Detroit Jazz Festival Highlights
This year’s Detroit Jazz Festival was blessed with close-to-perfect weather and a wide variety of jazz to fit the taste of most listeners. Here are some highlights of the largest free jazz festival anywhere.
TOP: Ron Carter played in various constellations during the festival. Here is his Nonet on opening night at Campus Martius. Carter is on the far left and to the right are the four cellos that created a unique nonet sound. It would probably have worked better in a concert hall.
RIGHT: The Jazz Talk Tent featured panel discussions, among others two on the remarkable career of Kenn Cox who departed the planet in 2008. Here are members of the Kenn Cox tribute band who overlapped in the Talk Tent with pianist Randy Weston and tenorist Jimmy Heath. From left: saxophonist Ralph “Buzzy” Jones, bassist Marion Hayden, pianist Kamau Kenyatta, Heath, fan Luis Torregrosa, and seated in hat is Weston.
LEFT: The Kenn Cox Tribute band at the Waterfront Stage on Saturday featured among others pianist Kamau Kenyatta, trombonist George Bohanon, bassist Marion Hayden and tenorist Vincent Bowens. The band featured several of Cox’s remarkable compositions.
BOTTOM: Playing on opening night was the Soul Rebels from New Orleans. Their version of the brass band tradition with funk beats was contagious and quite a contrast to the Carter Nonet. They played in front of the monumental First National Building on the south end of Campus Martius.
