Punta del Este
Four days full of jazz

Nicholas Payton brough New Orleans
jazz tradition to Uruguay.

PUNTA DEL ESTE
To get to the site of the Punta del Este Jazz Festival you wind down dirt roads through luxuriant coastal countryside, past dreamy farm houses, herds of dairy cows and three llamas. In the pasture behind the stage, cows gather along the fence line when the concerts start. These cows are jazz connoisseurs: every morning and afternoon when they are milked, they are treated to serious jazz over the loudspeakers.
Obviously, this is no conventional dairy farm and this is no conventional jazz festival. The four-day festival which ended last Sunday is the wild inspiration of Argentine Francisco Yobino who six years ago turned his spread into a Mecca for human and bovine jazz lovers. This year, seventy of the world’s best musicians made the trek down to Uruguay to play at the region’s most authoritative jazz festival. Together with the festival’s Grammy-winning music director Paquito D’Rivera, Yobino has created a first-rate festival that is intimate, bucolic, and sophisticated.
The opening night tribute to Brazil began with the duo of the legendary César Camargo Mariano on piano and Romero Lubambo on guitar. They were followed by the aging but vital accordion master Sivuca who brought the energy of the music of northeastern Brazil to the stage. The evening closed with another jewel of Brazil, the singer-songwriter Joyce, a prolific composer whose songs have been recorded by Maria Bethánia, Gal Costa, and Chico Buarque, among others.
The second night featured a tribute to George Gershwin, which began with vibraphonist Dave Samuels and the Perceum Percussion Ensemble of Montevideo, a local group drawing on Uruguay’s rich drumming tradition.
But the star of the second night was without a doubt the incomparable Roy Haynes Trio led by drummer Roy Haynes with Christian McBride on bass and Danilo Pérez on piano. The extraordinary musical communication between these three performers, their playfulness, and daring left the audience breathless. Haynes authority on stage was such that he would rise from his drum kit and strut around the stage stamping with his feet or using his drumsticks or hands on any available surface. The performance was full of the magic of inspired improvisation. The warmth of personality in Danilo Pérez’s piano work was also exceptional.
The evening closed with a Gershwin suite led by Paquito D’Rivera and his quintet. The vocal parts were sung by Brenda Feliciano and Raúl Midón, one of the revelations of the festival. The charismatic and soulful voice of Midón filled the music of Gershwin with depth and passion. Active as a session musician and background singer for the likes of Shakira, Midón is only now striking out as a soloist.
Also on stage was an unexpected guest, Alex Han, a 13-year-old saxophone player of prodigious talent. The story is that some friends slipped a tape of the young musician onto Paquito D’Rivera’s stereo one night and then asked D’Rivera who it was. He shot back, “Benny Carter.” When he discovered that he had confused a young boy with the veteran sax man, Paquito tapped the young musician for this festival. This was Han’s first international performance.
The unseasonable steamy weather of the past week in Punta del Este finally scuttled the Saturday night show. The Cedar Walton Trio, which began its set under a threatening sky and a tornado warning from the National Weather Service, was chased off stage when the winds picked up. But not before the mischievous saxophonist Johnny Griffin joined the band. (Perhaps it was his powerful playing that finally conjured the storm out of the black sky. In any case, the concert was rescheduled for the next morning at ten.
The Sunday morning concert was to begin with the Kenny Garrett Quartet, but getting Garrett to perform required all the cajoling of the concert organizers: the temperamental artist locked himself in his hotel room and refused all calls or visitors. His own musicians were dispatched to convince him without result. Finally, Garrett consented and his performance on the Sabbath was among the most moving of the festival. Combining wild saxophone explorations with lyrical rap-inspired melodies, Garrett’s authority as both an artist and performer was established beyond doubt on that stage that morning.
To round off the mid-day concert, the twenty-four year old Nicholas Payton and his quintet brought the rich jazz tradition of New Orleans to the afternoon, though the heat of the midday sun and the band’s impeccable suits seemed to dampen the performance. Payton’s sally later that night in the tribute to Dizzy Gillespie revealed the true force of his trumpet playing.
The final night of this incredible event began with one of Argentina’s great talents, the pianist-composer Pablo Ziegler in a tribute to Astor Piazzolla. Ziegler, who performed in Piazzolla’s famous Quintet, is an incorrigible experimenter who loves exploding the rigid boundaries of tango by drawing in jazz musicians such as Paquito D’Rivera or Joe Lovano to perform and record with him. Both were on stage with him in Punta del Este and Ziegler showed his success in taking the traditional music of the Río de la Plata and invigorating it with new voices.
Following Ziegler came the masterful trio of pianist Kenny Barron, bass man Rufus Reid, and drummer Lewis Nash. Barron’s performance included standards, but excelled most on the pieces by Thelonious Monk.
The close of the festival was a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie under the direction of trumpet player Jon Faddis and included an all-star cast of performers such as Barron, the ever-present D’Rivera, Slide Hampton, Joe Lovano, Nicholas Payton, and Argentine Diego Urcola, among others. The final number, Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia lasted 30 minutes before the musicians had had their say. It was a fitting and riveting end to this four-day musical feast.