Ballard Jazz Festival features hot jazz/rock fusion

Has the Ballard Jazz Festival gone smooth on us?

The festival's Saturday headliner, with pianist Mitchel Forman and guitarist Chuck Loeb, is being coproduced by Carol Handley Presents, a new company started by the former program director of the recently defunct smooth-jazz station KWJZ.

Not to worry, says Matt Jorgensen, who, along with John Bishop, runs Origin Records and produces the festival. Though Loeb is primarily known as a smooth jazzer and Forman has played with the likes of Rick Braun, Jeff Golub and BWB, the Forman/Loeb collaboration is a scorching jazz/rock fusion quartet with drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith (lately of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" band) that wouldn't have made it through the snoozy doors of KWJZ.

"It's a little bit different angle for the festival," says Jorgensen, "but it's kind of in line with what we do. We have a long history of presenting progressive modern jazz."

Call what he plays fusion, progressive, whatever, Forman is a lovely musician who draws from the Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans school of harmony on the acoustic side, can rock out on electric and has a mile-long cred sheet. A sideman with Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz in his early career, the versatile keyboard man toured with Carla Bley, Phil Woods and Mel Tormé before joining fusion superstars John McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter. (Forman plays on Shorter's "Phantom Navigator.")

Loeb is best known as a member of Steps Ahead and Fourplay, but he also worked with Getz and has enjoyed a successful career as a studio musician. If you're familiar with the Forman/Loeb quartet Metro, which has nearly the same personnel as the group playing here, you've got a pretty good idea of the creative, angular, '70s-style fusion you're likely to hear. (And if you prefer smoother fare, ironically, the same configuration is playing in a softer style under Loeb's leadership at Jazz Alley April 25.)

The Ballard concert features another tough twosome in trumpeters Ray Vega and Seattle's own Thomas Marriott, whose Origin album, "East-West Trumpet Summit," was the top-played record on jazz radio last June, says Jorgensen.

But the headliner show is just one of many festival highlights. As always, it kicks off with the Brotherhood of the Drum (Jorgensen and Bishop are both drummers), this year's guest star being Sonny Rollins sticks man Kobie Watkins.

The Ballard Jazz Walk, on Friday, with 13 venues featuring all stripes of jazz, from pianists Wayne Horvitz and Bill Anschell to trumpeter Cuong Vu and the ever-popular vocalist Greta Matassa, turns Ballard Avenue into Mardi Gras, a truly celebratory occasion when the jazz community comes out to party and commingle.

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