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CareFusion Jazz Festival

It took place in Brooklyn Avenue Park: this year's festival concerts are scattered across the stages of four of the five districts of New York City (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx; only the quiet bedroom of Staten Island was not covered). On a large open stage in the presence of about four thousand spectators were presented two programs related to the name and work of the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis.

The concert opened the hot and pushy set of Mike Stern Quartet - guitarist, which came to the attention of the general public precisely because of his work in the Miles ensemble in the early 1980s. Movable and positive, Mike played with his touring ensemble, with which we have repeatedly heard him in Moscow (bassist Tom Kennedy, saxophonist Bob Franceschini and drummer Lionel Cordew). Only Stern's own music sounded, mainly from his new album "Big Neighborhood". Powerful play of this quartet has won the sincere approval of the audience.

And the main event of the evening was the program "Bitches Brew Revisited", dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the release of an epoch-making album by Miles Davis, an album that has become a kind of watershed in the history of jazz. On the one hand, many fans of Miles, who cautiously but favorably accepted his earlier attempts to mix jazz idiomatic with the sound pressure and hypnotic rhythm of rock music, still could not accept the double album "Bitches Brew", represented more than one and a half hours (two vinyl records under one cover) of a powerful, deeply electrified and based on heavy rock rhythms of genres mixing, in which improvisation was built according to jazz laws, but the sound of rock dominated. This form was called "jazz-rock" and became the early (and most creative) version of the broad movement of the 1970s and 80s, called fusion (alloy). On the other hand, Miles' early fusion attracted at that time, in the 1970s, the broadest youth audience that had never heard of jazz before; having gone through the turbulent 1970s with the evolution of fusion, part of this audience (though a small part) discovered jazz itself. "Davis has drawn [this album] a line that many jazz fans have never been able to cross; moreover, they never forgave Davis for drawing it," wrote jazz historian Bill Mayer.

In the Bitches Brew Revisited project, the role of Miles is quite convincing played by the trumpeter Graham Haynes - even if he was dressed on stage and not as extravagant as Davis used to dress, but the same way he was placed back to the audience, facing the ensemble (in the frame, in addition to Haynes, you can see the percussionist Adam Rudolph; he was part of the rhythm section along with rock drummer Cindy Blackman (a group of Lenny Kravitz), who also has extensive experience working with jazz musicians.)

The necessary modernity of the sound of the project was ensured by the participation of DJ Logic, not just any DJ, but one of the most creative and experienced in terms of cooperation with improvising musicians. The key textures on an authentic electric piano and a modern synthesizer were played by Marco Benevento, and the bass grooves, on which all Bitches Brew music is largely based, were taken by one of the most interesting electric bassists of modern fusion - Melvin Gibbs.

Finally, the parties of all the perfumers of the original recording (saxophonist Wayne Shorter and bass clarinettist Benny Mopeen) were performed by one musician - Antoine Roney, who played both the bass clarinet and soprano saxophone. One of the most experienced participants of the project - guitarist James "Blood" Almer, who decorated the sound textures of Bitches Brew Revisited with his passages deeply embedded in the blues, was hiding next to him behind the barrier of notes attached to the lecterns (blowing breeze).

It should be noted at once that the participants of Bitches Brew Revisited did not play the original Davis - and who will be able to adequately play the game Joe Zavinul, Chick Coria, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin and other future titans who participated in the original recording? They created a modern reading of this material, which is quite recognizable and easily perceived by the widest possible public, and this was proved by the extremely hot reception given to this project by the audience.

"Vision" and "Carfusion" are not the only jazz festivals in New York this summer. For example, on June 12-13 in several clubs in Manhattan (more precisely, in the West Village quarter) Undead Jazz Festival took place, organized by the leaders of the new club (le) Poisson Rouge. The name of the festival means that jazz is "immortal", and this fact was emphasized by an extremely busy program - three venues in two evenings hosted thirty-five groups! Among the participants were both giants (trombonist Roswell Rudd, pianist Matthew Shipp, trumpeter Dave Douglas) and very young bands, sometimes very radical and youthful. Alas, at the time of the festival, the author of these lines was not yet in New York, so it was not possible to see it. But we managed to see the most interesting mini-festival Red Hook Jazz Festival, which took place on June 20 in Brooklyn's Red Hook Quarter, to be more exact - on the "City Meadows", a tiny rectangle of greenery on the place of the former dump, arranged by the forces of the quarter's residents - in fact, as well as the festival (held for the third time).

The "lawn", despite the foolish heat, gathered at least 250 listeners, mainly Red Hook neighbors, who enjoyed a modest "neighborhood" menu (pizza, dollar-brown cakes and lemonade for 50 cents a glass) and listened to excellent groups, mainly clinging to the modern Brooklyn improv scene, inherited in terms of creativity and "detachment" from the standards of mainstream Manhattan Downtown scene of the late 90's - early 2000's.

In fact, this is the scene, but the majority of its representatives in the last three or four years moved to Brooklyn - in Manhattan unbearably increased rents, could not stand the increase in rent and many avant-garde clubs in Manhattan.