mentored in the Next Generation Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra (look out for 17-year-old saxophonist Alex Han, from Arizona) and offering iconoclastic comments ("Bootleg!" he encouraged) in an onstage interview.

More understated, but also unconventional, Bley (in Seattle this week) offered a delicious — and, for a welcome change at Monterey, well-rehearsed — commissioned new work for big band. "The Black Orchid," named after a Monterey piano bar where the Oakland-born composer played when she was 17, began humorously, with the players gathered, piano-bar style, around the straw-blond pianist as she played "My Foolish Heart." They proceeded to deconstruct the tune with brassy, crisscrossed lines, oddly voiced yet appealing chords, followed by three compelling movements, with bluesy trumpet, trombone and alto sax solos. Fascinating piece, hopefully to be recorded soon.

More wild and wooly music blasted from indoor stage Dizzy's Den, where guitarist Nels Cline lit up the punk/jazz band Banyan with fierce lines and mad distortions.

The New Orleans Jazz Vipers, featuring bass saxophone and violin, entertained folks on the grounds. Booked before Hurricane Katrina hit, but enlisted to raise awareness for donations ($9,000 had been raised by Sunday night), these Crescent City players added just the right élan.

The weekend offered other superb performances, by the crackerjack Spanish Harlem Orchestra; the creative and keening Puerto Rican alto man Miguel Zenon; and swarming Bay Area pianist Denny Zeitlin. As always, there were mild disappointments. The promising new Pat Metheny band, which kicked off its tour in Seattle with a show that suggested a creative new direction, settled into a familiar power trio mode. And John Scofield's set devoted to the music of Ray Charles was marred by a sloppy guest appearance by Mavis Staples, whose voice, for all its conviction, is shot.

But this was a superb edition of the festival, one of the very best in years.

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com