Celebrating Miles Davis - 02/19/2011 | MiamiHerald.com

Cover of TutuCelebrating Miles Davis - 02/19/2011 | MiamiHerald.com

By the time of his death in 1991, trumpeter Miles Davis had lived several jazz lives.

Throughout a career spanning 50 years, Davis showed an acute sense for shifting musical paradigms and an uncanny ability to both absorb and transcend the musical trends of the day. Time and again, he reinvented himself as needed, and as he did, he also changed the sound of jazz.

Two sides of Davis’ music — one acoustic, featuring classic songs from albums such as Kind of Blue, the other electric, centering on Tutu, the most memorable studio recording of his late period — are the subject of Celebrating Miles, a concert featuring trumpeter (and Davis’ protégé) Wallace Roney, bassist-producer Marcus Miller, up-and-coming trumpeter Christian Scott and bassist Ron Carter, among others. The show, part of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Art’s Jazz Roots series, takes place at the Knight Concert Hall at 8 p.m. Friday.

“It’s an honor to be part of a tribute to Miles, although I feel I pay tribute to him every time I play the trumpet,” Roney said in a recent phone interview. “I feel my own music is an extension of what he gave to the art form — but I think everybody’s music has been influenced by him.”

Roney’s career includes stints with Art Blakey, Tony Williams and Ornette Coleman, as well as 16 albums as a leader. He also won a Grammy in 1994 as a member of the Miles Davis Tribute Band, featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Carter and Williams. He will perform in the acoustic half of the concert, leading an exceptional group comprised of Billy Childs on piano, Donald Harrison on alto sax, Javon Jackson on tenor sax, Carter on bass and Al Foster on drums.

Roney’s own music includes distinctly contemporary elements including turntables and down-tempo grooves. But he won’t approach this show like a repertory player performing a role.

“Playing Miles’ music is as much me as playing my own music. Playing Miles’ music is how I grew up, it’s how I’ve learned,” he says. “So it’s me. I don’t have to think ‘Well, now I’m going to role-play.’ All I have to do is go to that part of me.”

Jazz phenom

Roney, who will be 51 in May, was already being hailed as a young jazz phenom when he met Davis at a tribute to the trumpeter at the Bottom Line in New York City in 1983. After hearing him play, Davis took an interest and became his mentor. “He heard himself in me,” says Roney, matter-of-factly. “ ‘You remind me of me,’ he told me. ‘You look at me like I used to look at Dizzy.’ ”

In 1991, Davis invited Roney to be part of his concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. That evening, working with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones, Davis revisited some of the charts of his classic collaborations with arranger Gil Evans. Roney was a featured soloist.

He chuckles as he discusses the perception and truth of Davis’ cultivated, forbidding persona.

“Miles had a vibe. He definitely had a vibe. He walked into a room and everybody would turn, and he knew how to use that to make people back away from him,” Roney says. “But he was a beautiful person. He was funny. He was friendly. He was generous. He was everything that people would love in a human being but, if you crossed him, oh buddy, ooooh buddy. Then you’d see the “Evil Miles Davis” — and I saw that, too.”

He says that often lost in Davis’ mystique is the fact that “this man was one of the greatest trumpet players of all time.”

“I got to hear his sound in my ear, and I never heard anybody sound like that in my life,” Roney says. “He had a sound that seemed to come from the clouds. I’m telling you. It was not from this Earth. It came from the clouds.”

For all of Davis’ tough posturing, his sound spoke with a touching vulnerability, which served him well in the ’50s and ’60s (just check his classic ballad playing), but also in the ’70s, as he stirred a witches’ brew of electric rock-jazz fusion.

A new groove

In Tutu, recorded 25 years ago this month, the deep humanity of Davis’ sound is set in a world of synthesizers and pre-programmed grooves. Here, he’s Everyman standing in a shiny, mechanical world of zeros and ones, smooth metal and plastic.

“That’s what I was hoping to get,” said Tutu co-producer Miller, 51, who wrote and arranged most of the songs, and played most of the instruments on the album. “To me it was the sound of someone who had been through so much, trying to make his way in this weird, technological world. Miles’ sound was perfect for that.”

The recording was strictly a studio affair. Co-producer Tommy LiPuma, then the head of jazz at Warner Bros., Davis’ new label, decided not to use a live band. To complement Miller’s work, additional musicians were called as needed. As for Davis’ involvement, Miller recalls that “Miles came in, heard the tracks and told me to call him when I needed the trumpet. That’s it. But he was involved the whole time. I was just making a suit he would put on, and hoping it fit well.”

Some of the songs in Tutu were later incorporated into Davis’ live show playlist, but the idea of playing the whole album top to bottom only emerged a couple of years ago, as a one-off event, part of a Miles Davis exhibit in Paris.

“I wanted to do a tribute to Miles, but I also knew Miles would absolutely hate the idea of going back in time and recreating something from 25 years ago,” Miller explains. “Miles never liked to look back. ... And then I got the idea: if I could find some young musicians who were babies when Tutu came out and introduce these great young musicians to the world and have them interpret it, now that could be something Miles would appreciate.”

Miller found New Orleans trumpeter Scott, who will be 28 in March; Louis Cato, drums, 25; Federico Gonzalez Pena, piano, 42, and Alex Han, alto sax, 22. The performance was a success, concerts promoters called, and the one-time-only event became a touring show.

“When we first played the music it tripped me out. Every note brought up a memory of when I was hanging with Miles, working on the music, so it was really emotional to play it,” recalls Miller. “But I really enjoyed playing it live, bringing it to life.”

“What you are going to get out of these shows is how much influence this guy had in our music, in all of us,” says Miller. “Because we are all kind of his children, his family. It’s going to be a beautiful thing to see how Miles still lives.”

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Why We're Obsessed With Wayne Shorter : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Why We're Obsessed With Wayne Shorter : A Blog Supreme : NPR

he saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter is one of the few jazz musicians who can without a doubt be called a living legend. Many of his compositions are jazz standards; many of his records are studied endlessly. He's one of the artists who both musicians and fans obsess over — and even at age 77, he continues to reinvent his musical personality with every performance.

So what about Wayne Shorter gives him this towering, near-mythic profile? Why did people revere this man, and why do they continue to do so?

On Tuesday, Shorter starts a brief North American tour, stopping in Boston, New York, Durham, N.C. and Toronto. On the eve of this stint, I asked Michelle Mercer, author of the biography Footprints: The Life and Music of Wayne Shorter, to help explain and appraise the phenomenon that is Wayne Shorter, both then and now. (Mercer is also an occasional NPR contributor.) I sent her a few questions over e-mail:

Patrick Jarenwattananon: So if you've never heard of him, why is this Wayne Shorter dude worth paying attention to? I know you have a whole book on this, but ... give me the roughly 150 word version?

Michelle Mercer: Here's the encyclopedia entry: Wayne is as strong and distinctive a composer as he is a saxophonist. His storied career encompasses 50 years of jazz innovation. Wayne was weaned on bebop in the 40s and went on to break new ground in the genres of hard bop, post-bop, fusion and orchestral jazz.

But here's why he's really worth a listen: At 77, an age when many musicians have settled into nostalgia, Wayne is writing and playing music that can stir people up.

PJ: It seems like Wayne could have had a place for himself in the jazz canon based only on his work in the late '50s and the '60s. What was special about those years?

MM: In 1959, Wayne joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, a group that toured widely for its time, representing jazz and America around the world. Wayne became Blakey's musical director and with his compositions helped move the group from straightforward hard-bop to sophisticated post-bop. In 1964, Miles Davis recruited him for his quintet with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, which was sort of "the right stuff" of jazz groups. Miles loved Wayne's composing as much as Blakey had. On the '60s quintet albums Wayne has as many composition credits as Miles, if not more.

And there were Wayne's Blue Note recordings. In the '50s and '60s Blue Note was the Bell Labs of jazz, blessed with a lucky conjunction of plentiful funding, smart management and strong talent. Bell Labs produced dozens of breakthrough inventions; Blue Note produced dozens of classic recordings. A few spring to mind: Horace Silver's Song For My Father, Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Dexter Gordon's Our Man In Paris, Freddie Hubbard's Ready For Freddie. Even in such a remarkable catalog, Wayne's Blue Note recordings stand out for their harmonic complexity and memorable melodies. Wayne recorded six albums for Blue Note in one 18-month period, and these albums — The All Seeing Eye, Speak No Evil, etc. — included tunes that have become jazz standards.

PJ: I haven't read as much celebrating his music between the '60s and '00s. Did people write him off for many years in that span?

MM: My goodness, A Blog Supreme, what a leading question. I'm tempted to just say yes.

First, I'll look at Wayne's accomplishments during these years, since you asked about his achievements during previous decades. In the early '70s he and Joe Zawinul co-founded Weather Report, a group that did a lot to define the sound and structure of jazz fusion. Weather Report played to packed stadiums, and featured long, muscular solos by Wayne. For the fans who missed Wayne's acoustic playing, and they were many, there was VSOP in the late 70s, a reformation of Miles's '60s quintet, without Miles. (First Freddie Hubbard played trumpet in the group, then Wynton Marsalis.) On Native Dancer (1974) Wayne and Milton Nascimento invented the first new sound in Brazilian jazz since Getz/Gilberto's jazz bossa. In the '70s, '80s and '90s, Wayne contributed classic solos on recordings by Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell, and on soundtracks like Glengarry Glen Ross and The Fugitive.

But Wayne did suffer a compositional drought in the late '70s and '80s, especially compared to his fertile writing of the '50s and '60s. In the early '70s, with his conversion to Nicheren Buddhism, Wayne decided to "put life ahead of music," as he often says. Though he remained Weather Report's co-leader for all 14 years of the group's tenure, Wayne was much less active in the group than Zawinul.

After Weather Report disbanded in 1984, Wayne made three solo records for Columbia. These '80s albums, Atlantis, Phantom Navigator, and Joy Ryder, as well as his 1995 Verve debut, High Life, were synthesizer-heavy, with some programmed backbeats. Wayne and his producers went with the sound of the times. For many of Wayne's fans these production values were a big obstacle to their musical appreciation. As Joni Mitchell put it in one of her typically vivid metaphors, the backbeats on these albums "put fence posts through the music."

Happily, for everyone concerned, over the past decade or so Wayne has been commissioned to rework some of those '80s compositions for orchestra or chamber ensemble. When these pieces are rearranged for broader instrumentation and performed in an acoustic setting, their strengths are easier to hear. Many of these pieces have several intertwined melodies, for example — and if you pull out any one melody, it's striking enough to serve as the primary one. Basically, the way I see it, in the '80s and '90s, Wayne was becoming a serious classical composer, but the style and sound of his records obscured it for most fans.

PJ: It seems like people "in the know" are still obsessed with him, even if they didn't like his electric recordings. Why are his performances still so anticipated? He's surely more than just a "legacy act," as they say.

MM: In the jazz world, the people most "in the know" are the musicians themselves. Early on, Wayne's unconventional character and original musicianship gave him a special cachet among musicians. Whether or not they've played with him, most musicians have a good Wayne story — or five. With the growth of jazz degree programs, more young musicians began formal study of Wayne's solos and compositions. Appreciation spread and spilled over to the cognoscenti.

That doesn't really explain the obsession, though. Here are some thoughts:

As Wayne remembers it, his mother encouraged his creativity and protected his playtime from the rude incursions of the real world: e.g. his father asking him to take out the trash. Because of this maternal influence, or just because, Wayne lodged comfortably in his imagination, finding richness of experience there. Part of him has never stopped looking at the world through his mind's eye. Wayne's composition and improvisation are windows into this imagination.

And Wayne has a deep musical memory. As he lived music over the decades, he absorbed it all: the Beethoven he studied at NYU, the rhythmic fusillades of Art Blakey, the runic phrases of Miles, the soundtracks to the movies he's watched constantly since he was a kid. Add all this to his own vast catalog of compositions, and he's got a lot of music at his fingertips.

Finally, Wayne's now had a serious Buddhist practice for 40 years, which has made him very awake. Though it sounds simple, I don't know a better way to say it. He's awake. Watching a movie or eating dinner or sitting in an airport terminal, Wayne can be extraordinarily alert to the unfolding of the phenomenal world. On stage, this translates to a keen awareness of what his band mates are playing in every moment.

So Wayne's live shows offer up his unfettered imagination, sharp recall of 20th century music and committed wakefulness, which makes for an unusual combination. Fans never quite know what they're going to get when he picks up a saxophone.

PJ: Tell me about how this current band formed. As jazz fans surely know, Brian Blade, John Patitucci and Danilo Perez — drums, bass and piano, respectively — are some of the most incredibly talented musicians in jazz right now. How did they all meet for this group?

MM: John Patitucci had played and recorded off and on with Wayne since 1987. In the late '90s, when Wayne's symphonic performances began, he'd play with a jazz quartet alongside the orchestra. (He still does.) Wayne tried a few different musicians for this quartet, including John on bass, then added Danilo and Brian at the 2000 Monterey Jazz Festival. It just worked. These musicians had what Wayne wanted and needed: exceptional musical intelligence and a spirit of adventure.

PJ: So what might one see at one of these quartet shows? How else might you describe where Wayne seems to be going musically these days?

MM: You've heard the phrase "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Describing this band's music is even more implausible: It's like swimming about brain surgery.

It's easier to start with what audiences won't hear. Even though this is an acoustic group, audiences won't hear tunes played in the style of Wayne's classic Blue Note recordings. They won't hear set compositions at all. The band will likely play a sort of stream-of-consciousness suite, seguing without break between musical ideas, which may even coalesce briefly into recognizable melodies.

Usually the leader of a jazz group is a protagonist, the central character in the music's story. Wayne rejects that role. This quartet is truly an ensemble cast, and makes good on Joe Zawinul's famous boast about Weather Report: "We always solo and we never solo." They are four equal players making it up as they go along.

There are some risks to this approach. While the band is casting about for an authentic idea, one worthy of development, a musical passage can lose tension or momentum. It may feel as if the band is stuck in quicksand. That's because the band is stuck in quicksand. But it doesn't last long.

Wayne's sound will probably be partly cloudy on tenor sax and mostly sunny on soprano. He may play slurred downward spirals of notes, or what the quartet's manager/engineer Rob Griffin calls "the Draino stuff." He'll lean into some ostinatos. If a distinct melody emerges, he'll probably improvise a counter melody. He'll leap around in wide intervals, lots of fifths and octaves, leaving plenty of space for the other guys to roam. He may whistle.

None of this explains the altered sense of time and space some fans, especially fellow musicians, experience during these shows.

The band's onstage demeanor is more elated than you might expect from a jazz quartet. Danilo and John will often shout out at a surprising musical gesture, especially if it's Wayne's gesture. Brian erupts into grooves with a force that would intimidate most rock bands. The guys are rarely out of eye contact. They laugh more often than jazz musicians usually do in performance, except maybe in New Orleans.

Something audiences won't see is how the band's pre-show conversation carries over into the night's music. Or how after the show, their banter picks up right where the music left off.

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Albany Student Press Ravi Coltrane puts on a great performance at Jazz Fest

Albany Student Press

Coltrane puts on a great performance at Jazz Fest

By Jeff Nania

Jazz Musicians entertain the city of Albany at the annual Riverfront Jazz Festival

The sound of Ravi Coltrane's tenor saxophone was clear on the walk to the amphitheater where Albany's 2010 Riverfront Jazz Festival was held on the 11th of this month.

The first tune was immediately recognizable as "Nothing Like You." This song was first heard years ago on an album called "Sorcerer" by the second great Miles Davis Quintet with drummer Tony Williams, bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Pianist Herbie Hancock.

The track is somewhat of an oddity of jazz lore, a piece of music that has its own little story to go with it. Maybe that is why Ravi Coltrane chose to start his set with it

The second piece was called "Prelude," an original of Coltrane's. It began more lightly and slowly than the first tune, starting out with just bass and sax for the first couple of bars. Unlike the first tune, it never made its way to a full on swing groove.

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Renee Rosnes Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard : NPR

Image via WikipediaRenee Rosnes Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard : NPR

Renee Rosnes has been in the news lately as one half of a jazz power couple: She's married to fellow pianist Bill Charlap, and earlier this year they released the duet album Double Portrait. But she recently made headlines as one quarter of a jazz powerhouse: The Renee Rosnes Quartet. That foursome played a week at the Village Vanguard this September; NPR Music and WBGO were there to record and live broadcast the group both on air and online on Wednesday, Sept. 15.

Let's be clear: Rosnes' talent on the piano is no fraction of anything. She's been on the New York scene for nearly 25 years, enough to play with late jazz legends and develop her own approach in doing so. At the Vanguard, she was full of subtle shadings on lesser-played standards and a few rambunctious originals. There was deep blues feeling and plenty of buttery swing, set forth among a variety of textures from her veteran bandmates. With Rosnes for her Vanguard run are the silky vibraphonist Steve Nelson and the reliable hookup of bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash.

Raised in Vancouver, Rosnes moved to New York in the mid-1980s. Within years, she was playing in the bands of Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and J.J. Johnson, among others. Her self-titled 1989 debut album features such guest stars as Shorter, Branford Marsalis and Herbie Hancock. She's gone on to make more than 10 additional albums under her name, recording for a while on Blue Note Records, and to join the all-star SFJAZZ collective at its inception.

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Getting a big dose of goosepimples in Hancock's latest CD - SOUNDS FAMILIAR By Baby A. Gil | The Philippine Star >> News >> Entertainment

Getting a big dose of goosepimples in Hancock's latest CD - SOUNDS FAMILIAR By Baby A. Gil | The Philippine Star >> News >> Entertainment

Are you in the mood for some goosepimples? I guarantee that you will get a big dose right from the first note of Herbie Hancock’s The Imagine Project and then all throughout this remarkable all-star album.

Jazz music fans know Hancock very well. He is this great pianist whose tinkle tinkle of the ivories can produce so much soul. He played with Miles Davis. He is an insightful songwriter. Remember Speak Like A Child. He is also one excellent producer. I am sure you still remember how his last album The River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to the music of Joni Mitchell ran off with the Album of the Year award, plus a few more trophies at the Grammies two years ago. Hancock is now back with another album that will surely grab an award or two and which will be much talked about and most of all, listened to for a long time.

Hancock explains what The Imagine Project is in the liner notes. This album was recorded in various countries throughout the world, in multiple languages, and with various international artists in an effort to show the power and the beauty of global collaboration as a golden path to peace. It is just too bad that it takes more than making beautiful music together to achieve world peace. If it were, I can say that the release of The Imagine Project had already achieved this end.

But back to the goosepimples. We get the initial dose from Hancock’s piano intro to John Lennon’s Imagine followed by the vocals of India.Arie and Oumou Sangare. Goosepimples. Goosepimples. And not only that. There are also Jeff Beck on the guitar and chants from Konono No. 1. What a song! It still works after all these years. And what voices! What an introduction to the myriad delights waiting in the other cuts. As if that were not enough Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up comes up next as performed by Pink and John Legend. Double wow!

Hancock, who also arranged, provides his own kind of thrills throughout the CD. He plays piano and keyboards in his own distinctive style in all of the songs. Then as in the first two tracks each one features artists who make various types of music but now perform together to create this wonderful album that they recorded in studios from Paris to London to India and other places.

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Music Industry Celebrates 40 Years Of Miles Davis' "Brew" - NY1.com

Image via WikipediaMusic Industry Celebrates 40 Years Of Miles Davis' "Brew" - NY1.com

A new collectors edition of the groundbreaking jazz fusion album recorded by Miles Davis will be released Tuesday, marking 40 years since its legendary debut. NY1's Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

Forty years later, many are marking the anniversary of Miles Davis' legendary recording "Bitches Brew."

At a recent Celebrate Brooklyn concert in Prospect Park, "Bitches Brew Revisited" saluted the musical pioneer. The band includes some who played with Miles and others who were inspired by him including DJ Logic.

"It feels good to see the old and the young just coming out and supporting and just seeing something unique as well as paying tribute to Miles Davis and the legacy and the music," says DJ Logic.

Drummer Vince Wilburn Junior played for several years with his uncle.

"To me it was like I was a student and he was like the master, the jedi," recalls Wilburn Jr.

Miles Davis wasn't just a musical genius, he was also a brilliant marketer and promoter. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when rock and roll acts were attracting the big crowds, Davis traded his more traditional look and sound for electric instruments and a rockin' style. The music was called fusion. The album was called "Bitches Brew" and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. And while some called him a sell out, he was selling out large venues and records, just as he had hoped.

"Miles was a forward thinker so being around him and playing with him, you never knew what to expect. He just had visions in his head and he wanted us to carry it out. He didn't care about what people thought," says Wilburn Jr.

To mark the anniversary, a box set cd and live DVD are being released -- remixed by DJ Logic. A biopic of the restless and experimental musician is also in the works with Herbie Hancock doing the score and actor Don Cheadle tapped to play Miles.

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Jazz greats find their way to Buffalo - The Buffalo News

Jazz greats find their way to Buffalo - The Buffalo News

You should always steal from the best. So to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the death of big name touring jazz in Buffalo are greatly exaggerated.

It is, in fact, alive and flourishing.

Jazz radio isn't, heaven knows. In one of the more disgraceful abdications of recent local radio history, WBFO-FM ended most of its already mediocre jazz programming in favor of carrying NPR (thereby duplicating a lot of WNED-AM needlessly), leaving Toronto's CJRT-FM (91.1) to provide jazz on the air in Buffalo. None of this surprised a living soul who had followed the career of the station's longtime program director, even if it left Western New York criminally deprived of the one crucial place people used to be exposed to the music (and often the interviews) of great jazz musicians coming to town.

But understand -- last Friday's well-attended Herbie Hancock concert at the Erie Canal Harbor is only the beginning of stellar jazz news for the next month. For instance:

Aug. 21: Superb alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett comes to the Tralf Music Hall and plays his first show at 8 p.m. As with everyone else who ever played with Miles Davis, that truly magic jazz name is usually invoked to lend glitter to Garrett for those who don't know his music, but it's utterly unnecessary. Yes, it's true that at the end of Miles' life, Garrett was one of his saxophonists, but he was already considered one of the most powerful younger players in jazz.

I'm afraid the word "younger" has to be replaced with the word "veteran" now (he'll be 50 in October), but everything else stands. The Tralf gig is much awaited.

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At Newport, jazz ranging to the ends of its scale - The Boston Globe

Chick Corea via last.fm

At Newport, jazz ranging to the ends of its scale - The Boston Globe

Newport fest covers traditional, eclectic

By Steve Greenlee, Globe Staff | August 9, 2010

NEWPORT, R.I. — The eclectic mix of styles that is the hallmark of the Newport Jazz Festival could not have been displayed better than it was midafternoon yesterday. As trumpeter Wynton Marsalis took his quintet through an hour of buttoned-down, straight-ahead jazz on the main stage, saxophonist Ken Vandermark’s thrash-jazz outfit Powerhouse Sound unfurled its fury on one of the two side stages.

Talk about stark differences: Legendary class act Dave Brubeck even sat in with Marsalis for a few tunes, his swiftly ascending chords defying his 89-year-old hands on a romp through “Take the ‘A’ Train.’’ When the song ended, festival founder George Wein led the audience (backed by Marsalis’s band) in singing “Happy Birthday’’ to Brubeck (who won’t turn 90 until December).

Meanwhile, Vandermark’s quartet — with electric guitar, electric bass, and drums — shredded a set of angry, noisy anti-songs that contained elements of heavy metal, punk rock, funk, and free improv. “That guy is sick,’’ one woman said as she walked out. Vandermark would probably take that as a compliment.

Under picture-postcard-perfect skies all weekend, 30 sets of wildly varied jazz unfolded on three stages in Fort Adams State Park, headlined by crowd-pleasing jazz-pop heartthrobs Jamie Cullum (Saturday) and Chris Botti (Sunday). Even if you were there for the full 16 hours, you couldn’t have taken in a fraction of what was offered. Yet you would have left satisfied.

Highlights? We’ve got your highlights right here:

Ahmad Jamal’s “Poinciana.’’ The pianist just turned 80, but he brought new life to his signature song. Jamal’s style hasn’t changed in the least over the years — sparse playing and empty spaces remain his calling cards. On “Poinciana,’’ he went silent for four and six bars at a time, then played single-note right-hand runs for six or hand bars, then threw in some block chords, and — hey, why not — tossed in a quote from “Take the ‘A’ Train.’’

Fly on Cole Porter. Fly is the leaderless trio of saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Jeff Ballard. Two songs into their set, Turner and Grenadier repeated a four-note phrase four times, after which Ballard joined in. Once everyone was grounded, Turner let go of the handle and played a series of sustained notes. Suddenly the melody of Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me’’ emerged, but the song was entirely rearranged.

Chick Corea goes free. Almost. The pianist’s new quartet of all-stars, the Freedom Band, includes alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Roy Haynes. While they didn’t go completely free-improvisation on us, they did perform with great elasticity. “OK, we’re just gonna play,’’ Corea said at the top, and they did — a speedy hard bop number, hard-driving postbop tune, and a more-off-kilter-than-usual Thelonious Monk composition.

Anat Cohen has a blast. Cohen, who is fast becoming the most interesting clarinetist of her generation, played with great physicality — lurching, thrusting, blowing at length with eyes closed and head down — but at the heart of her performance was a commitment to enjoy herself. During her quartet’s take of “After You’ve Gone’’ — one that began as a lightly bouncing ballad but turned into a riot — Cohen was having so much fun that she missed her own entrance because she was laughing. Did it harm the piece? Hardly. She had the audience in her palm.

Matt Wilson’s attention-deficit jazz. Drummer Wilson brought a quartet that included cornet, saxophone, and bass, as well as a string quartet, and they constantly found new (and humorous) ways to interact. Wilson shifted gears restlessly, often employing counter-rhythms while the horns cackled and howled. “Some Assembly Required’’ concluded with the jazz musicians shaking little colored bells while the string players plucked pizzicato-style. The playfulness evolved into a piece of maniacally upbeat raga in which the strings figured prominently. Then — of course — the band covered Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy.’’

Gretchen Parlato gives goosebumps. Working in a style that drew from bop, bossa nova, and strains of world jazz, Parlato delivered her vocals in a breathy manner, nearly whispering her lyrics. On songs like Herbie Hancock’s “Butterfly,’’ her gorgeous voice behaved more like an instrument — a soprano sax here, a cello there — than something belonging to a singer. The evidence is piling up that young Ms. Parlato is the most original jazz singer in a generation.

Dave Douglas’s brass fantasy. The trumpeter’s new quintet, Brass Ecstasy, features trombone, French horn, tuba, and drums in homage to Lester Bowie. The group sounded like a bebop combo, a funk-blues outfit, and a marching band on mushrooms — sometimes in the same piece. The set’s craziest moment arrived when Marcus Rojas sang distortedly through the mouthpiece of his tuba during a cover of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’’

Moran deconstructs Monk. Pianist Jason Moran, whose trio Bandwagon has become a regular at Newport, patiently explored every nook and cranny of Monk’s “Crepuscule With Nellie,’’ unearthing new harmonic and rhythmic delights in the beautiful ballad. With his exceptional sidemen, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, Moran accomplished an impossible feat: making a Monk tune sound like his own.

Shipp’s uncharted waters. Pianist Matthew Shipp, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, and bassist Joe Morris performed a set of atonal free jazz with few preconceived notions of where it should go. Shipp rummaged around in the lower register, Morris plucked quickly and nimbly, and Allen engaged in cyclonic squawking through a half-hour opening number. Each part might have sounded like so much rumbling, but, if anything, the individualism of each player wound up complementing the others. Together it all coalesced and made perfect sense. You might say it was a microcosm of the Newport Jazz Festival ethos.

Steve Greenlee can be reached at greenlee@ globe.com.

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