Photo courtesy of Jim Bloch. Vocalist DeeDee Bridgewater at the Detroit Jazz Festival.
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Detroit Jazz Festival sends off summer in high style

By Jim Bloch

Great blasts of live music make the inevitable end of summer easier to digest.

You try to cling to those 80 degree beach days, the buzz of humming birds and dragon flies, brisk northern lakes, big summer novels, just-picked tomatoes — and time that seems positively unbounded.

There is no better way to send off summer than the Detroit Jazz Festival, held Labor Day weekend each year at Hart Plaza and Campus Martius in the Motor City.

The festival kicked off on the first day of the climatological start of fall Sept. 1 with a salute to of the city’s “angel of jazz,” Gretchen Carhartt Valade who died at 97 on Dec. 30, 2022.

The heiress to the Carhartt clothing company fortune, Valade single-handedly saved the jazz festival in 2005 after the Ford Motor Company yanked its sponsorship: She established the DJF Foundation to support the largest free jazz fest in North America in perpetuity. Valade had already launched the city’s renown jazz label Mack Avenue Records in 1999. She opened the jazz Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe in Grosse Pointe Farms in 2008. She has contributed nearly $10 million to Wayne State University to turn the Hillbury Theatre into the soon-to-open Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center with a jazz club in the basement.

Photo courtesy of Jim Bloch
Regina Carter and Gayelynn McKinney.

Opening night of the festival got off to a scary start when Shannon Powell, the New Orleans drummer who was the featured musician in Dr. Valade’s Brass Band, collapsed on stage and was taken away on a stretcher.

The second set, named “Our Angel of Jazz,” opened with the original members of the all-women band Straight Ahead, formed in Detroit in 1987: Bassist Marion Hayden, pianist Alina Moore, flutist/vocalist Cynthia Dewberry, drummer Gayelynn McKinney and violinist Regina Carter, her hair now pure white. The band anchored the west end of the packed stage.

Photo courtesy of Jim Bloch
Bassist Marion Hayden.

If Valade had not died in December, the theme of the festival may have been Detroit’s three National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master inductees in 2023: Carter, who closed the JP Morgan Main Stage on Saturday night; saxophonist Kenny Garrett, who played just before Carter; and Louis Hayes, the ageless drummer whose quintet took over the Carhartt Amphitheatre on Monday.

After Straight Ahead, trumpeter Dwight Adams led the Rising Stars Jazz Band on the east end of the stage, turning in sweet solos by guitarist Cyrus Kashtkar channeling his inner Wes Montgomery, bassist Trevor Lamb, drummer Tariq Gardner, pianist Michael Malis and two hot young trumpeters.

Photo courtesy of Jim Bloch
Guitarist Cyrus Kashtkar and trumpeter Dwight Adams.

Midway through the set, Chris Collins, the saxophonist, music professor at WSU and artistic director of the festival, announced that Powell, also known as the King of Treme, was okay.

“Mr. Powell had a minor medical issue and didn’t have to go to the hospital,” Collins said to applause from the big crowd. “He’s resting comfortably in his hotel room.”

Collins introduced the great Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, who played a long, intricate solo.

Vocalist and NEA Jazz master DeeDee Bridgewater followed Perez, backed by the DJF Orchestra in the middle of the stage. The cellar club at the old Hillbury will be named after Bridgewater, who was joined for a song on stage by singer Joan Belgrave, widow of legendary Detroit trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who died in 2015.

“Gretchen was always very low key,” said Bridgewater between songs. “I was so in love with that woman. That’s why I’m here.”

She sang “Lights of Detroit” by Valade — an accomplished pianist and songwriter in her own right — with a bright arrangement by bassist John Clayton.

Drummer and artist-in-residence Karriem Riggins closed out opening night with an electrifying fusion of jazz and rap, featuring Madlib, J.Rocc and Sasha Kashperko.

Collins claimed that Riggins’ work was changing the world of jazz and his set certainly bridged generations, something Valade would have adored.

“I don’t do a lot of talking,” said Riggins as young fans thronged the stage. Riggins has played with Betty Carter, Oscar Peterson, Roy Hargrove and Ray Brown and produced J Dilla, Eryka Badu, Common, The Roots and Kanye West. “Let’s let the music talk.”

It talked like crazy.

Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com. 

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