Call us lazy Dodgers fans for arriving in the second inning and departing in the seventh, but baseball games don't last six hours, and we didn't wanna end up like the woman in front of us who left on a stretcher.
UCLA's Herbie Hancock Institute can pick the best for its Performance Ensemble, and this year's class will have to sprint to match last year's, which included comprehensive alto man Devin Daniels and trumpet-composing genius Julien Knowles. The alto woman on today's stage, Alden Hellmuth, had the goods -- rounded tone, full command from top to bottom, and most important, chunks of ideas to chew on, not just gales o' scales. Ukrainian trumpeter Yakiv Tsvietinskyi blew clean, hard and melodious, and drummer Ebs Daramola provided slapbang drive for compositions that packed more energy than intrigue. Glad we got there in time for this fun sextet.
Alex Isley (daughter of Isley Brothers psychedelic guitarist Ernie) displayed an effortlessly wafting two-octave voice in service of her band's medium-groove makeout music appropriate for Bowl sunbathing and beach-ball batting, though one could imagine it going down just as well at night. No memorable melodies surfaced, nor did we extract much jazz (flighty flute guy excepted). But then Ms. Isley checked her coordinates and demonstrated the full excellence of her pipes on Thelonious Monk's twisty "'Round Midnight," which hardly anyone can imagine singing note for note. (She was humble about it.)
You might have heard vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke's snakecharmer music on one of those "Ethiopiques" issues of contemporary '70s Ethiopian music (Vol. 4) or someplace else. Get an Afro groove going with traps and hand drums behind mystic horn riffs while Mulatu wails on the plates -- what could go wrong? The ganja smoke rose, festgoer bodies swayed, and it could have gone on forever. The only thing missing was that cheesy Vox organ, and we easily forgave that when Kamasi Washington, the next day's headliner, stepped up in a spangly robe and ripped into a tenor solo that made us think he had four sets of lungs.
Slotted before Astatke on the rotating stage was the all-star quartet of wind master Charles Lloyd, resuming the role of outdoor-festival jazz welcomer he embodied in the '60s, if anyone remembered. Which few seemed to, as the crowd milled and gabbed through the familiar bouncy tenor-sax riffs of 1966's "Dream Weaver," and audience noise continued to blur the remarkable subtleties of Lloyd's "Defiant, Tender Warrior," released this year. "Monk's Dance" and "Booker's Garden," also from Lloyd's current "The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow" album, began to turn heads, as pianist Jason Moran leveraged his crisp attack and sense of harmonic adventure to show how Thelonian lessons continue to fertilize jazz soil; and bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade kept up a thumping rhythmic conversation that fed the magical Moran-Lloyd dynamic -- this quartet's time together has paid dividends. Finally, let us acknowledge that though Charles Lloyd may wear a red cap and smile, he's a serious man. Gentle piano chords and hushing cymbals laid a carpet for Lloyd, half in shade, half in sunlight, to breathe the dolorous tenor tones of "La Llorona," whose Spanish melody drew tears from the eyes of the attentive even if they didn't know the song's story. Interpreted in many ways, "La Llorona" always includes the character of a woman weeping over her dead children, an image that can't fail to strike home in our moment. True observation: To the east over the summer-browning canyon, two pairs of crows circled slowly during this song, and this song only. They never appeared before or since.
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Also on the bill: The L.A. County High School for the Arts Jazz Band, Christian McBride, Cimafunk, Andra Day, Jodeci.
PHOTO BY FUZZY BAROQUE.