Mick LaSalle May 18, 2021Updated: May 18, 2021, 6:09 pm
Chucho Valdés performs at SFJazz Center. Photo: Scott Chernis, Photo By: Scott Chernis
The San Francisco Jazz Festival plans to go virtual for the second year in a row with two dozen broadcasts of archival festival performances, despite the city’s move to allow more in-person events.
But that doesn’t mean all the offerings will be virtual during the festival’s run, which is set for June 4-25, said Randall Kline, founder and executive artistic director of SFJazz.
“We’re easing our way back into it, one toe at a time,” he said on Tuesday, May 18.
David Angel Jazz Ensemble –
Out On The Coast (Basset Hound Music): “David Angel is a Los Angeles composer and arranger. He has had a rehearsal band for over 50 years. David spent many years composing and arranging for the Hollywood Film and TV world and later spent many years as a composition professor in Europe. His unique music is described as Gil Evans meets J.S. Bach. Over the years dozens of the greatest jazz musicians on the west coast have been members.The David Angel Jazz Ensemble is a Los Angeles based 13 piece jazz band, “Out on the Coast” is a TRIPLE CD set and all of the music is composed or arranged by David Angel. The style is described as “Gil Evans meets J.S.Bach” with all 13 musicians playing polyphonic lines. The band members are among the finest jazz musicians on the west coast. It is swing and Latin music reminiscent of the 60′ west coast jazz scene with impressionistic classical elements.” (https://www.bassethoundmusic.com/product/out-on-the-c
Michael & Peter Formanek –
Dyads (Out Of Your Head): “Michael and Peter Formanek started making music and improvising together before Peter started school. Regular visits to their home from friends and colleagues like Tim Berne, Jim Black, Marty Ehrlich and many others only served to normalize this as being an essential part of human interaction. During much of their time living in Baltimore and as Peter began to study music formally (first on guitar then on saxophones and woodwinds), it was just part of daily life to have musicians come by to play, rehearse, or just hang out. This eventually turned into regular groups and collaborations that performed in local venues in and around Baltimore. For Peter’s eighteenth birthday they played a night of Michael’s music at the Cornelia Street Cafe with a lineup of Tim Berne and Peter Formanek on saxophones, Jacob Sacks on piano, Jim Black on drums, and Michael Formanek on bass. Peter went to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2
The 10 best jazz albums of 2020 John Fordham
Pat Metheny – From This Place
Being both a bestselling jazz-fusion superstar and an experimental collaborator with John Zorn and Ornette Coleman takes rare agility, but guitarist Pat Metheny has managed both. Metheny’s 2020 album, performed by his current live band (UK pianist Gwilym Simcock, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Antonio Sánchez) with guest appearances from vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello and harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret, showcases his famously cinematic compositional muse, shrewdly balanced with the group’s off-the-leash inventiveness, and for the most part subtly applied synthesised orchestral effects. Read the full review.