San Jose Jazz Festival

The world's largest "free" jazz festival took place this past weekend in San Jose, CA. It's the only festival I've ever been to and participated in where you can see a different act every hour for two days straight! I put some big numbers on my pedometer checking out all of the different bands. More about them in my next blog...
I played with Dr Wayne Wallace and Rhythm and Rhyme Saturday on the Latin Jazz stage. Wayne as you all probably know is a prolific composer/arranger as well as trombonist of monstrous proportions. His band is made up of the best cats in the Bay Area and tore it up!!!
Check out this line up:
Louis Fasman-lead trumpet
Marcia Miget- tenor sax
Melecio Magdaluyo-bari sax, flute
Murray Low, Frank Martin-keyboards
Dave Belove-bass
Paul VW-drums
Micheal Spiro, John Santos-percussion
With Wayne leading it all, it turned into one of the most exciting afternoons in the history of the festival. At one point we had Micheal Zilber on soprano sax, Dan Weinstein on trombone and Open Path recording artist Kristen Strom on stage tearing it up. Louis and I had some fun playing harmon muted solos on "Silver Serenade" which brought forth a comment from Wayne along the lines of "Angry Harmon's" or something. On "Take The A Train", Louis played an "F" above (!) double "C" as loud as the one I played an octave below!!! From the strong ensemble work to the imaginative solos, Wayne did his thing again and created another afternoon of music to remember.
On Sunday, Louis, Kris, Wayne and myself joined the ranks of the San Jose Jazz Orchestra on the Main stage to back up Geri Allen, Bobby Watson and a gospel choir to honor the memory of the late Ray Charles. Geri Allen played wonderful, Bobby Watson sounded great, the choir swung and the band kicked butt for 15 minutes. Yes, you heard me correct. I couldn't believe we got only 15 minutes after all the work that went into putting the band together. We were supposed to play longer but everything was running late and we took it for the cause. More about this in my next blog….
My severe disappointment was abated when Ray Vega walked on the Latin Jazz stage and showed everyone why he is considered to be one of the greats in any style or venue in the modern trumpet world. Ray and the band (Murray Low, Micheal Spiro, Dave Belove and Paul VW) had the crowd on their feet dancing, shouting and testifying from the time he got on till the time he left to catch his red eye flight back to the Bronx. Ray was gracious enough to invite me to the stage a blow a few tunes with him. I will never forget the fun and excitement playing next to him on Rahsaan's Run and the other tunes. Thank You Ray, for allowing me to share the stage with you. You are the man my friend!!!
Afterwards, a group of us walked across the street to Gordon Biersch (for the 2nd time that day…can’t get enough of that Marzan stuff) and closed that place down.
It was great to see so many friends at the festival, Kerry McCoy, Lorenzo Perez and his family, John Hablieb, Tom, David Murray,Tom Bertetta, Mark the soundman extraordinaire, Andy Nozaka, Yoshi Kato and the folks on the Jazz Panel Discussion of which will be in my next blog coming very soon. Thanks to all for supporting live jazz. A great time was had by all.