North Bay well represented at 50th Monterey Jazz Fest

By JAY GOETTING, Register Correspondent

Jimmy Lyons, the late co-founder of the Monterey Jazz Festival, used to say he was throwing a big party each year on a September weekend. A 50th anniversary is certainly cause to celebrate, and Lyons would have been proud to see that his successor Tim Jackson has carried on the tradition.

In fact, it was not only a tribute to festivals past. The festival also contained a healthy dose of new music and artists that made the party one of the better editions at Monterey in recent years.

One-time headliner of Napa’s downtown jazz festival in the early 1990s, drummer Benny Barth, saw to it the north end of the Bay was well represented, adding bassist Chris Amberger and guitarist Randy Vincent. Not only did they provide a solid set with the trio but brought on Buddy Montgomery on vibraphone and Dick Whittington on piano, reminiscent of the Mastersounds of the ’50s and ’60s.

Barth joined the Montgomery brothers and pianist Richie Crabtree in Indianapolis and came to California to play the first MJF in 1958. They went on to play Chicago’s original Blue Note, New York’s first Birdland and numerous other venues around the U.S. “Most of those clubs aren’t around any more,” said Barth, “but Buddy and I are.”

The group played the music of Gerry Mulligan, Tadd Dameron, J.J. Johnson and some Montgomery originals including “Waterfall” and brother Wes’s “SOS.” The trio played an especially pretty version of Jimmy Rowles’ ballad, “The Peacock.”

Montgomery played some nice lines, but the mallets have slowed a notch. Barth, on the other hand, a year older than his former colleague, played with energy, driving the group through the nearly hour-and-a-half set.

Vallejo’s Mimi Fox, a regular at Napa’s Uva Trattoria, along with her guitar trio, played a pair of sets in the Coffee House Gallery.

This year was the earliest in the past half-century that the three-day event sold out all three days. In all, some 45,000 jazz fans attended the 2007 festival.

Also drawing audiences were some of the jazz world’s best known names: vocalist/pianist Diana Krall, artist-in-residence Terence Blanchard, composer-bandleader Gerald Wilson and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who put the finishing touch on Sunday night’s main arena concert.

Though Krall played much of the same music she performed at earlier festivals, her commercial success and her marriage to rock star Elvis Costello have apparently elevated her to “celebrity status.” Security personnel and her handlers kept even professional photographers from getting too close to snap photos.

Gerald Wilson presented this year’s commissioned work, a collection of jazz pieces he called “Monterey Moods.” That was on the same Saturday evening program as trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s “A Tale of God’s Will,” a suite of moving pieces based on the New Orleans experience of hurricane Katrina.

As some Napans learned, it is imperative to get tickets early. A few got grounds passes barely before they sold out, but Tom and Judy Nunan have worked their way up through the chairs over the years. They now have seats in the box once occupied by jazz writer Ralph J. Gleason who was co-founder of the MJF with Jimmy Lyons. Tickets will go on sale for the 51st Monterey Jazz festival next spring.

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