Roy Hargrove
For the last several years, the US Bank Saint Louis Jazz Festival has brought some top-flight talent to St. Louis for concerts in Clayton's Shaw Park. The 2005 editition of the Fest is set of Friday, June 24 and Saturday, June 25, but if you go to their Web site looking for the lineup of musicians, you're greeted by a brief note on the home page stating, "Sorry for the delay! Please return in May, 2005 for a complete line-up." .
Fortunately for those who just can't wait that long, the current (May) issue of down beat contains the magazine's annual guide to summer festivals, and said guide offers a preview of the potential lineup for the St. Louis Jazz Festival.
First, a caveat: Like all monthly magazines, down beat has a deadline well in advance of the cover date, so the information for the guide had to be compiled some time ago. Lineups can change, depending on musicians' schedules, promoters' budgets, and a thousand and one other factors. Nothing is official until the Festival says it is.
That said, it looks like the 2005 Festival could be a big year for groups led by trumpet players, since the lineup as listed in down beat's preview includes Dave Douglas, Roy Hargrove's RH Factor and New Orleans' Latin-jazz-funk group Los Hombres Calientes, featuring trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and percussionist Bill Summers, a charter member of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. Also mentioned in db's brief preview are vocalist Jane Monheit and Summer Storm, a smooth jazz package featuring guitarist Norman Brown, saxophonist Everette Harp and vocalists Peabo Bryson and Brenda Russell.
Given the constraints under which they must work, I think that in the past the Festival organizers have done a reasonably good job of balancing musically adventurous artists with more commercial or recognizable ones. With Douglas as this year's choice for the hard-core jazz fans, and Los Hombres and Hargove's RH Factor band mixing jazz with Latin and hip-hop, respectively, this projected lineup has some real potential even for those with scant interest in vocals or smooth jazz.
Whenever the offical Festival lineup is announced, I'll blog it, hopefully with annotations and/or commentary, right here.
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