For Immediate Release14th annual Healdsburg jazz Festival – June 1-10, 2012

Press Contact information:Ticket sales and information for public: online or at 800 838-3006 Website: www.healdsburgjazzfestival.orgPress Contact: Jessica Felix, jessicafelix.ap@gmail.com 707-332-8433 cell (please do not use this number in publications)Media Kit: Online press pack: http://www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org/wordpress/festival-2012/2012-media-kit/ : contains press releases, event descriptions, artist bios and website links, photos, web banner, and more. To request interviews, photos, press materials, etc., please contact Jessica Felix,or call the Jazz Festival Office: 707 433-4633

14th Annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival Set to Be a "Roy-al" Affair

The Healdsburg Jazz Festival will take the wine country by storm for the 14th consecutive year with a power-packed roster of jazz “Roy-alty” -- that's Roy as in Haynes, the legendary drummer and NEA Jazz Master -- and a bevy of veterans and jazz rising stars. The festival is proud to present for the first time, NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, a unique vocal force in the music for over half a century. Healdsburg, which has never compromised its vision of presenting authentic jazz greats, continues this June with a lineup that includes another Jazz Master -- the peerless guitarist Kenny Burrell -- red-hot pianist Vijay Iyer and his trio that's the toast of New York; local jazz mover and shaker Adam Theis' Shotgun Wedding; the dazzling pianist Michele Rosewoman with trombone legend Julian Priester sitting in as special guest;  suave, bluesy pianist/singer Freddy Cole; timbales grandmaster Orestes Vilato's brand-new trans-Latin group Azesu, featuring the beguiling Venezuelan singer Maria Marquez; a dixieland superband led by Mal Sharpe; a Jazz Night at the Movies courtesy of Mark Cantor and his mile-deep cache of rare jazz footage; Northern California soul-jazz guitarist extraordinaire Calvin Keys; and lots more. 

As usual, the festival matches the jazz with the area's most beautiful settings, such as Rodney Strong Vineyards, Barndiva restaurant, the Cousteaux Bakery, the town plaza and of course the Raven Performing Arts Theater.

With help from the very prestigious $10,000 NEA Jazz Master's Live grant to present Mr. Haynes and Ms. Jordan, the Festival will also be offering a couple of special programs.  A Roy-al Family Panel Discussion featuring headliner Roy Haynes and his two sons, cornetist Graham and drummer Craig and other participants, will air out the limitless legacy of a drummer who has played with practically every significant figure in jazz history, from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane to Chick Corea. A  Vocal Master Class led by the divine Ms. Jordan, open to singers of all levels, will reveal secrets she has stored since singing with Charlie Parker as a teenager. 

Other treats abound at the fest. Try the late-night jams at the Healdsburg Hotel featuring Lorca Hart's juicy trio, or a wine tasting at Seasons of the Vineyard graced by the superlative Benny Barth Trio.

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Come to the festival and soak in the magic that has made Healdsburg an annual mecca for jazz pilgrims who crave the real deal. 

Below are event descriptions, websites and more. Visit our media section on our website for photos, artist bios and more. Please let me know if I can help in any way.Jessica Felix, Jessicafelix.ap@gmail.com

FRIDAY 6/1Calvin Keys Organ QuartetKRUG EVENT CENTER 1261 Grove Street7-9PM | $20http://www.calvinkeys.com/

Calvin Keys Organ QuartetWhen it comes to laying down a groove, guitarist Calvin Keys is the undisputed master. He's been entertaining Bay Area audiences consistently for decades with his Wes Montgomery-influenced hollow-body stylings, and at 68 he's not slowing down. For Healdsburg this year, Keys will be bringing his Organ Quartet -- Brian Ho on the Hammond, Art Maxwell on sax and Leon Joyce on drums -- which means old-style funky blues in the house.

After attending soul-jazz basic training in the bands of Hammond B3 specialists Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff and Richard Groove Holmes, the Omaha, Nebraska native graduated to the big time with a stint in Ray Charles' band. In Los Angeles in the early '70s Calvin released a few landmark records on the fondly remembered Black Jazz label, two of which, Shawn-Neeq and Proceed With Caution have been re-issued on CD. His latest album, Hand Made Portrait (on Silverado Records), allows Calvin to flaunt is fleet, single-note attack style on American songbook classics like “I'll Remember April, “I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face,” and jazz standards like “Naima” and “The Good Bait.”

For Healdsburg, the emphasis will be on R&B, so be prepared for grooving at our new venue.

SATURDAY 6/2

Jazz & Wine Tasting:

Benny Barth Trio with Randy Vincent & Chris AmbergerSEASONS OF THE VINEYARD 113 Plaza Street4-6PM | No Cover

Benny BarthOn Saturday, June 2, Taste wine at Ferrari-Carano, the jazz-friendly vineyard where the Benny Barth Trio will be spreading good vibes. Barth began playing in the bebop era and has worked in all the

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legendary San Francisco clubs of yore. Randy Vincent, guitar teacher to the stars, swings his ax, and local Veteran Chris Amberger caresses the stand-up.

Dixieland at the Bakery:Mal Sharpe’s Big Money & Dixieland Jazz Band & New Horizon Stompers COSTEAUX BAKERY & CAFÉ 417 Healdsburg Avenue 7PM | $25

Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Dixieland Band

Get the right musicians together playing Dixieland, and the result is an intense conversation that communicates joy. Trombonist Mal Sharpe has been having these conversations for decades, with a direct link to the origins of the music by way of his playing with George “Pops” Foster, who started working in New Orleans in 1907. Mal's Big Money in Jazz Dixieland Band is firmly in the tradition of San Francisco legends Lu Watters, who launched San Francisco's Dixieland revival in the 1940s, and Turk Murphy, who extended it into the '80s.

Perhaps “revival” isn't really the right word for a music that will always exist as long as players, and audiences, demand the kind of simultaneous polyphonic improvisation that Dixieland represents at the quintessence. Mal's band features musicians who are veterans of many early jazz styles, and even some modern. Pianist Si Perkoff is a walking Bay Area jazz academy who has worked with everyone from Harry “Sweets” Edison to Pepper Adams to T-Bone Walker. Trumpeter Leon Oakley served in Turk Murphy's band for 11 years. Clarinetist Dwayne Ramsey plays in the King Cotton Band, the Zenith Jazz Band and the Napa Valley Jazz Band. Bassist and tuba man Sam Rocha is in Clint Baker's All Stars. And drummer Carmen Consino has worked with the Dynamic Miss Faye Carol, Sheila Jordan, Denise Perrier and Kim Nalley.

Expect them to light a fire under standards like “Beale Street Blues,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” and “Mood Indigo,” among others, proving yet again that trad is rad.

The New Horizon Stompers are a Dixieland distillation of a very large Sonoma County orchestra called the New Horizons Band. Ray Walker, a retired music instructor from the Santa Rosa school system who plays clarinet and banjo in various Dixieland bands, put together the Stompers, who include Dave Stare on banjo, Rob Taylor on trumpet, Richard Bloom and Bill Byrne on clarinet, Louise Graves and Neil Herring on alto sax, Bill Badstubner and Dave Graves on trombone, Gerry Turner on tuba, Jim Cunningham on drums and Bob Ressue on piano.

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SUNDAY 6/3

Freddy Cole QuartetBARNDIVA 231 Center StreetTwo Shows: 4PM & 7PM $45 | $65Dedicated to the memory of David Dietzwww. freddycole .com

Freddy Cole QuartetIn a culture besotted with youth, some people haven't figured out that musicians only improve with age. It's not like sports, and in this, Freddy Cole's life offers an object lesson. As high schooler in Chicago, Cole was a football star. But when an injury sidelined him, he focused on the piano instead. Now, imagine if he had gone onto play pro football. His retirement would have commenced, well, 45 years ago. Now, at 80, he's just about hitting his prime. So, the lesson is, jazz isn't sports. In jazz, you just keep getting better with age. Cole, of course, was a late bloomer. Part of that was the need to escape the long shadow of his older brother, Nat King Cole, who died in 1965. Not to mention that Nat's daughter and Freddy's niece, Natalie Cole, has staked a strong claim to the family franchise. Though there are some similarities between the vocal approach of Freddy and Nat, as would have to be the case with siblings, with Freddy you get a little less crystal and a lot more of the barrelhouse, a trait complemented by the way he digs deep into the piano, swinging it every which way. His 2010 album Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B (that's Billy Eckstein, natch) was nominated for a Grammy in the jazz vocal category, and on his latest disc, Talk to Me, he ups the sass and the class. It's been a long time coming for Freddie, but he has matured into one of jazz's pre-eminent singers. And if youth is really what you must have, then you won't believe his guitarist, Randy Napoleon. The rest of the band, Elias Bailey on bass and Curtis Boyd on drums, is merely ageless.

Financial investigative journalist David Dietz fell in love with Healdsburg in the 1980s. But it wasn’t until he and his wife, Joanne Derbort moved here from San Francisco in 2003 that he really understood why. In those years here, still working full-time at Bloomberg News, he helped on projects he believed in, like the Jazz Festival, and was active in the successful push to save the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge. David passed away on June 1, 2011. One of the things he loved most was listening to amazing jazz in Barndiva’s gorgeous back garden.

MONDAY 6/4Jazz & Wine Dinner

Kai Devitt-Lee Trio withZach Ostroff & Jesse SimpsonDRY CREEK KITCHEN317 Healdsburg Avenue7-10PM | Reservation Recommendedhttp://www.kaidevittlee.com

Kai Devitt-Lee Trio

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There must be something in the Wine Country water that causes guitar prodigies to sprout. Julian Lage was the first – now meet Kai Devitt-Lee, 18, this Healdsburg-raised fret wonder is playing the Healdsburg Jazz Festival with his trio of young lions. Now living in NY and studying at the New School, fleet of finger and pure of tone, Kai has many prestigious accolades already including being selected as the one guitarist for National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts Youngarts week in Miami and Monterey Jazz Festival Next Generation Jazz Orchestra. His outstanding trio consists of two fellow Bay Area prodigies currently making waves in New York: Zach Ostroff, 19, on bass and Jesse Simpson, 22, on drums. Ostroff is highly melodic player who has shared stages with Julian Lage, George Cables, Howard Riley and Taylor Eigsti. Simpson’s volcanic playing has gotten him work with Benny Green, Cedar Walton and others.

TUESDAY 6/5

Azesu: Latin Rhythms, South American Folklorico & JazzHEALDSBURG PLAZA 6-8PM | Freehttp://azesu.com

AzesuOrestes Vilato has played with practically every Latin jazz or Latin rock artist of note – from Ray Barretto to Carlos Santana to Carlos “Patato” Valdez to Chico O'Farrill – not to mention he's lent his timbales skills to stars like Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. So when the 67-year-old Cuban-born percussionist wanted to put together a new group, he made some unusual choices. His group, Azesu, which is playing a dance concert at the Healdsburg Plaza, is neither salsa nor mambo or any traditional style you might expect someone from his background and generation to play. It's a polyglot group with a blended sound, created with an idea of chemistry that Vilato had in mind when he sought his personnel.

What they all share is a Bay Area connection. Vilato's been hereabouts since the early '80s, and his husky-voiced lead singer, Maria Marquez, was on her way to a music career in Venezuela when she left to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Then, moving to the Bay Area, she commenced work with percussion great John Santos and guitarist Joyce Cooling, among others. Her husky voice bears traces of Nina Simone and Edith Piaf – down to earth, simmering cool and as deep as she wants to take it.

Another Venezuelan, Omar Ledezma Jr. is like Vilato a master percussionist who got a law degree in Caracas, then traveled to Cuba to study with drum legend Chanquito before hitting the U.S. on scholarship at the Berklee school, while spending most of his time sitting in with Latin jazz stars all around the East Coast. Currently he's teaching at the Community Music Center in San Francisco. Bassist David Pinto, who was music director for Grammy winning singer Susana Baca, brings the folklorico of his country Peru into the mix, lending a cool undercurrent to the otherwise fiery nature of Azesu. Bay Area multi-reed man Sheldon Brown has the versatility to play big band jazz, klezmer and Afro-Cuban jazz with Omar Sosa, and pianist Jonathan Alford switched from being a classical recitalist and composer for stage and dance companies to playing in John Santos' Machete Ensemble,

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which also featured Vilato, and has worked with Santana, Pete Escovedo, Ray Obiedo, and many more. Azesu has released a self-titled CD that lays down a new marker for hybrid Latin jazz – a marker you can dance on at the Plaza.

Vintage Blues on Vinylwith David KatznelsonBERGAMOT ALLEY328a Healdsburg Avenue 8-11PM | $10

DJ - David KatznelsonDancers warmed up by Azesu should head down the street where the music-loving folks at Bergamot Alley wine and beer store will presenting a sizzling platter of blues and R&B served up by DJ David Katznelson, renowned for the KUSF-in-Exile Internet radio show The Cotton Exchange. Katznelson will be spinning tunes by John Lee Hooker, Fred McDowell, Slim Gaillard, Amos Melborne, Roscoe Gordon, Ruth Brown, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James, and many more. Blues babies, find out more at www.thecottonexchange.net.

WEDNESDAY 6/6

Jazz Night at the Movies with Mark CantorRAVEN THEATER 115 North Street 7-9:30PM | $10 http://www.jazz-on-film.com/

Mark CantorThough jazz festivals are first and foremost about presenting live music, promoters have known for decades that a secret to a festival's success can be a program of jazz films from the vaults of Mark Cantor. For 40 years, this passionate archivist has been enthralling audiences with screenings from a collection of more than 4,000 performances, all eras and styles of the music, some even predating jazz. He’s been a mainstay at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, and this year he returns to the Raven Theatre for Jazz Night at the Movies, with lots of surprises.

With so much depth in his film cache, Mark doesn’t have to worry about repeating himself. He always manages to find new historical material to work with. Mark doesn’t like to announce what he’ll be showing beforehand, but we did manage to squeeze a few revelations out of him for the Healdsburg crowd. Jazz lovers, expect to see John Coltrane and Stan Getz playing together on the same stage. How? Because they both ended up as part of the same European tour. Tenor madness? Or just gladness? Also, a trip in the way way back machine brings us to New Orleans pre-“jazz” clarinetists George Lewis and Alphonse Picou playing with trumpeter Punch Miller. “This is the first time that this performance will have been seen in public in more than half a century,” Mark says. Also new for Healdsburg: the 1958 film and television debut of alto bop great Art Pepper.

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As for the rest, who knows? Could be Bird, could be Bing, could be Ella, Duke, Newk, Goodman, Monk – maybe a clip of Chuck Berry playing the blues, or of Jaki Byard giving a quick keyboard demonstration of all the jazz styles from stride to free-form. The audience will be in good hands, as was Ken Burns when he hired Mark as a consultant/archivist for the PBS landmark “Jazz.” Ditto dozens of festivals the world over.

When jazz is the subject and Mark is the teacher, history is never dull.

THURSDAY 6/7Hip Hop Meets Jazz:

Shotgun Wedding SPOONBAR219 Healdsburg Avenue8-11PM | No Coverwww.jazzmafia.com/family/ shotgun - wedding -quintet

Shotgun Wedding QuartetOne day a few years back the Bay Area woke up and discovered it had been taken over by the Mafia. The Jazz Mafia, that is. Seemingly out of nowhere, a syndicate had sprung up, absorbing practically every able-bodied musician in the region like Star Trek's Borg and distributing them among about 10 different bands, each under the Jazz Mafia umbrella. There's orchestral (the Jazz Mafia Symphony), big band (the Realistic Orchestra), brass band (the Brass Mafia), hip-hop jazz (the Shotgun Wedding Quintet) and several other outfits that the Jazz Mafia's don, Adam Theis, conjured into existence. This year Theis is extending the franchise into the Healdsburg Jazz Festival by sending the Shotgun Wedding Quartet to do a hit on the Spoonbar.

It's fitting, since Theis grew up in Sonoma County where he started creating musical possibilities for local players while still in high school. He went from those early '90s humble beginnings as a horn section hired out to bands that wanted some fire power to an organization that managed to extort a $50,000 grant out of the Wallace Alexander Gerbode and William and Flora Hewlett Foundations to produce the 60-piece “Brass, Bows & Beats,” a hip-hop symphony that principal composer and trombonist Theis toured around North America and recorded as a live album. Theis is a serious composer who, with Shotgun Wedding, manages a seamless meld of jazz with hip-hop beats and narration. On the group’s latest CD, Tales From the Barbary Coast, the music makes rapid shifts, sort of like mini-suites – not far from how Ellington and Mingus worked – creating a noir feel enhanced by samplers and loops. Over the music MC Dublin tells lurid tales from the bygone era indicated on the album’s title. Also playing sampler and violin, Dublin is joined by Theis on bass, trombone, synths and sampler; Joe Cohen on saxes and keyboards; and Pat Korte on drums and sampler.

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FRIDAY 6/8

Music, Wine & Food Cocktail Hour: Gary Johnson TrioACROSS FROM RAVEN THEATER Parking lot at North & Center Streets, 6-8PM

Michele Rosewoman Trio with Andy McKee & Billy Hart plus special guest Julian Priester

RAVEN THEATER115 North Street8PM $50 | $30 | $25 Student/Senior (Senior 65+, Students with ID) Michelle Rosewoman Trio with www. michelerosewoman .com Andy Mckee - http://www.andymckee.info Billy Hart – www. billyhart music.com Julian Priester www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=1006

Michele Rosewoman TrioThose who have been lucky enough to catch Michele Rosewoman's occasional homecoming performances in the Bay Area over the decades can feel like members of a secret society, pilgrims to the shrine of a piano goddess who has illuminated mysteries of the keyboard that very few have accessed. Raised in Oakland and schooled by Northern California's late piano guru, Ed Kelly, Michele was a prodigious talent who while still in her teens had multiple strains of jazz and world music dancing in her head. Around the time she moved to New York in the late 1970s she was like a magnet to the rising stars of the day – Oliver Lake, Billy Bang, Julius Hemphill and many more.

What immediately bowls one over about Michele's playing is her uncanny technique. She is equally virtuosic at in-the-pocket post-bop playing, rippling romanticism, atonal flights or the Afro-Cuban clave. But while many many have chops, few can muster them with the sense of equipoise that Michele brings. Like a dancer in the eye of a hurricane, Michele choreographs the piano keys in a way that's electrifying. In a 2007 interview with allaboutjazz.com, Michele touched on the essence of what she's about: “One is called on to deal with so many things, and the key is balance,” she said. “Balancing limitation and expansion, form with free form, respect for, and acknowledgment of tradition with a drive for creativity and evolution, aggressiveness with receptiveness, how to react and listen at the same time, incorporating the voices around you, taking the initiative.”

She's still attracting young hotshots – recent bands she's led have featured Mark Shim, Gene Jackson and MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Miguel Zenon – but for this evening's concert at the Raven Michele pulls out some big guns: Billy Hart on drums, Andy McKee on bass, and special guest Julian Priester on trombone. Well known to the Healdsburg audience, Billy is a master of shading and color who can crank up the raw power when necessary. He's worked with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, Miles Davis and dozens more. Julian was hired by Sun Ra and Duke Ellington both, which tells you most of what you need to know about him. From the low register of his instrument he

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extracts alluring narratives that have also brought him into the bands of Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Tyner and John Coltrane. Andy McKee is a prodigiously talented bassist who was schooled in the bands of Philly Joe Jones and Elvin Jones and went on to play with Mal Waldron, Don Cherry, Michel Petrucciani and many others.

Lorca Hart Trio with Josh Nelson & Edwin LivingstonHOTEL HEALDSBURG LOBBY 25 Matheson Street9PM-Midnight | No Coverwww.lorcahart .com www.joshnelson music.com www. edwinlivingston .com

Lorca Hart Trio

Ask the musicians: some of the most fun to be had at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival takes place at night in the lobby of the Hotel Healdsburg, where the playing goes until midnight. The final Friday and Saturday nights of the fest, the Lorca Hart Trio holds forth. The son of drumming titan Billy Hart, Lorca Hart has been carving out his own niche on the instrument, showing the kind of versatility that's gotten him work with folks like Calvin Keys, Julian Lage, Hugh Masakela and Red Holloway. Marinating in the L.A. Scene while studying at Cal Arts enabled him to put together the crack band he'll have at the hotel: pianist Josh Nelson, who's worked with Christian McBride, Tom Scott and Matt Wilson, and bassist Edwin Livingston, a Texas terror sought out by Elvin Jones, Los Hombres Calientes and Hubert Laws. Nelson and Livingston recently served as Natalie Cole's rhythm section. You can check out Lorca's trio on the 2010 CD Recollections. The Healdsburg Hotel is the place to be when the Raven concerts get out. You never know who will stop by and sit in.

SATURDAY 6/9

Master Vocal Class with Sheila JordanHEALDSBURG HIGH SCHOOL 1028 Prince Avenue/Band Room11AM-2PM $50 participants | $25 to audit

“Getting Your Act Together” Vocal Master Class with Sheila JordanBand Room at Healdsburg High School.11 to 2pm. The class is open to all levels of expertise. Cost is $50 for participants, $25 for observers

2012 NEA Jazz Master and Healdsburg Jazz Festival featured performer Sheila Jordan invites singers of all levels to a Vocal Master Class.

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Teaching since 1978, Sheila is as passionate about passing on her knowledge as she is about singing. “My purpose in life is to keep this music alive, Sheila says. “I’m going to die one day. Is the music going to die with me? No!”

In the class Sheila will talk about her own life, how she learned singing and what her approach is to it. She will cover bebop and scat singing, and teach at least one song that the class can sing together. She urges anyone who wants to learn a specific song to bring in a lead sheet, although that’s not necessary.

“I want to give people the jazz fever,” Sheila says. “Once they get the jazz fever, they won’t want to sing anything else.”

From 1978 until 2005 Sheila taught jazz singing at City College of New York. She teaches every year with Jazz in July at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro. She also conducts workshops around the world. She says she believes in teaching from heart, offering encouragement to build confidence.

Panel Discussion with the “Roy-al Family”Moderated by Billy Hart RAVEN THEATER115 North Street2-4PM | Free

Open Panel Discussion with the Roy-al Family

Why is the music of NEA Jazz Master Roy Haynes important? What kind of influence has he had on drums? On the jazz world at large? What is it about Roy that has made him one of the most sought-after drummers in jazz history?

Any artist who has worked with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Lester Young, Gary Burton, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Chick Corea has something going on that deserves being discussed.

In honor of 2012 Healdsburg Jazz Festival Headliner Roy Haynes, fans are encouraged to attend a panel discussion on jazz’s Roy-al family. Roy Haynes will air his thoughts and take questions, and his sons, drummer Craig and cornetist/electronic music artist Graham, will talk about what it was like to grow with a dad who happened to be a star in the jazz firmament. They’ll talk about how he encouraged them and influenced them. Billy Hart, a first-call drummer from a slightly later generation who teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music, the New School and New York University, will participate and discuss Roy’s impact on drummers and on the jazz world in general. Perhaps he’ll reveal some tricks he learned from Roy – or vice versa!

Festival goers are welcome to ask questions. Come and ponder the meaning of one of the central figures in jazz history.

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Music, Wine & Food Cocktail Hour: Susan Sutton TrioACROSS FROM RAVEN THEATER Parking lot at North & Center Streets5:30-7:30PM

Kenny Burrell, Solo & TrioRAVEN THEATER115 North Street 8PM $65 | $45 | $35 Student/Senior (Senior 65+, Students with ID)This concert is dedicated to Al Voigtwww.latimesblogs.latimes.com/.../ jazz - guitarist - kenny - burrell -at-80.html www.classic jazzguitar .com/artists/artists_page.jsp?artist=57 http://www.playjazzguitar.com/kenny_burrell.html

Kenny Burrell, Solo and TrioWith Kenny Burrell's two sets ringing in the final weekend, the Healdsburg Jazz Festival's Jazz Masters begin showing what it's like at the top of the artistic mountain. Kenny, who turned 80 last year, picked up his Jazz Masters knighthood from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005, just another feather in the cap of a musician who's got a room full of them. But it was an occasion to consider what Kenny represents in jazz. If, of the other Jazz Masters at Healdsburg, Roy Haynes could be seen as determination and Sheila Jordan as innovation, then Kenny is definitely precision.

He's been hitting the sweet spots on his fretboard since 1951, when, as a young guitarist in Detroit, he landed a record date with Dizzy Gillespie. After a tour with Oscar Peterson in '55, Kenny arrived in New York and immediately became a hot ticket among the jazz elite. He had to figure out how to balance making his own records against demands for his services from people like John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Smith, Tony Bennett, Lena Horn and many more.

What's his secret? He told the Los Angeles Times that music “has to be a balance between heart and mind. The thing is to not let your technique or your analytical side overshadow your feelings.” On his way to recording over a 100 albums as a leader, and appearing on hundreds more, Kenny has demonstrated two sentiments: an abiding love of Duke Ellington's music (Ellington called him his favorite guitarist) and a penchant for teaching. He combined the two passions in 1978 when he created a class at UCLA called Ellingtonia, teaching it for 18 years until the university instituted a full-fledged Jazz Studies Department, naming Kenny the director. The guitarist teaches ethnomusicology, jazz studies, and leads a few guitar workshops – all the while continuing to record albums and perform concerts. He was also involved with Herb Alpert and Herbie Hancock in folding the Thelonious Monk Institute into UCLA's jazz programs.

Kenny will play two sets at the Raven. The first will be solo guitar, where the audience is likely to hear the remarkable picking and finger-style technique he displayed on his new album of live solo guitar, Tenderly. On this casually paced, evocatively arranged tour de force – surprisingly his first recording of unaccompanied guitar – he balances original tunes with tributes to Billie Holiday, Wes Montgomery,

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Louis Armstrong and Ellington. At the second set he'll front a trio. Expect the polished drive and swing that has made Kenny Burrell arguably the most respected guitarist in jazz history.

Al Voigt, an artist, inventor and art patron, passed away in 2011. Co-founder of the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation, Al’s generosity and artistic vision are widely recognized for boosting the quantity and quality of public art in Northern California. Visit thespiritoftheman.com for details about a yearlong sculpture exhibition honoring Al that will open with a reception on May 20th at Paradise Ridge Winery.

Lorca Hart Trio with Josh Nelson & Edwin Livingston HOTEL HEALDSBURG LOBBY 25 Matheson Street9PM-Midnight Refer to Friday, June 8 for details.

SUNDAY 6/10Jazz Roy-alty with the Roy-al Family & Friends: Roy Haynes & Fountain of Youth Band with guest Craig HaynesSheila Jordan & Cameron Brown – vocal and bass duoVijay Iyer Trio with guest Graham HaynesRODNEY STRONG VINEYARDS2PM, gates open at 1PM $45 | $35 Student/Senior (Senior 65+, Students with ID)

Vijay Iyer Trio with guest Graham Hayneswww. vijay - iyer .com http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RVK4un3qnXo#! It's always nice to welcome back Bay Area artists who took off for New York and actually made it there. Vijay Iyer, who juggled academia and performance in the East Bay – he earned a PhD from U.C. Berkeley with a dissertation titled Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics while playing jazz piano in dives around town – moved to New York in 1998 and gradually established himself as one of the leading lights of creative improvised music. He's a prolific recording artist whose every release has garnered more praise than the previous, culminating with a Grammy nomination for his last album Historicity. Now, Vijay's just-released Accelerando is already attracting raves for his radical yet sensual trio interpretations of tunes like Michael Jackson's “Human Nature” and Herbie Nichols' “Wildflower.”

Vijay is an original. With influences ranging from Steve Coleman's M-Base rhythmic experiments in the 1980s to Indian ragas and African dance and drumming, he's created a music that moves horizontally, much like an ocean current, ebbing and flowing, propelled by the interlocking rhythms of his band and his brooding, rumbling piano playing. Traditional jazz trio roles are abandoned or exchanged; sometimes Vijay's piano drives the rhythm, while the drummer supplies embellishment. The music doesn't swing, it pulses, and it's crazily buoyant. Familiar songs Vijay tackles are swept up by the forward motion of his sound, digested, flattened, stretched and ultimately served up in thrilling ways. It’s as if he's created an entirely new genre of music, and he may well have done so. Each album brings a new advance, a new twist to the concept.

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In New York Vijay has collaborated with hip-hop MC Mike Ladd for a couple of song cycles about language and identity. He's had an orchestral work performed by the American Composer's Orchestra, and has received several grants and fellowships. He is on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, New York University and the New School.

Vijay's trio is an intriguing choice to start off the final Roy-alty day at the festival. Though his usual drummer, Marcus Gilmore – Roy Haynes' grandson – couldn't make the gig, another Haynes, son Graham Haynes, will be sitting in. Graham is a virtuoso cornetist and electronic music maven who's been part of the New York experimental scene since the 1980s. The drummer for the gig, Tyshawn Sorey, has a symphonic sweep to his playing that will undoubtedly mesh perfectly with Vijay's ideas. Bassist Stephan Crump has been supplying the intuitive pulse Vijay needs for years.

Sheila Jordan and Cameron Brown - Vocal and Bass duo www. sheilajordan jazz.com Something that can't be said about many singers is true of Sheila Jordan. She doesn't sound like anybody else. Emerging in Detroit in the late 1940s, Jordan fell under the sway of Charlie Parker. That wasn’t unusual for singers. But Sheila found a way into bebop that was unique. Instead of merely singing the horn solos or the melody, she treated the tunes much as a great visual artist uses a block of clay, cutting tantalizing aural sculptures with precision vocal strikes that swoop, shock and delight. The result? Joy.

Reinvention is what she is about, and while her life hasn't been easy – she worked in day jobs for years while raising a child alone – reinvention proved the formula that kept her going. Every musical moment Sheila tackles is new beginning. Jazz is supposed to be like that, of course. But it's easy for musicians to fall into familiar patterns. It's not easy to pour your soul into something as if it's a door just opened for the first time, every time.Sheila first showed up on record courtesy of George Russell's 1962 The Outer View, on which she stole the show with a 10-minute vocal tour de force on “You Are My Sunshine.” The same year came her debut as a leader, Blue Note's “Portrait of Sheila,” which remains one jazz's great statements by a singer. On interesting choices like “Falling in Love with Love,” “If You Could See Me Now” and “Laugh! Clown! Laugh!” she wrote her own rules about singing. It's impossible to listen to this record without getting goosebumps. Try it.

The final Sunday at this year's festival is a Roy-al family affair featuring NEA Jazz Masters Roy Haynes and Sheila Jordan. Sheila just got her Masters designation; Roy was awarded his in 1995. Though they haven't performed together, because Roy rarely plays with singers (although he had a long stint backing Sarah Vaughan), there are deep ties. The two first met in a Detroit jazz club in the early '50s. “We were both kids,” Sheila says. “He told me I dressed great. He said I like the way you dress because I like to dress up, too.”

When they took separate paths to New York a few years later, Sheila became close friends with Roy's girlfriend, Lee. Shelia was at the time married to Duke Jordan, who was Charlie Parker's pianist. Roy and Lee married, and Sheila and Lee had babies within a week of each other, in 1955. Lee and Roy's first child, Craig, is now a percussionist and will be sitting in with the Roy-alty band at the festival's

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climax. Sheila's daughter Tracey works in marketing.

At Sunday's concert, Sheila will perform in duet with the towering bassist Cameron Brown. Singing with bass is her preferred mode of performing, and she's been doing it since the '50s. “I started the bass and voice,” she says. “I feel very free with bass. It's open – the silence, the space. I work off that.” Her first bass partner was Steve Swallow, who played on Portrait of Sheila. Next came Harvie Swartz, with whom she duetted for 20 years, traveling the world and recording several albums (the most recent, Yesterdays, is a stunning 1990 date just released on High Tone). When Swartz left to pursue a separate career, Sheila contacted Cameron, and now the two have been performing for about as long.

Interestingly, Cameron was Sheila's choice for a bass partner before she started up with Swartz. “I asked Cameron, but he said he was too busy working with George Adams and Danny Richmond. So after Harvey quit, I flashed back to Cameron. We are close friends; I'm the godmother to his oldest daughter. So I asked him and he said, 'Yeah, I'd love to.'” Sheila says that on Sunday the pair will perform numbers by Charlie Parker, Fats Waller, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Billy Holiday and Duke Ellington, among other tunes. Better strap in, people, because Sheila doesn't just sing the words, she sings the instrumental solos, and sometimes makes up her own words on the spot.

As passionate as she is about singing, Sheila's thrown herself with equal force into teaching. (See article on Sheila's Master Vocal Class on the final Saturday of Healdsburg.) Why? “Because I'm not a diva!” Sheila says. “I want to keep this music alive. I'm gonna die one day. Is the music gonna die with me? No! … I want to give singers the jazz fever. Once they get the jazz fever, they don't want to sing anything else.” It's sure worked for her.

Roy Haynes with Fountain of Youth with guest Craig Hayneshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegtSP_OtIg&feature=player_embedded#!Roy Haynes on Dave Lettermanhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH85QvJHt9Qnice cliphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsF5QAKvpoo

Roy Haynes, at 87, is jazz Roy-alty. He's one of the greatest drummers of all time, he's an NEA Jazz Master with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys, he's played with practically every significant jazz artist of note going back to Louis Armstrong, he's produced two sons and a grandson who each are great musicians, and his name even means “king.” But if you asked Roy what he's most proud of, he'd probably say being picked by Esquire magazine in 1960 as one of the best dressed men in America. Because, you know, all these accolades and honors … what are they to a guy who just wants to bring it? Get him behind the drums so he can shake up the world, as he's been doing for 70 years.

That's one thing the Healdsburg audience can count on to happen when Roy takes the stage for the final festival blowout, backed by his Fountain of Youth band of youngsters, plus an offspring or two and special guests. Fellow Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, who's sharing the bill Sunday, is certainly royal in her own right, but she's also close to being Roy-alty, as she's known Roy since they were getting

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started in the business and was tight with Roy's late wife Lee, mother of Craig and Graham Haynes. Vijay Iyer, the sizzling pianist who's starting off the proceedings Sunday, also must be counted among the Roy-al clan by dint of his years playing with drummer Marcus Gilmore, who happens to be Roy's grandson.

It's a long reach Roy has, and it goes much much farther than the people mentioned here. It truly has to extend to anybody Roy has played with – hundreds of top-level musicians – thanks to the magic that Roy brings every time he sits behind the drum kit. Because Roy isn't just the drummer; he's the guy steering the wheel. As the great bassist and frequent Roy collaborator Dave Holland once said, “You have to be ready to play when you perform with Roy. You have to be ready to have a conversation.”Roy isn't known for a specific style or pinned to a specific era. Max Roach shifted the time-keeping functions of the drums to make room for bebop, Elvin Jones took the freedom further with his polyrhythms, but Roy came up with a system that could work equally well with swing, bop, funk, soft ballads, Latin or free jazz. It's a dancing full-body system, utilizing precision drum tuning that allows him to play rhythm, melody and even harmony all at once. Call him a one-man band inside a band. And sidemen, take note! If you don't have it going on, Roy will go there for you. As he's said in the past, he doesn't have any beats to waste. When musicians get with the Roy-al program, though, they are pushed to places they've never been before. This system of Roy's is not just a gold standard of drumming, it's a modus operandi applicable to any musician who values assertiveness, intense listening and the need to push and then push harder. As such, it's been an influence on all of jazz, and even beyond music. Yes, we all can learn from Roy.

In recent years Roy has been leading his own band of young post-bop warriors: Martin Bejerano on piano, David Wong on bass and Jaleel Shaw on alto sax. On Roy's latest album, Royalty, they were augmented by Chick Corea, Roy Hargrove and son Roy's son Craig Haynes, who will be sitting in with Dad at Healdsburg. Craig has lent his skills to Sun Ra, George Benson, Geri Allen, Marcus Miller and others.

Will there be any surprises for the grand finale? Impossible to say, but with all the jazz royalty occupying Healdsburg this year, it wouldn't be wise to count anything out.

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