Performances Magazine Hollywood Bowl Playboy Jazz Festival 2019 by California Media Group

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PERFORMANCES MAGAZINE 1

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SATURDAY & SUNDAY

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GREETINGS FROM THE L A PHIL

Welcome to the

H OLLYWOOD BOWL!

Welcome to the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl! This muchloved program is now in its fifth decade, and we’re thrilled to bring you a festival filled with some of the world’s greatest musicians, with a huge diversity of musical styles and backgrounds. You will enjoy Kool & the Gang, Boz Scaggs, Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, Maceo Parker, Terence Blanchard, The Cookers, Angélique Kidjo, celebrations of Benny Golson and the late Ndugu Chancler, and much more. All the concerts, of course, will be hosted by George Lopez. We hope you will also take a look at this year’s Jazz at the Bowl series, curated by our Creative Chair for Jazz, Herbie Hancock. Highlights include Tony Bennett, Buddy Guy, Black Movie Soundtrack III, Michael McDonald, Chaka Khan, a Brazilian night with Ivan Lins and Lee Ritenour, The Roots, Ben Harper, and Herbie’s own “Next Generation” collaboration with rising stars. All of this adds up to another dazzling array of concerts; the best in jazz, blues, funk, and beyond. And don’t miss these other shows that share the same spirit: John Legend headlining Opening Night, Pink Martini with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and Thomas Wilkins, Leon Bridges, Cécile McLorin Salvant, our annual Smooth Summer Jazz minifest, Gladys Knight, and our Fireworks Finale with Earth, Wind & Fire. Jazz and blues are thriving at the Hollywood Bowl, and I wish you many happy evenings under the stars! SIMON WOODS

Chief Executive Officer Los Angeles Philharmonic Association

Here we go! It’s summer at the Hollywood Bowl. However you and your family celebrate your tradition of the Bowl, we are excited to share it with you in this party which is The Playboy Jazz Festival! This festival each year marks the start of the LA Phil’s summer at the Hollywood Bowl and we’ve been getting this spectacular venue ready to greet you. We hope you will enjoy the variety of offerings from Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine: from tacos and fried chicken to sushi and short ribs. Visit our Bowl Store for recordings, t-shirts, picnic accessories, and much more. Stop by the Hollywood Bowl Museum to learn about the history of this iconic place. Find a spot in your seat, on a bench, or in one of our picnic areas to start your day and then continue with hours and hours of incredible jazz programming. We at the LA Phil cannot make this happen alone and, as always, we are grateful to all members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the County Chief Executive Office, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission for their partnership. We thank our foundation, corporate, and media partners, and all of our donors who provide incredible support to each concert you come to experience here at the Bowl. The Hollywood Bowl has been the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 98 years and we hope you will embrace this beautiful county park as your summer home as well. We are proud to host wonderful artists representing a vast range of musical genres throughout the summer and to bring together all the people of the county and beyond for this quintessentially Los Angeles experience. Thank you for joining us in kicking off our season with this fantastic tradition. Welcome back, and enjoy the show! GAIL SA MUEL

Executive Director Los Angeles Philharmonic Association

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ABOUT THE LA PHIL

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHAIR

DIRECTORS

Jay Rasulo*

Gregory A. Adams Julie Andrews Wallis Annenberg Thomas L. Beckmen Lynn A. Booth Reveta F. Bowers Linda Brittan Jennifer Broder Kawanna Brown Andrea Chao-Kharma R. Martin Chavez Christian D. Chivaroli, JD Dan Clivner Mari L. Danihel Donald P. de Brier* Louise D. Edgerton Lisa Field Joshua Friedman David Gindler Jennifer Miller Goff Lenore S. Greenberg Carol Colburn Grigor Megan Hernandez Teena Hostovich Jonathan Kagan* Sarah H. Ketterer

CEO

Simon Woods VICE CHAIRS

David C. Bohnett* Jerrold L. Eberhardt* Jane B. Eisner* David Meline* Diane Paul*

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HONOR ARY LIFE

Darioush Khaledi Dana Marevich Margaret Morgan Younes Nazarian Becky Novy Leith O’Leary R. Joseph Plascencia Sandy Pressman Ann Ronus Jennifer Rosenfeld Laura Rosenwald Nancy S. Sanders* Eric L. Small G. Gabrielle Starr Jay Stein* Christian Stracke* Jason Subotky Ronald D. Sugar* Jack Suzar Sue Tsao Jon Vein Alyce de Roulet Williamson Irwin Winkler

DIRECTORS

Lawrence N. Field Frank Gehry Ginny Mancini Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy *Executive Committee Member as of March 1, 2019

July

Featu

Simo Tom R Ingrid

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Jaz z July 13-20, 2019

at The

Featuring:

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COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES

I am delighted to welcome you to our wonderful Hollywood Bowl. As the largest natural outdoor amphitheater in the country, the iconic Hollywood Bowl is one of the prized treasures among the County’s world-renowned arts venues. The Bowl has always been especially near and dear to my heart. For as long as I can remember, I have been coming here each summer to enjoy good food and great music with friends, family, and many a stranger. There are few things I enjoy more than a summer night at the Bowl. So, whether you are a long-time or first-time concertgoer, I hope that this season you will add to your collection of Hollywood Bowl memories. Thank you so much for being part of the Bowl 2019 audience. This great L.A. icon is located in the Third Supervisorial District, which I am proud to represent. SHEILA KUEHL

Supervisor, Third District County of Los Angeles PS: The Bowl’s Park and Ride and its Shuttle services are designed so that neither traffic nor distance will keep someone from attending a performance. If you haven’t used them before, please make this the summer you try them.

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COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Hilda L. Solis Mark Ridley-Thomas Sheila J. Kuehl Janice K. Hahn, CHAIR Kathryn Barger COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION

Helen Hernandez PRESIDENT

Eric Hanks VICE PRESIDENT

Constance Jolcuvar SECRETARY FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: MARK RIDLEY-THOMAS, SHEILA J. KUEHL, JANICE K. HAHN, KATHRYN BARGER, HILDA L. SOLIS

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission fosters excellence, diversity, vitality, understanding, and accessibility of the arts in Los Angeles County, encompassing 88 municipalities, and provides leadership in cultural services. In addition to supporting over 400 arts organizations in its role as an arts funder, the Arts Commission implements the regional initiative dedicated to restoring arts education to 81 school districts, funds the largest arts internship program in the country, and commissions art for the County’s civic art collection. This July, the Arts Commission will become the official Department of Arts and Culture for the County of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association’s programs are made possible, in part, by generous grants from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Liane Weintraub EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Eric Eisenberg IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT

Pamela Bright-Moon Tim Dang Darnella Davidson Liz Schindler Johnson Bettina Korek Alis Clausen Odenthal Claire Peeps Norma Provencio Pichardo Hope Warschaw Rosalind Wyman Kristin Sakoda EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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FE AT U R E

TERRACE MARTIN AN D DON NY McCASLIN The Future Steps Forward BY PE T E R H O L S L I N TERRACE MARTIN

Terrace Martin and Donny McCaslin are two very different artists: Martin is a hiphop producer and jazz saxophonist from Los Angeles and distinctly Los Angeles in his sound, while McCaslin is a sax player and composer in New York City for whom arena-rock bravado and late-night moodiness are equal touchstones. But while they’ve taken different paths in their careers, they share a progressive sensibility, building on the jazz canon while drawing influences from hip-hop and rock. This cross-genre tendency has always been at the core of the Playboy Jazz Festival, so we decided to speak with them about where jazz fits in alongside other styles of music, and how an open-minded approach impacts jazz’s past, present, and future. In his contributions to critically acclaimed albums like Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, Martin has proven himself a master at balancing disciplines. His style is sensuous and luminescent, owing as much to the complex harmonies of jazz as to the bulletproof production of West Coast rap. If you ask him, though, there’s no magic formula to his genre-crossing approach. This is simply the music he grew up on, and how he always experienced it at home in L.A.’s Crenshaw District. “I grew up around Black music in general,” Martin says. “The truth is, me personally, I don’t look at it as ‘hip-hop’ and ‘jazz.’ I just look at it as all the same.” Alongside peers like Kamasi Washington and Robert Glasper, Martin embodies a new generation of cross-genre jazz innovation. He’s hardly the first artist to cross jazz with other styles of music — a tradition that dates back to at least the 1940s, when Machito and Chano Pozo pioneered

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Latin jazz, inspiring and working with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker as they added Afro-Cuban rhythms to bebop. But Martin also isn’t indebted to vintage approaches, like the “fusion” era of the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas fusion drew from psychedelic rock and R&B, he came into jazz through hip-hop, picking up the sax when he was 14 after hearing A Tribe Called Quest sample the same records that his

father (himself a seasoned jazz drummer) would regularly play in the house. Working with a variety of artists — Snoop Dogg, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder — he’s learned to focus on making good music, whatever the inspiration may be. “I’ve always played jazz and been strongly part of the culture, but my thing has always been to produce records and

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FE AT U R E — CO N T I N U E D

get the point across on a certain level that the world will hear,” Martin says. “You just gotta be able to walk in the room and understand that the biggest ego in the room is the music. All we want to do is make the best song we can possibly make — a song that’s going to touch somebody’s heart, maybe convince somebody to not commit suicide, maybe tell somebody in jail, ‘Don’t worry about it. Your time will come.’” Over on the East Coast, saxophonist Donny McCaslin shares a similarly bold vision of what jazz can be. Raised in the hippie enclave of Santa Cruz, CA, McCaslin grew up going to reggae concerts and playing in a salsa group while learning his way around Paul Gonsalves’s legendary tenor sax solo in Duke Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” from the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. He later moved to New York, where he’s been a veteran of the jazz scene for nearly 30 years. A master of the craft, he’s studied Sonny Rollins but has also explored Latin music and rock ‘n’ roll — and his openness to new ideas prepared him well for his groundbreaking work on David Bowie’s jazz-inflected final album, 2016’s Blackstar. McCaslin acknowledges his love for classic fusion bands like Weather Report and The Headhunters, but he sees his own work as separate. “To me, it’s more like progressive music,” he says of albums like Blow., his stunning solo effort from 2018, in which he distilled his furious and lush playing style into dynamic, vocal-driven rock. According to McCaslin, the life of a jazz musician in a hub like New York is both more liberating and more daunting than it used to be. “There’s more of an emphasis now on original music. There’s less of the tradition of the young apprentice playing in a seasoned veteran’s group. For a variety of reasons, that has really broken down,” he says. “It used to be Art Blakey, Betty Carter, Gary Burton, Dizzy Gillespie — you had all these young people in their bands. But that’s changed. When you’re younger, you have to go your own way.” This has been the direction that a lot of music has taken in recent years, as the internet has facilitated a more natural cross-hatching between genres. And like Martin, McCaslin has been eager to think

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DONNY MCCASLIN

LarL

IT USED TO BE ART BL AKEY, BE T T Y CARTER, GARY BU RTO N, D IZ Z Y G I LLESPI E — YO U HAD ALL TH ESE YO U N G PEO PLE I N TH EI R BAN DS. BUT THAT’S CHAN GED. WH EN YO U ’RE YO U N G ER, YO U HAVE TO G O YO U R OWN WAY. — D o nny M c Caslin

outside of the traditional jazz mold. Working with Bowie taught him to think bigger and embrace radical innovation. In the sessions for Blow., he threw out his previous approaches and remapped the entire composition process to fit in singers alongside his sax. When Martin mixes jazz with hip-hop, he works in service of a wider vision. His 2016 album Velvet Portraits features sprawling epics like “Mortal Man,” whose aquatic undertow of saxophone and synths inspire deep meditation in the listener. But he also wrote a more lowrider-friendly tribute to an L.A. food staple with “Turkey Taco.” Made in the same session where he produced rapper YG’s street anthem “Twist My Fingaz,” the song’s chest-caving, Roger Troutman–style boogie-funk beat anchors bracing sax builds and almost Monk-like piano accents — all of it reflecting the overlapping cultures of Los Angeles. “You see turkey tacos a lot in the Black communities in L.A.,” Martin says. “We

ground up the turkey, and we make it just like a taco, but we may add Louisiana or Red Rooster hot sauce to it, lettuce and extra-sharp cheddar cheese. The Blacks and Latinos are all connected in L.A. We all live in the same community, so we raise each other, and we mix a lot of different influences.” In Martin’s eyes, the only way the jazz tradition can continue to thrive is if musicians embrace the idea of venturing into uncharted territory. Jazz has always been a progressive form of music; there’s no point in mastering the standards if you’re not also willing to look beyond them. “What are you saying? And does it matter what you say?” Martin says, citing saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and recent Blue Note signee Joel Ross as young artists who are expressing something vital with their music today. “It takes more courage to put yourself at the front of the line and try to push the culture.”

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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Macbeth

Simon Simon Helberg Helberg in Witch in Witch

David Kwong’s The Enigmatist

Idina Idina Menzel Menzel in Skintight in Skintight

Theresa Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet

Marisela Marisela Treviño Treviño Orta’s Orta’s Nightfall Nightfall

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F O O D + W I N E AT A G L A N C E

The Backyard

Marketplaces

Specialty sandwiches, seasonal grab-and-go salads, cheese + charcuterie plates, snacks, beer, and a wide-ranging variety of approachable and delicious wines await you at all]three of our Marketplaces. You’ll find everything you need to build a picnic from scratch or supplement one you already have.

The Bowl’s culinary team – James Beard Award Winners chef Suzanne Goin and restaurateur Caroline Styne of celebrated restaurants Lucques, a.o.c., Tavern, and The Larder – are now in their fourth year of providing exceptional cuisine designed to make your concert experiences even more spectacular. From supper in your box seats to portable picnic baskets, there’s

Inspired by the gorgeous natural surroundings of the Bowl, this al fresco space has the feel of a chic backyard in the Hollywood Hills. Two large wood-burning grills are the focus of this farmers’ market-driven restaurant serving grilled fish, chops, steaks, vegetables, salads, and raw bar items.

Street Food & Snacks

A variety of delicious options are available throughout the Bowl, including street tacos, salads, nachos, specialty hot dogs, bánh mì, gourmet pizza, rustic BBQ, artisan baked goods, sweets, and popcorn.

Picnic Boxes

It’s easier than ever to enjoy a picnic supper before your concert with five menus of delectable fresh-made picnic boxes from Food + Wine. Simply pre-order online by 4 pm the day before your concert, and your choice will be waiting for you when you arrive at the Bowl.

something for everyone – no matter your taste.

The Wine Bar by a.o.c.

Inspired by the original a.o.c. on 3rd St., the Wine Bar features a wide selection of Caroline’s favorite new and old world wines to be explored by both experienced and novice wine lovers, all paired with Suzanne Goin’s signature small plates menu. Reservations recommended.

Kitchen 22

Kitchen 22 is the best place to indulge in fan favorites like burgers, French fries, fried chicken, specialty sandwiches, and salads.

Catering at the Bowl

Lucques at the Circle

Give your guests the experience of a lifetime when you host your next event at the Bowl! Our selection of seven beautiful venues is perfect for events of all sizes, from intimate gatherings to elaborate affairs.

Fine dining for subscribers of the Pool Circle, with a seasonal made-to-order menu and an exceptional wine list, styled from the award-winning restaurant Lucques.

Supper in Your Seats

Enjoy a delicious pre-concert meal served to you in the comfort of your box seats. Menu selections include Suzanne Goin’s threecourse menus, family-style feasts, à la carte starters, main courses, desserts, and wine. Order by 4pm the day before your concert.

Mobile ordering: Download the Hollywood Bowl app to place an order from the comfort of your seat and skip the line at pick up. Mobile ordering is available at the Popcorn, BBQ/Pizza, and Hot Dogs/Bánh Mì Street Food Stands.

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CODA

WE CELEB RATE AN D WE REMEMBER… The firmament of jazz is vast and ever-expanding, but as we prepare to celebrate the 2019 Playboy Jazz Festival, we recognize and mourn the stars who have left us since the last time we gathered. No consideration of the music world’s losses in the past year can begin without Aretha Franklin. The gospel singer was more than a once-in-a-generation musician: She was an unparalleled artist who helped to shape the soul of the latter half of the 20th Century. We’ve also had to say goodbye to the incomparable Nancy Wilson, a mainstay at the Playboy Jazz Festival, whose talent, joy, and personality made her one of the most beloved jazz singers of all time. André Previn holds a special place in the heart of the Hollywood Bowl. The Music Director of the LA Phil from 1985 to 1989, Previn was a multihyphenate talent who embraced performance, composition, and conducting. Hal Blaine is potentially the most prolific drummer in the history of recorded music, with over 35,000 sessions to his name; he got his start touring with Count Basie and toured with Patti Page and Tommy Sands. We also lost vocalists James Ingraham, Rebecca Parris, and Ethel Ennis — better known to those in her Charm City home as the “First Lady of Jazz.” Trumpeter Roy Hargrove carved a unique path in the jazz world, winning a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album and collaborating with funk and neo-soul artists like D’Angelo. Tomasz Stanko, the Polish free-jazz trumpeter who worked with Jack DeJohnette and Cecil Taylor, also passed away, as did Jerry Gonzalez, the Nuyorican trumpeter who played with Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente. Trombonist Urbie Green led both the Benny Goodman Orchestra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, while

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trombonist Jimmy Wilkins played the same role in bands with Clark Terry and Count Basie. Quincy Jones collaborator Bill Watrous literally wrote the book on the instrument: Trombonisms. A number of pianists left us this year, including New Orleans legend Henry Butler, musicologist James Dapogny, Jack Reilly, French new-wave cinema composer Michel Legrand, classical-jazz hybridist Jacques Loussier, and Randy Weston, who introduced untold numbers of Americans to African music. Percussionist Jack Costanzo was an early adopter of the Afro-Cuban beat, while drummer Alvin Fielder was a founding member of the legendary Chicago collective Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. We lost AACM saxophonist Joseph Jarman and baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett. R&B legend Big Jay McNeely and Miles Davis collaborator Sonny Fortune departed, too. And we bid farewell to longtime Playboy Jazz Festival favorite Dave Samuels, who played vibraphone and steelpan with Spyro Gyra and Caribbean Jazz Project. Chicago blues lost a pair of guitar titans in Otis Rush and Eddie Taylor, Jr., while Canadian guitarist Ed Bickert also passed. And of course, we pay tribute to those who helped to shape the world of jazz beyond the stage, including journalist and historian Ira Gitler, composer and arranger Patrick Williams, producer Michael Panico, JazzTimes founder (and drummer) Ira Sabin, and Lorraine Gordon, who owned one of the most consequential jazz clubs of all time: the Village Vanguard. From its very beginnings, jazz has been a communal art form, which means that the loss of each of these people is a loss for the music. We thank them all for sharing their lives, legacies, and music with us.

ARETHA FRANKLIN

NANCY WILSON

ROY HARGROVE

HENRY BUTLER

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COMIN G SO O N

JAZZ AT TH E BOWL The Playboy Jazz Festival kicks off another summer of vibrant and exploratory jazz, soul, and R&B concerts at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. Join us!

J U N E 15

AUG 7

AU G 23 –25

Opening Night at the Bowl with John Legend

Buddy Guy ∙ Jimmie Vaughan ∙ Charlie Musselwhite

Pink Martini with Orchestra Hollywood Bowl Orchestra

Hollywood Bowl Orchestra

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

AUG 23 Violent Femmes ∙ AUG 24 La Santa Cecilia ∙ AUG 25 Booker T’s Stax Revue

AUG 28

The Roots Christian McBride Big Band S E P T 11

Ben Harper ∙ Neneh Cherry A U G 14 J U N E 16

Chromeo ∙ Toro y Moi ∙ Noname ∙ Ian Isiah

Ivan Lins and Friends: A Journey to Brazil Ivan Lins Quartet with Big Band conducted by John Beasley Dianne Reeves, special guest

J U LY 2 – 4

New York Voices, special guest

July 4th Fireworks Spectacular with Nile Rodgers & CHIC

Lee Ritenour’s World of Brazil Dave Grusin, special guest Luciana Souza, special guest

S E P T 13 –14

Paulinho Da Costa, special guest

Earth, Wind & Fire

Gregoire Maret, special guest

Hollywood Bowl Orchestra

Chico Pinheiro, special guest

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

A U G 18

J U LY 5

Leon Bridges Rhye

Smooth Summer Jazz Dave Koz & Friends with Gerald Albright, Rick Braun, Kenny Lattimore, and Aubrey Logan ∙ The Commodores ∙ Hiroshima the 40th Anniversary ∙ Adam Hawley A U G 21

J U LY 1 0

Tony Bennett J U LY 31

Michael McDonald ∙ Chaka Khan

Herbie Hancock: Next Generation R+R=NOW

SEPT 25

Noname, special guest

Black Movie Soundtrack III

Phoelix, special guest

Marcus Miller, musical director Craig Robinson, host Hollywood Bowl Orchestra Vince Mendoza, conductor

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Chick Corea Trilogy with Christian McBride & Brian Blade

Joshua Redman Quartet with The Bad Plus

Sergio Mendes & Bebel Gilberto

Bill Frisell & Julian Lage Duo

Thu, Oct 3 Royce Hall, UCLA

Sat, Nov 16 Royce Hall, UCLA

Sun, Nov 10 Royce Hall, UCLA

Thu, Dec 5 Royce Hall, UCLA

ANNOUNCING THE

2019-20 SEASON Omar Sosa & Yilian Cañizares Aguas Trio Featuring Gustavo Ovalles Fri, Feb 28 Royce Hall, UCLA

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Lea DeLaria PHILIP GLASS In Concert

& JERRY Sat, Jan 18 QUICKLEY WHISTLEBLOWER The Theatre at Ace Hotel

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Gregory Porter Fri, Feb 7 Royce Hall, UCLA

Fly Higher: Charlie Parker at 100 Thu, Mar 26 Royce Hall, UCLA

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JULY 15

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5/28/19 11:40 AM

M ASTER OF CEREMONIES

GEORGE LOPEZ Now that he’s in his seventh year as host of the Playboy Jazz Festival, you’d think George Lopez might be getting accustomed to the excitement. No way.

H OW D I D YO U G E T I N TO JA Z Z?

Y O U P L AY E D B A S S O N S T A G E W I T H

My grandparents raised me. They listened to Mexican music in the morning, and at parties it was Mexican music. My grandfather’s nephew worked at a record pressing plant, and from the early ’70s he would bring the albums that were defective [over to the house]. He’d bring me Songs in the Key of Life, What’s Going On?, Elton John’s Captain Fantastic, and he brought me Miles Davis. I always loved music and had an appreciation of it. In doing the jazz festival, it’s grown beyond.

MARCUS MILLER A COUPLE OF

D O YO U R E M E M B E R YO U R FI RS T CO N C E R T AT T H E B OW L?

My first concert at the Hollywood Bowl, I believe it may have been when the orchestra played to Warner Bros. cartoons. When you realize that every cartoon that you’ve ever seen had a big orchestra behind it, you get lost in that! You forget the horns and the piano and that an orchestra is there playing music for a cartoon! I think I saw Earth, Wind & Fire early on, too. It’s always great! As a venue, it doesn’t lose anything — the acoustics aren’t lost, which a lot of times they are in open-air venues. In the last row, you hear as well as if you were in the tenth row.

Y E A R S AG O, R I G H T ?

I wasn’t plugged in, but I’m ready to throw down, man! I play a little bit of guitar, and I’m trying to convince them to let me play in and out of intros, but I think that’s a few years away. I F Y O U C O U L D J A M W I T H A N Y B O D Y, WHO WOULD IT BE?

Santana would be one; he and I are buddies. Boz Scaggs! Silk Degrees came out when I was in high school, and he’ll be there this year. Kool & The Gang; Sheila E.’s always great. I think seeing Boz Scaggs from my seat on the side of the stage is going to be something I’m not going to miss. D O YO U H AV E A FAVO R I T E J A Z Z A RT IS T O R E R A?

I go back to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Monk, stuff like that from the ’60s. The darker, the cooler stuff. Dizzy, the horns, that kind of thing. Even Robert Johnson, the old bluesy type stuff. That’s really where the Stones and Elvis [got their inspiration from]. W H AT D O E S I T M E A N F O R YO U

W H AT’S T H E H OS T I N G E X P E R I E N C E

AS AN ANGELENO TO HOST THIS

B E E N L I K E FO R YO U?

F E S T I VA L ?

I’ve always been a fan and fanned out on people. Stanley Clarke, George Benson — “This Masquerade” came out when I was in high school. I love the music, and if I’m not already a fan, they make me one. Quincy Jones has come by to hang out, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter — all the guys that Santana introduced me to. Jamie Foxx comes every year and supports the festival. It’s becoming a bit of a hang again! You always like it when it’s a hang.

Being from Los Angeles, all of the things people look to from around the world, we have. The Hollywood Walk of Fame, Rodeo Dr., the beach. And the Hollywood Bowl is one of the greatest venues ever. Everybody who’s a performer has performed there. The Beatles were there, Hendrix was there. Tom Petty’s last show was there. It stands alone as one of the greatest places to perform in the world.

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PROGR AM

SATU R DAY, J U N E 8 , 201 9 In order of appearance (subject to change)

VA L E N C I A V I K I N G S H I G H S C H O O L T W O N ’ F O U R V O C A L J A Z Z E N S E M B L E Under the direction of Christine Tavares-Mocha Assistant Directors: Dr. Cassie Nickols, Andre “Marty” Hillman Samantha Anderson, Eugene Tuzon, Kelley Fredrickson, Zachary Miranda, Madisyn Miller, Kenneth Borchart, Alexia Vincent, Clay Riche, Sophia Bellefeuille, Youngjin Kim, Danna Dumandan, George Kim, Jaden Lewis, Stephen Yang, Amber Griffith, Denise Nunez, vocals; Adrian Rosen, bass; Brandon Dickert, drums; Marty Hillman, piano JA Z Z IN PINK Gail Jhonson, keyboards, vocals; Karen Briggs, violin; Mariea Antoinette, harp; Jose Aiello, percussion, vocals; Robin Bramlett, bass; Dee Simone, drums; D. Love, guitar TERR ACE M A RTI N Terrace Martin, saxophone, keyboards, vocoder; Marlon Williams, guitar; Justus West, electric bass, guitar; Quentin Gulledge, keyboards; Trevor Lawrence, Jr., drums; Alex Isley, Erin Ray, vocals; Elena Pinderhughes, flute, vocals B E N N Y G O L S O N ’ S 9 0 T H B I R T H D AY Q U A R T E T Benny Golson, tenor saxophone; Roy McCurdy, drums; Mike Gurrola, bass; Tamir Hendelman, piano C E L E B R AT I N G N D U G U C H A N C L E R Patrice Rushen, MD, keyboards; Ernie Watts, tenor saxophone; Alphonso Johnson, bass; Terri Lyne Carrington, drums; Doc Powell, guitar; Byron Miller, bass; Munyungo Jackson, percussion; Rayford Griffin, drums; Josie James, T.C. Carson, vocals; Alexis Angulo, keyboards; Sheila E., special guest, percussion TERENCE BL ANCHARD FE AT U R I N G T H E E- CO L L E C T I V E with special guest Quiana Lynell Terence Blanchard, trumpet, keyboards; Quiana Lynell, vocals; Charles Altura, guitar; Taylor Eigsti, piano, keyboards; Dale Black, electric bass; Oscar Seaton, drums A N G ÉL I Q U E K I DJ O Angélique Kidjo, vocals; Dominic James, guitar; Michael Olatuja, bass; Yayo Serka, drums; Magatte Sow, percussion BÉL A FLECK A N D TH E FLECK TO N ES Béla Fleck, banjo; Victor Wooten, bass; Howard Levy, harmonica, piano; Roy “Futureman” Wooten, drumitar, drums SHEIL A E. Sheila E., leader, timbales; John McVicker, drums; Raymond McKinley, bass; Bertron Curtis, keyboards; Mychael Gabriel, guitar; Eddie Mininfield, saxophone; Joel Behrman, trumpet, trombone; Rebecca Jade, Lynn Mabry, background vocals KO O L & T H E GA N G Master of Ceremonies GEORGE LOPEZ Produced in association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association by FestivalWest Inc. Programs, artists, and dates subject to change.

Acura is a proud sponsor of the Hollywood Bowl. Media sponsor: Ofﬁcial Automotive Partner of the Hollywood Bowl

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Ofﬁcial Airline of the Hollywood Bowl

Ofﬁcial Cruise Line of the Hollywood Bowl

Pianos provided by Steinway Piano Gallery — Beverly Hills.

P L AY B OY J A Z Z F E S T I VA L 2 O19

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VALENCIA VIKINGS HIGH SCHOOL TWO N' FOUR VOCAL JAZZ ENSEMBLE

VA L E N C I A V I K I N G S H I G H S C H O O L T WO N’ FOUR VOCAL JA ZZ ENSEMBLE

Under the direction of jazz vocalist and music educator Christine TavaresMocha, the Two N’ Four Vocal Jazz Ensemble includes students interested in studying the history of jazz, but also taking the sound forward into the future. Hailing from Valencia, CA, the ensemble has earned multiple Downbeat Awards and been invited to perform on-stage at the Monterey Jazz Festival for the last five years, a distinction afforded to only two high school choirs. The 16-piece vocal choir performs with the express goal to “inspire, uplift, and cultivate community through song.” J A Z Z I N P I N K

JAZZ IN PINK

Offering up an erudite blend of jazz, soul, funk, and hip-hop inflected pop, Jazz in Pink is a collaborative collective of women, including band leader Gail Jhonson, Robin Bramlett, D Love, Dee Simone, Karen Briggs, Josie Aiello, and Mariea Antoinette. Individually, its members have been included on the short lists of music luminaries like Quincy Jones, Kirk Franklin, Bobby Womack, Sheila E., The Time, Yanni, and even the Wu-Tang Clan, who’ve included members of the Jazz in Pink ensemble on stage and on record. In 2014, the band released its debut album 1st Collection, and will release its follow up, 2nd Collection, soon. First single “Back & Forth” — with its flute-laden quiet storm ambiance — demonstrates what’s propelled Jhonson and company’s vision for more than a decade, blending thoughtful playing with a deep, sophisticated groove. TERR ACE M ARTIN

Los Angeleno Terrace Martin stands at the forefront of young artists blending jazz traditions with the modern sounds of hip-hop and electronic music. As a go-to collaborator, musician, and producer for artists like Snoop Dogg, Charlie Wilson, and Travi$ Scott, Martin’s sense of eclecticism and adventurousness has become a hallmark of his work — and led to a Grammy® nomination for his 2016 album Velvet Portraits. Few artists are equally at home playing alongside Herbie Hancock as they are rapper YG, but Martin remains situated in a world that hears more commonality in jazz and rap than difference; like young artists like Thundercat, Lamar, and Washington, he represents a distinctly forward-looking trajectory for jazz music, while always holding on to the spirit that inspired his artistic forbearers.

TERRACE MARTIN

B E N N Y G O L S O N ’ S 9 0 T H B I R T H D AY Q U A R T E T

At 90 years old, hard-bop saxophonist Benny Golson provides the sound of living history. Coming of age in Philadelphia, he came onto the scene playing rhythm and blues before joining up with Art Farmer to form the Jazztet and playing with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, recording the classic LP Moanin’ in 1958. While playing with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, Golson penned the threnody “I Remember Clifford” as an ode to his friend and collaborator Clifford Brown. The composition, like others Golson has written, would go on to become a standard, recorded by Donald Byrd, Ray Charles, Keith Jarrett, Quincy Jones, and many more. Later, Golson turned his attention largely to compositional work for television, contributing to the soundtracks of shows like Mannix, M*A*S*H, The Partridge Family, and Mission: Impossible, as well as working with former Animals vocalist Eric Burdon on his 1967 LP Eric Is Here. In the mid ’70s, Golson returned to jazz work, playing in the newly adopted free jazz scene that relished aggressive improvisation. In 2007, he received the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and in 2009, he was inducted into the

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BENNY GOLSON

5/21/19 11:56 AM

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

SHEILA E.

International Academy of Hall of Fame. His quartet is rounded out by bassist Mike Gurrola, who’s performed with Jeff Hamilton, Benny Green, and more; Tamir Hendelman, pianist with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and the Jeff Hamilton Trio, who has also collaborated with Natalie Cole and Barbra Streisand; and Roy McCurdy, who first played with Golson in the Jazztet in 1962 and the next year played on Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins’ landmark Sonny Meets Hawk, and who would go on to perform with Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Herbie Hancock, and Oscar Peterson, among many others. C E L E B R AT I N G N D U G U C H A N C L E R

With Patrice Rushen, MD and guests Ernie Watts, Alphonso Johnson, Terri Lyne Carrington, Doc Powell, Byron Miller, Munyungo Jackson, Rayford Griffin, Josie James, T.C. Carson, Alexis Angulo and special guest Sheila E. Over the course of his long career, the Shreveport, Louisianaborn drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler played with nearly everyone, from Michael Jackson and Miles Davis to Weather Report and Santana. The “Billie Jean” beat? Yeah, that’s Chancler, who picked up the nickname “Ndugu,” Swahili for “earth brother,” from fellow percussionist James Mtume. His distinctive playing style, honed by years on the road and in recording studios, earned him not only a Grammy nod (for Dazz Band’s “Let It Whip,” which he co-wrote) but also a reputation. When he passed away in 2018 of prostate cancer, Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Chancler’s “crisp grooves and pinpoint fireworks of syncopation were heard on hundreds of albums.” To celebrate his life, an all-star band has been convened. Joining in is Grammy-nominated keyboardist Patrice Rushen, the first woman to serve as the musical director for the Emmy Awards; saxophonist Ernie Watts, known for his work with such varied talents as Keith Jarrett and Frank Zappa; former Weather Report and Phil Collins bassist Alphonso Johnson; the inimitable drummer Terri Lyne Carrington; guitarist Doc Powell — known for his work with Prince, Chaka Kahn, and John Legend — bassist Byron Miller (George Duke, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye); Miles Davis/ Sting percussionist Munyungo Jackson; jazz fusion drummer Rayford Griffin; vocalists Josie James and T.C. Carson; and special guest percussionist Sheila E. T E R E N C E B L A N C H A R D

ALPHONSO JOHNSON

RAYFORD GRIFFIN

Featuring The E-Collective with special guest Quiana Lynell In 2018, visionary director Spike Lee brought to the big screen the story of Ron Stallworth, a black detective who, along with his partner Philip “Flip” Zimmerman, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. BlacKkKlansman told a story that felt larger than life, but it’s the Oscar®-nominated music of composer Terence Blanchard that helps anchor the film in reality. An educator, jazz trumpeter, and Grammy® Award winning composer, Blanchard began a life of music in the early 1980s, before touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and Art

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DOC POWELL

TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON

PATRICE RUSHEN

BYRON MILLER

ERNIE WATTS

T.C. CARSON

MUNYUNGO JACKSON

JOSIE JAMES

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. In the ’90s, he began working extensively with Lee on a series of films, including Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, and Mo’ Better Blues. Like Lee, his work focuses on the socio-political, and in recent years he’s developed a compositional interest in jazz opera, with his most recent work — this year’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of New York Times columnist Charles Blow — co-commissioned by Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Jazz St. Louis. With the E-Collective — his group featuring Charles Altura on guitar, Taylor Eigsti on piano and synth, drummer Oscar Seaton, and bassist Dale Black — Blanchard addresses gun violence and police brutality, drawing from both black history and topical material ripped from recent headlines. “I’m not trying to say I’m here to try to correct the whole thing,” Blanchard says. “I’m just trying to speak the truth.” For this concert, he and The E Collective will be joined by the musically dexterous Quiana Lynell, the 2017 winner of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition.

TERENCE BLANCHARD AND THE E-COLLECTIVE

QUIANA LYNELL

A N G É L I Q U E K I DJ O

Dubbed “Africa’s premier diva” by Time, Angélique Kidjo stands as a towering figure in world music, blending Afropop, gospel, jazz, Latin, and dozens of other rhythm-centric styles from around the globe. The Beninese singer/songwriter/ actress/author has earned three Grammy® Awards for her diverse and sprawling discography. Her latest projects speak to her powerful ability to translate emotion: In 2018, she teamed with producer Jeff Bhasker (JAY-Z, Drake, Rihanna) to reinterpret the entirety of Talking Heads’ Afrobeatinspired Remain In Light. “While she foregrounds the 1980 record’s latent paranoia, social disquiet, and political loathing, Kidjo also imparts a tactile sense of resilience to offset the original’s despair,” wrote Pitchfork’s Andy Beta. Her 2019 album Celia offers a similar reinvention. Taking on the music of salsa star Celia Cruz, Kidjo, along with guests like Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen and polyglot bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, merges Afro-Cuban themes and Afrobeat ebullience. Few singers are capable of projecting the spirit of joy the way Kidjo does. With Celia, she continues a streak of marvelous transformations, offering a musical demonstration of the empathy that fuels her work as a humanitarian and activist.

BÉLA FLECK & THE FLECKTONES

BÉL A FLECK & THE FLECKTONES

Featuring Victor Wooten, Roy “Futureman” Wooten, and Howard Levy More than 30 years after forming in Nashville, Tennessee, the genre-defying Béla Fleck & The Flecktones remain committed to blurring the lines dividing American folk music traditions. Led by Fleck on banjo, electric bassist Victor Wooten, pianist/ harmonica player Howard Levy, and percussionist Roy “Futureman” Wooten — who plays a singular instrument called the “drumitar” — the Flecktones’ music is hard to place in just one box. They dub their sound “blu-bop,” and together the quartet explores the vast shared ground between jazz, bluegrass, Eastern European folk dance, North African blues,

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ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

country, electric blues, and classical music. The band’s un-categorizable zeal has not only earned them a slew of Grammy® Awards, but also a dedicated cult following. Equally adept at jazz improvisation and tightly-coiled avant-Americana, the Flecktones offer a kaleidoscopic vision of sound. “There’s a special thing that happens when the four of us get together and play,” says Levy. “We all have the same attitude of trying to do things that we haven’t done before, and coincidentally, no one else has either.” SHEILA E.

“The connection between the music and me felt like it was in my DNA,” Sheila Escovedo, better known by her stage name Sheila E., writes in her 2014 memoir The Beat of My Own Drum. The line is no exaggeration — the daughter of famed percussionist Pete Escovedo, Sheila E. began playing drums at the age of three, and she’s gone on to perform and record with a staggering list of artists, including Marvin Gaye, Herbie Hancock, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie, Patti LaBelle, Stevie Nicks, Ringo Starr, and Beyoncé. After cutting her teeth in the jazz scene, she began working with the enigmatic Prince, making key contributions to his Purple Rain soundtrack. Soon, Sheila E. stepped to the front of the stage and began a long career as a star in her own right. Over the decades, she’s proved a dynamic collaborator, working with Hans Zimmer on the scores for superhero films like Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, playing percussion on modern blues rocker Gary Clark Jr.’s politically charged This Land, and serving as the musical director for President Obama’s Performance at The White House: Fiesta Latina. K O O L & T H E G A N G

KOOL & THE GANG

2019 marks 50 years since the release of Kool & the Gang’s 1969 self-titled debut. It’s been a fortuitous set of decades for the long-running funk band. Led by brothers Robert “Kool” Bell and Ronald Bell, KATG has amassed a long list of accolades, including two Grammy® Awards and seven American Music Awards, and contributed some of the most recognizable funk standards to the American pop music canon. From “Get Down On It” to “Celebration” to the brass-bolstered “Jungle Boogie,” few bands can boast as large an influence on the sound of subsequent generations. Kool & the Gang has profoundly influenced the sonic shape of rap music — artists like the Beastie Boys, JAY-Z, and Cypress Hill have all incorporated elements of Kool’s distinctive, horn-forward sound. After early days in Jersey City, New Jersey, that found the group playing alongside jazz legends like McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders, the group emerged in the 1970s alongside groups like Parliament-Funkadelic, Earth, Wind & Fire, and the Ohio Players, fusing psychedelic rock, jazz, and R&B with a boisterous pop sensibility. Few funk bands have demonstrated the staying power of the Bells’ long-running band — whose songs remain associated with unabashed celebration.

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EYEBROW

“WE WANTED TO

ALL OF IT” PAT R I C E R U S H E N O N THE LEGACY OF LEON “NDUGU” CHANCLER BY J OS H H U RS T

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F E AT U R E

When Patrice Rushen first crossed paths with Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, they were both high school students enrolled in a Los Angeles music education program called the Msingi Workshop (that’s Swahili for “root” or “foundation”). Though nominatively a jazz ensemble, Msingi functioned more like a launchpad for cross-disciplinary exploration, a catalyst for curiosity and versatility. As Rushen recalls, most of the students in the workshop had grown up in the immediate orbit of working musicians – the countless session pros and studio guns who populated L.A. at the time. As such, they knew good and well how important it was to be able to hit their marks and deliver technically proficient performances whenever called upon, no matter the idiom or the style. “We wanted to be able to do all of it really, really well,” she reflects. “The whole idea was to get your skillset to a point where you could play anything, that you could be inventive and creative but also precise and technical.” It’s an illuminating origin story not just for Rushen but especially for Chancler, the venerated drummer who was a Playboy Jazz Festival mainstay, and who died in early 2018. In many ways the embodiment of a working-class musician, Chancler never became a household name, despite high-profile assignments with the likes of Miles Davis and Quincy Jones. Yet in a career committed to both studied professionalism and a porous, borderless relationship to genre, Chancler created a resume that’s still startling for its depth and eclecticism. You can hear him providing fluid funk and irresistible grooves on a number of just-left-of-center jazz classics by people like Joe Henderson, Azar Lawrence, and Weather Report. But then, you’ve already heard him on popular milestones like Thriller and Bad. Clearly, the Msingi training did indeed take root: Chancler proved over and over that he was game to play anything. Rushen, who collaborated with him countless times over the years – and who’s in charge of this year’s Chancler tribute show – says his mooring as a working musician gave him a kind of egolessness. “Whatever kind of music he was playing, and with whomever he was playing, he

PATRICE RUSHEN

H E WA N T E D TO B E A B L E TO P L AY W I T H A N D F O R A N Y B O DY. A N D T H AT M E A N T D E V E LO P I N G A H U G E M U S I C A L V O C A B U L A R Y, A N D S E N S E O F N U A N C E, A N D A B I L I T Y TO F I N D T H E E S S E N C E A N D T H E P U L S E O F A N Y M U S I C T H AT H E W O U L D P L AY. — Patrice Rushen

became invested in making it happen,” she remembers. “That’s one of the things I admired most. Even if he was playing music that he didn’t particularly like, he would always bring his best self to it. Playing with him, for me, was always a joy because I could depend on that fire, that awareness, that consciousness.” Though never a showboater, Chancler was hardly absent a distinctive style. “I think he always had this balance between being able to be loose and precise at the same time,” says Rushen. “That feeling of spontaneity and the idea of being able to execute some of the most intricate kinds of things always gave his music a personality, a certain kind of snap. And it would propel other people to play better. It certainly did for me.” That style served him well in far-flung musical settings, from big band ensembles to small funk groups – but to hear Rushen tell it, Chancler never actively pursued such eclecticism. “If he sought anything out, he sought out the ability to make anything he played sound like that’s all that he

played – so people would hear him in different circumstances and call him to play something, then find out later that he could do this and this and this and all this other stuff.” Continues Rushen, “That came from a mindset that had been nurtured, and that he maintained, starting when he was a teenager. He wanted to be able to play with and for anybody. And that meant developing a huge musical vocabulary, and sense of nuance, and ability to find the essence and the pulse of any music that he would play.” Clearly, Chancler put his finger to that pulse time and time again – and no one was more grateful for it than he. “He used to say, ‘We’re so lucky to be able to play music,’” Rushen says. “’That’s why you should always bring your A-game.’”

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MONSIEUR PERINÉ

TH E

WORLD OF PLAYBOY JAZZ The Playboy Jazz Festival hit the Hollywood Bowl for an historic 40th time last summer, with next-level performances from jazz artists of all generations. → 34 PERFORMANCES MAGAZINE

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T H E W O R L D O F P L AY B O Y J A Z Z

S AT U R D AY

DAYMÉ AROCENA

MATTHEW WHITAKER

The eclectic Miles Electric Band brought a wild celebration of Miles Davis’ wide-ranging output of the late 1960s and early ’70s to the Bowl stage, the site of Miles’ last-ever performance on August 25, 1991. Monsieur Periné hyped up the early crowd with a high-energy set of Afro-Colombian music, while Daymé Arocena entranced with her AfroCuban rhythms and New Orleans bombast. Matthew Whitaker put on a virtuosic display, and Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin showed off the depth of their musical chemistry. Snarky Puppy brought serious grooves, and Anthony Hamilton capped the night by bringing us all to church. ANTHONY HAMILTON

SNARKY PUPPY

MILES ELECTRIC BAND

LEE RITENOUR

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T H E W O R L D O F P L AY B O Y J A Z Z

S U N D AY

ROY GAINES

On Sunday, Parlor Social shook up the early afternoon with a wild set influenced by Cab Calloway and Outkast, and Kneebody twisted and turned through a knobby set of their own. Roy Gaines and His Orchestra put on a blues clinic, Freddie Hubbard was feted by a supergroup, and Charles Lloyd and his Marvels joined forces with the legendary Lucinda Williams. Ramsey Lewis — a legend in his own right — once again brought the house down, and Jazmine Sullivan kept the Bowl shaking with her fiery R&B. Closing us out was Tower of Power with a celebration of their fifty years of funk — a fitting cap to a jubilant weekend. RAMSEY LEWIS

KNEEBODY

TOWER OF POWER

LEFT JAZMINE SULLIVAN RIGHT PARLOR SOCIAL

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F E AT U R E

GOODBYE, SWEET NANCY Remembering Nancy Wilson

BY S UZ A N N E LO RG E

June 1982 at The Hollywood Bowl. It was only the fourth year for the Playboy Jazz Festival at the celebrated amphitheater, and the lineup was spectacular: Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Tal Farlow, Dexter Gordon, Weather Report, The Manhattan Transfer, Grover Washington, Jr., Maynard Ferguson, Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Willie Bobo, Woody Shaw, Milt Jackson, Sarah Vaughan. Front and center amidst this jazz royalty was vocalist Nancy Wilson, in a rare concert with trumpeter/ flugelhornist Art Farmer and saxophonist Benny Golson. “I remember that concert,” Golson says. “I was wondering if I would be good enough for her.” His concern is understandable given the kind of form she was in. On stage that day, she reprised one of her hits from Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley, her 1961 album for Capitol Records with the famed alto player. During “Save Your Love for Me,” you can hear all of the defining features of Wilson’s vocal style — the warm throatiness, the crisp articulation, and the characteristic growls, cries, and upswings. But more striking than these is her transparent personal relationship with the lyrics. She was above all else a storyteller. The live recording of the festival — the Elektra/Musician album In Performance at the Playboy Jazz Festival — documents just one of Wilson’s many mid-career appearances, when her voice was at the height of its power. By 1982 she had already cut more than 30 jazz, pop, and soul records, with at least 40 more yet to come. She had won her first of three eventual Grammy Awards, hosted an Emmy-winning series (The Nancy Wilson Show), and logged more than 100 television appearances as a singer or actress. Later,

NANCY WILSON

she would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, an NAACP Hall of Fame Image Award, a Peabody Award for her NPR documentary series Jazz Profiles, an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship Award, and a spot in the International Civil Rights Hall of Fame. Hardly any performer of Wilson’s generation can match her in creative and social output during these years. Even though jazz history has claimed her as its own, Wilson didn’t consider herself a singer of any one type. Born in 1937 in Chillicothe, Ohio, she came up through the gospel choirs of her hometown and the R&B clubs of Columbus before moving to New York City in 1959; within a year she had released her first popular record, an R&B-inflected cover of “Guess Who I Saw Today?” Cannonball Adderley, on whose advice Wilson had moved to New York to

begin with, then urged her to delve more deeply into jazz — a recommendation that gave rise to one of her most seminal albums. Golson adds that Wilson was always gracious toward musicians and notably easy to work with. “She was vibrant and friendly — she had nothing to prove. That’s why I liked her so much,” he remarked. “She was always willing to work to make things as good as they could be.” After some bouts of ill health, in September 2011 Wilson played her final concert in Athens, Ohio, within a stone’s throw of the places where she’d first learned her craft. Last December, at age 81, she passed away in her Southern California home. “When she stopped singing it was a real disappointment,” admitted Golson. “I still miss her.” With these few words he speaks for the world.

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PE R YO E BGRROAW M

S U N DAY, J U N E 9, 201 9 In order of appearance (subject to change)

T H E L A U S D/ B E Y O N D T H E B E L L A L L- C I T Y J A Z Z B A N D Under the direction of Tony White and J.B. Dyas Aidan Cini, Britney Duong, Eddy Sarabia, Ronnie Heard, Chester Cahill, Stephan Hicks, saxophones; Macrae Eckelberry, Matthew Wickershim, Orlando Vargas, Christian Lehr, Cesar Villalobos, trumpets; Eli Howell, Abel Cecchi, Zane Eshaghian, Cal Apio, Eduardo Bonilla, Blake Rojas, trombones; Dalton Hayse, piano; Dario Bizio, bass; Nigel Fregozo, bass; Nicholas Lopez-Orenday, guitar; Charlie Faragher, Micah Heard, drums; Ricardo Palamino, percussion M I C H A E L M AY O Michael Mayo, vocals; Jacob Mann, keyboards, synths; Nick Campbell, bass; Robin Baytas, drums; Erin Bentlage, India Carney, Gregory Fletcher, vocals H A R O L D L Ó P E Z- N U S S A Q U A R T E T Harold López-Nussa, piano; Ruy Adrían López-Nussa, drums, percussion; Luques Curtis, bass; Mayquel González, trumpet D O N NY MCC ASLIN BLOW Donny McCaslin, saxophone; Tim Lefebvre, bass; Jason Lindner, keyboards; Zach Danziger, percussion; Jeff Taylor, vocals, guitar SONA JOBARTEH Sona Jobarteh, kora, guitar, vocals; Derek Johnson, guitar; Andrew McLean, electric bass; Westley Joseph, drums; Mouhamadou Sarr, percussion THE CO OKERS Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Eddie Henderson, trumpet; David Weiss, trumpet; Donald Harrison, alto saxophone; George Cables, piano; Cecil McBee, bass; Billy Hart, drums D I R T Y D OZ E N B R A S S B A N D Roger Lewis, baritone saxophone, vocals; Kevin Harris, tenor saxophone, vocals; Gregory Davis, trumpet, vocals; Kirk Joseph, sousaphone; T.J. Norris, trombone, vocals; Julian Addison, drums; Takeshi Shimmura, guitar M A C E O PA R K E R Featuring The Maceo Parker Big Band Maceo Parker, vocals, alto saxophone; Steve Sigmund, MD, conductor; Larry Goldings, keyboards; Scott Mayo, Alford Jackson, alto saxophones; Rickey Woodard, Louis Van Taylor, tenor saxophones; Terry Landry, baritone saxophone; Chuck Parrish, Ted Murdock, Dave Hoffman, Ken Scharf, trumpets; Wendell Kelly, Arturo Velasco, Steve Baxter, trombone; Rich Bullock, bass trombone; Nils Johnson, bass; Steve Gregory, guitar; Paul Kreibich, drums; Katrina Harper, Karen Evans, Elaine Woodard, vocals B OZ S C AG G S William Scaggs, lead vocals, guitar; Willie Weeks, bass; Michael Miller, guitar; Eric Crystal, horns; Branlie Mejias Sanchez, percussion, background vocals; Michael Logan, keyboards, background vocals; Terence Clark, drummer T H E FA M I LY S T O N E Jerry “Papa J” Martini, saxophone; Phunne Stone, lead vocals; Russell “Swang” Stewart, lead vocals, keyboard, guitar, harmonica; Jimi McKinney, vocals, keyboards; Frank Klepacki, drums; Blaise Sison, bass; Nate Wingfield, lead guitar Master of Ceremonies GEORGE LOPEZ Produced in association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association by FestivalWest Inc. Programs, artists, and dates subject to change. Acura is a proud sponsor of the Hollywood Bowl. Media sponsor: Ofﬁcial Automotive Partner of the Hollywood Bowl

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Ofﬁcial Airline of the Hollywood Bowl

Ofﬁcial Cruise Line of the Hollywood Bowl

Pianos provided by Steinway Piano Gallery — Beverly Hills.

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LAUSD/BEYOND THE BELL ALL-CITY JAZZ BIG BAND

T H E L A U S D/ B E Y O N D T H E B E L L A L L- C I T Y JA Z Z B I G BA N D

Presented in collaboration between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz at UCLA, the LAUSD/Beyond the Bell AllCity Jazz Big Band features the cream of the crop of high school music students currently enrolled in Los Angeles Unified schools. The group is directed by Herbie Hancock Institute Vice President for Education and Curriculum Development J.B. Dyas and Beyond the Bell Music Entertainment Coordinator Tony White, and it features music from throughout jazz history.

MICHAEL MAYO

M I C H A E L M AY O

Vocalist Michael Mayo grew up surrounded by music. The son of two traveling musicians, the young Michael absorbed the sounds of artists like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, and Earth, Wind & Fire by watching them from the side of the stage. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, he was accepted into the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, where he studied with artists like Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Luciana Souza. Currently based in New York City, Mayo has appeared everywhere from the Kennedy Center to the White House. He’s become a go-to vocalist for some of the vanguard of young progressive and legendary artists alike, collaborating or sharing the stage with Herbie Hancock, Becca Stevens, Kneebody, and Josh Groban. He’s proved an adaptable performer, too — working with rhythm sections, full bands, or occasionally alone with a pedal to loop and layer his versatile voice. H A R O L D L Ó P E Z- N U S S A Q UA R T E T

Havana pianist Harold López-Nussa experienced music early on. His father and brother played drums and percussion, his uncle Ernán López-Nussa played jazz piano, and his mother Mayra Torres taught piano. López-Nussa himself got started on the instrument at the young age of eight. Influenced by artists like Chucho Valdes, he blends Latin and Afro-Cuban rhythms into a jazz framework, his playing both powerfully melodic and rhythmically playful — it’s the sound of Centro Habana, a neighborhood known for its folkloric Afro-Cuban ceremonies. “What I soaked in there has never left me,” López-Nussa says. For his Playboy Jazz Festival performance, he’s joined by his brother, percussionist Ruy LópezNussa, New York bassist Luques Curtis, who’s worked with Donald Harrison, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and Gary Burton, and Mayquel Gonzales on trumpet and flugelhorn. “I want to grow closer to the American people,” LópezNussa says. “This has always been an important desire for Cubans, especially musicians. It’s impossible for us to be separate because we have so much in common, so much to share.”

HAROLD LÓPEZ-NUSSA

DONNY McCASLIN BLOW

When the late David Bowie wanted to bring a sense of jazzy heaviness to his final album Blackstar, saxophonist Donny McCaslin was among the first he called. On McCaslin’s 2018 album Blow. it’s easy to hear why the stylistically fluid Bowie heard a kindred artistic spirit in the saxophonist. The record is sprawling and ambitious, blending art rock textures, electronic twitches, and arching jazz melodies. McCaslin came up in the ’90s New York jazz scene, where he played alongside Gil Evans, John Medeski, and Lan Xang, his collaborative project with bassist Scott Colley, drummer Kenny Wolleson, and saxophonist David Binney. Soon, he began fronting his own groups. In 2012, he released Casting For Gravity, which featured complex and daring material like “Stadium Jazz,” which serves as something of a mission statement for McCaslin, at once pummeling,

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND

graceful, and unspeakably heavy. With Blow. the composer found himself interested in breaking new sonic ground. “Going all in with new territory is really stimulating to me,” McCaslin says. Working with vocalists like Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek, Ryan Dahle, Jeff Taylor, and Gail Ann Dorsey — another Bowie collaborator — McCaslin transmutes his “stadium jazz” into full-on art pop. SONA JOBARTEH

It would be easy enough to label Sona Jobarteh a pioneer for her work helping to introduce Western audiences to the kora, a 21-stringed African harp that can approximate the sound of a dozen or so players working together. But the 35-year-old Jobarteh is also a pioneer in her own country of Gambia as well, as one of the first major female artists to play the instrument, which is typically passed down almost exclusively from father to son. Born into one of the five principal Griot families — keepers of the kora tradition — Jobarteh represents a break with patriarchal expectations. Like her grandfather Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, cousin Toumani Diabaté, and brother Tunde Jegede, she’s a master of the instrument, and has earned an international fanbase in countries like Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, and India. An accomplished songwriter and singer, Jobarteh hews closely to musical tradition, which has found her not only recording albums like 2011’s Fasiya, but also contributing to scores for films like 500 Years Later, Broken Embraces, and the 2010 documentary Motherland, a film about the African continent’s history and contemporary moment.

DONNY McCASLIN

THE COOKERS

On 2010’s Cast the First Stone, seven of bebop’s most established players gathered together for a set of roaring avant-garde jazz. Featuring Billy Harper, Cecil McBee, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, and Billy Hart, each of whom came up in the experimental and evolving mid-’60s hard-bop scene, alongside younger players David Weiss and Donald Harrison, who cut their teeth playing with veterans like Art Blakey, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, and Roy Haynes, the album announced them to be more than your typical supergroup. The pedigree of the individual players is astounding: Hart and Henderson played in Herbie Hancock’s band; McBee worked in Charles Lloyd’s chart-topping ’60s quartet; Harper played with Lee Morgan, Max Roach’s Quartet, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; Cables worked with Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon, and Art Pepper. But as their records show, The Cookers represent more than just supergroup alignment; they’re a set of players who’ve internalized jazz’s wild spirit.

THE COOKERS

D I RT Y D OZE N B R A SS BA N D

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band started off in humble environs. They first came together in 1977 in New Orleans, where the original members served as the house band at the Dirty Dozen Social and Pleasure Club. Before long, the band had adopted the name of the establishment as its own. More than 40 years later, they are

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SONA JOBARTEH

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

recognized as one of the foremost examples of the Crescent City brass tradition. The group — baritone saxophonist Roger Lewis, tenor saxophonist Kevin Harris, trumpeter Gregory Davis, Kirk Joseph on the sousaphone, trombonist T.J. Norris, drummer Julian Addison, and guitarist Takeshi Shimmura — have traveled the world, blending traditional styles with jazz, funk, and R&B. Their booming sound has found them in unexpected places, like on record with indie rock band Modest Mouse or behind jazz singer Norah Jones, but the group has never lost touch with its original core: performing music rooted in the celebratory sounds of New Orleans second lines and social clubs, places where the very foundations of jazz music first evolved. The sound of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band is that of community gathered together in songs, alternating between boisterous and tender, soft and occasionally deafening. M A C E O PA R K E R

MACEO PARKER

Featuring the Maceo Parker Big Band Born into a musical family in Kinston, North Carolina, in 1943, saxophonist Maceo Parker gravitated to the sound of rhythm and blues in his teenage years. Hearing Ray Charles set him on his path: “I got into Ray at a very early age,” Parker says. “I’d listen to him sing and I’d try to equate that with playing the saxophone…He was always the cat for me.” Parker’s lyrical saxophone playing quickly earned him attention. In 1967, he joined up with James Brown’s legendary band. On stage and in the studio, it was clear that Parker was more than a sideman — with his rollicking sax riffs, he sought to not only complement the Godfather of Soul’s energy, but to match it. Parker went solo in the ’70s, but he continued collaborating with trendsetting creators through the decades, joining up with George Clinton’s mutant funk outfit ParliamentFunkadelic and Bootsy Collins’ Rubber Band, and contributing to records by Prince and the New Power Generation and De La Soul. Toward the end of the ’80s, he returned to work with Brown, as well. All along, he continued creating dynamic solo work. With his Big Band, Parker pays tribute to his musical roots, exploring the raw soul of Ray Charles, and reminding listeners why he titled his 2013 memoir 98% Funky Stuff. BOZ S C AG GS

As the ’60s counterculture wound down, singer/songwriter Boz Scaggs emerged with a new take on rock music, one that was nuanced, smooth, and stylistically diverse. On his 1968 self-titled solo debut, the former Steve Miller Band guitarist folded in elements of blues, R&B, blue-eyed soul, and pop. In the 1970s, he hit a hot streak with records like Moments, Boz Scaggs & Band, My Time, and Slow Dancer, all building to 1976’s Silk Degrees, which remained on the top album charts for a stunning 115 weeks and yielded massive hits, including “Lido Shuffle,” “It’s Over,” and the Grammy® Award winning “Lowdown.” While Scaggs spent much of the ’80s out of the limelight, he returned with gusto in the ’90s and the 2000s, his albums moving in grittier directions than his glossy hits, which continued to dominate classic pop and rock

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BOZ SCAGGS

radio. In 2018, Scaggs returned to his blues roots with Out of the Blues, which featured songs made famous by Bobby “Blue” Bland, Neil Young, and Magic Sam. “Sometimes you assemble your dream team and it doesn’t work,” Scaggs says. “But in this case, the chemistry was right and it all came together beautifully. It was a complete joy from beginning to end, and I’m really happy with it.” T H E F A M I LY S T O N E

In the mid-’60s, Sly and The Family Stone rose up out of the psychedelic underground of San Francisco with a soul-stirring blend of funk, R&B, and rock ’n’ roll. The band’s multi-racial, mixed-gender lineup proved as progressive as its music, which includes classics like “Everyday People,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” and “Dance to the Music,” along with revolutionary LPs like 1971’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Led by original Family Stone member Jerry Martini, The Family Stone celebrates the groundbreaking legacy of those songs and records. Martini is joined by Phunne Stone, daughter of Sly Stone and late Family Stone trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, alongside guitarist Nate Wingfield, keyboardist Jimi McKinney, drummer Frank Klepacki, and bassist Blaise Sison. On stage, the band offers up psychedelic soul music, featuring lyrics charged by a message that blurs the distinction between the personal and the political. “Even today, the Family tradition thrives,” Will Hermes wrote for Rolling Stone, reviewing Higher!, a deluxe retrospective boxset, noting Sly and the Family Stone’s influence on artists like “Stevie Wonder and Miles Davis, P-Funk and Prince,” along with “generations of rappers and dance-rock bands.”

THE FAMILY STONE

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GENERAL I N F O R M AT I O N

VALET PARKING

BUZZ M COY’S MARKETPLACE & SUSHI C

WEST GATE

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By law (LACC 17.04.645), smoking is not permitted on the Hollywood Bowl grounds, except in designated areas. Violators are subject to removal. Smoking in any other areas could lead to arrest and would be considered a misdemeanor.

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H I GH L A

NINA SIMONE

A MORE

COMPLETE PICTU RE FILLING IN JAZZâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FEMALE HISTORY

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WOMEN IN JA Z Z

DAKOTA STATON

The first Playboy Jazz Festival, held sixty years ago, was billed as the largest ever. A crowd of as many as 22,000 fans packed into the since-demolished Chicago Stadium for three days in early August 1959 to see a dizzying array of artists, most of whom were or would soon become part of jazz’s canon: Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, and more. There were six women musicians on the bill for that year’s festival: Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Dakota Staton, June Christy, Chris Connor, and Annie Ross. Two of those names, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, belong to widely beloved contributors to not just jazz, but American music as a whole. But today, even for jazz aficionados, the other women who performed at that first festival might not evoke more than the barest recognition; though then they were playing stadiums, today they’re rarely more than footnotes in jazz history books. This year, at the 41st Playboy Jazz Festival, there are still six women leading their own groups — but unlike in 1959, they’ll be joined by many other women bandmembers and featured artists. The greater number of women onstage is a sign of the steady and still-too-slow progress that jazz has made towards gender parity, progress that’s best expedited not only through booking contemporary women artists but also by better understanding women’s instrumental (pun intended) place in the music throughout its storied history. Consider the women on that 1959 festival bill. Today, Ella Fitzgerald is justifiably among the most recognized women in jazz thanks to her vast catalog of impeccably performed standards. Sixty years ago, Fitzgerald was the marquee attraction, headlining the final evening. But singers are too often not afforded the same credit and respect for their work as instrumentalists; a preview of the 1959 festival, for example, promised “the greatest musicians and vocalists ever to be seen under one roof.” Because the effortlessness of her performance gets read as something intuitive instead of intentional and creative, sometimes the nuance and heft of Fitzgerald’s place in jazz gets ignored — even by those who acknowledge

DAKOTA STATON

T H O U G H T H E Y W E R E T H E N P L AY I N G S TA D I U M S , TO DAY T H E Y ' R E R A R E LY M O R E T H A N F O OT N OT E S I N J A Z Z H I S TO R Y B O O K S .

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ELLA FITZGERALD

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her mastery. In spite of her technical flawlessness, Fitzgerald never lost her warmth and humor — indeed, her ability to make a whole variety of songs palatable to a wide audience, as demonstrated in her now-canonical Songbook series, helped crystallize what would become known as the American songbook. Nina Simone might be the prototypical example of an artist whose vision was ahead of their time. At the 1959 festival, a 26-year-old Simone was still riding the wave of her 1958 debut Little Girl Blue, a collection of standards that only hinted at the iconoclast she would become. She was bold and uncompromising, traits that might have been celebrated if she were a man but instead provoked endless criticism and scrutiny. In spite of the antagonism Simone faced, she made some of the most impactful music of the 20th century, blending her classical and jazz bona fides with a progressive, principled approach to pop. Dakota Staton was one of the best-selling jazz artists of 1959, a brash, bluesy singer who gave some of the most beloved songs of the day an acidic bite while collaborating with people like George Shearing, Hank Jones, Harry “Sweets” Edison, and more. Within the limited space most women musicians were afforded at that time — one defined by their pop appeal in both an aesthetic and musical sense — Staton carved out an admirable, enduring niche. June Christy gained renown for her ability to bridge the worlds of vocal and cool West Coast jazz in the early 1950s, particularly with the 1954 album Something Cool. Despite her commercial success, Christy, too, felt hampered creatively by the insistence that she reach pop audiences; she later said Something Cool, which included Maynard Ferguson, Bud Shank, Jimmy Giuffre, and Shelly Manne, among others, was ‘’the only thing I’ve recorded that I’m not unhappy with.’’ Like Christy, Chris Connor got her start with Stan Kenton’s orchestra; unlike Christy, she stuck with more traditional swing, despite the fact that she was signed to the already R&B-oriented Atlantic. Her bands regularly included luminaries like John Lewis, Oscar Pettiford, Milt Jackson,

CHRIS CONNOR

CO N N O R WA S A L S O O N E O F V E RY FE W LG BTQ J A Z Z A R T I S T S O F T H AT E R A , M A K I N G I T E V E N M O R E D I FFI C U LT F O R H E R TO B E ACC E P T E D I N T H E I N D U S T RY, and Kenny Burrell, and her records were among the most successful crossover efforts of the era. Connor was also one of very few LGBTQ jazz artists of that era, making it even more difficult for her to be accepted in the industry. Annie Ross performed at the festival with her trio, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, a poppier group who were nevertheless among the best-known practitioners of vocalese. But as a soloist, Ross was deeply embedded in the storied New York jazz scene of the 1950s, recording and performing with members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Zoot Sims, and Hoagy Carmichael, among others. These are just a few of the countless women musicians who have an undeniable impact on jazz music — and yet for the most part they remain obscure, alongside so many of their talented contemporaries. Active in 1959 alone were Melba Liston, Hazel Scott, Mary Lou Williams, Dorothy

Donegan, Shirley Scott, Sarah McLawler, Barbara Carroll, Muriel Roberts, and Dorothy Ashby. As far as singers, there was a glut of options, alongside those mentioned above: Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Anita O’Day, Blossom Dearie, Ernestine Anderson, Ruth Brown, Sarah Vaughan, and many more. Their stories are told in books about women jazz musicians — books that have depressingly little overlap with the jazz history tomes that have shaped popular understanding of the music. Their absence is troubling for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that their remarkable music is relegated to hidden-gem status, which is a loss for contemporary jazz fans as much as it is to the state of their legacies. It might seem overly precious to insist on the inclusion of jazz musicians whose oeuvres are either limited (in large part due to the unfavorable circumstances for

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WOMEN IN JA Z Z

MARY LOU WILLIAMS

PHOTO: WILLIAM P. GOTTLIEB

women musicians throughout much of jazz history) or littered with pop trivialities. But without these women, the story of jazz remains inaccurate — and as a result, our perception of the music today is as well. The central problem faced by women in jazz is that a century after they started making the music, they’re still being billed as pioneers. There’s no question that the women performing at this year’s festival — Angélique Kidjo, Sheila E., Patrice Rushen (music director for the festival’s tribute to late drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler), Sona Jobarteh, the all-woman Jazz In Pink band, and Christine Tavares-Mocha (director of the Valencia High School Two N’ Four Vocal Jazz Ensemble) — should be defined by their chosen medium and accomplishments, not by their gender. Women have been part of jazz since jazz existed, and the only reason it doesn’t seem that way is because their stories have not been deemed worthy by those with the power to tell them.

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T H E C E N T R A L P R O B L E M FA C E D BY W O M E N I N J A Z Z I S T H AT A C E N T U R Y A F T E R T H E Y S TA R T E D M A K I N G THE MUSIC, THEY’RE STILL BEING BILLED AS PIONEERS. But all these years later their presence is still noteworthy, still the exception to the overwhelmingly male rule. So we discuss these extraordinarily talented musicians in the context of something completely unrelated to their work, because even though being a woman has nothing to do with one’s ability to create music it can still be a barrier to doing so — even in 2019. It’s certainly harder to tell the stories of jazz’s women: there’s less information, fewer recordings, fewer interviews, and plenty of careers interrupted to take care of families or support husbands. But the payoff couldn’t be more important. A history of jazz in which women are more than just a sidebar or an anomaly tells girls that they don’t have to break new ground to participate; the trail has long since been

blazed. When the music has more voices in the mix, chances are even jazz aficionados will hear something they haven’t before. After we decide that the stories of jazz’s women are as important as those of its men and tell them with equal care, we can finally start talking about the most interesting thing of all: the music itself.

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