fb-pixelNewport Jazz Festival’s wide range of styles - The Boston Globe Skip to main content
music review

Newport Jazz Festival’s wide range of styles

NEWPORT, R.I. — “We have time for one more, but it’s a sick one.” With that, John Zorn introduced the final piece in a nearly two-and-half hour set of his music, performed by nine different ensembles Friday at the Newport Jazz Festival presented by Natixis Global Asset Management.

Zorn — saxophonist, composer, MacArthur “genius” fellow, and longtime musical provocateur — is 60 now, and so is the Newport Jazz Festival. The festival celebrated its 60th by expanding from two days to three, with Friday devoted to “emerging artists.”

Aside from Zorn, these artists covered a wide range of styles. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society extended the big band tradition with overlapping rhythmic grooves, textural variety, and dynamic range. Argue also made a couple of the day’s more political comments, dedicating one tune to the military contractor Blackwater International and another to the pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, who was persecuted for being gay. Rudresh Mahanthappa’s quintet deconstructed the music of Charlie Parker. Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks dug into the details of ’20s-era jazz. New Orleans musician Jon Batiste led a second-line parade in front of the mainstage.

Given the biggest chunk of time, Zorn took Fort Adams’s interior Quad Stage for one of his Masada Marathons, covering the many kinds of ensembles he writes for under that moniker. Was it “sick”? Not exactly. Zorn’s various Masada projects have a strong streak of the minor-keyed melodies and odd meters of Jewish klezmer music. His longstanding Masada Quartet split the difference between klezmer and Ornette Coleman, with its folky, loose-unison themes and passages of free blowing. Sometimes the klezmer-like melodies took on a Latin or Arabic tinge.

Advertisement



The violinist Mark Feldman and pianist Sylvie Courvoursier played a virtuoso set that veered into tango. With the quintet Bar Kokhba, guitarist Marc Ribot took off into a bluesy frenzy that conjured the Latin rock of Santana. That final number, from Electric Masada, sent up squalls of jammy jazz-rock abetted by laptop noise.

Advertisement



Zorn alternately played, directed the bands from a seat onstage, or sat in the wings, smiling approvingly. And he brought all nine bands in ahead of schedule. This former enfant terrible appears to have superior organizational skills.


Jon Garelick can be reached at jon.garelick4@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgarelick.