from The Seattle Times:

The big story at this year’s Jazz Port Townsend — held last weekend in the Fort Worden balloon hangar called McCurdy Pavilion and at several Port Townsend clubs — was the world premiere of a work by Los Angeles composer Bill Holman for reed man Paquito D’Rivera.

The piece lived up to expectations and more at its Saturday afternoon debut. But a plain old-fashioned jam session that night was the festival highlight.

A bebopper’s delight, the program featured an ad hoc group of musicians who had been teaching all week at a workshop that preceded the festival. Jokingly called an “8-Piece Sextet” (that ultimately had seven players — go figure), it fell effortlessly into a deep, toe-tapping groove.

The bespectacled, suit-clad drummer Matt Wilson had a lot to do with that, as he set a swingin’ pace on Herbie Hancock’s soulful shot, “Driftin’.” D’Rivera, whose irresistibly silly humor fell somewhere between Dizzy Gillespie and Ricky Ricardo, pulled the crowd to its feet with a sparkling solo on “Corcovado.” Trumpeter Terrell Stafford tore the lid off Gillespie’s “Tour de Force” and Wilson answered with a solo that cleverly cast his bass drum against fields of silence. Pianist Benny Green rumbled over the edge of the earth into of the ether of pure sound.

Continue reading at The Seattle Times.

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