{"id":10603,"date":"2025-06-11T00:26:48","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T05:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=10603"},"modified":"2025-07-19T18:36:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T23:36:51","slug":"day-one-2024-newport-jazz-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/day-one-2024-newport-jazz-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Past, Present, and Future: Day One of the 2024 Newport Jazz Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One criticism occasionally levied against the more recent editions of the iconic Newport Jazz Festival is that it somehow abandoned its mooring in jazz. A pseudo-purist faction asserts that the music that first put George Wein\u2019s festival on the map was discarded years ago. But this perspective is deeply flawed. For one, it ignores the many \u201cjazz-adjacent\u201d performers littered throughout the event\u2019s lineage – Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few. More offensively, however, the revisionist narrative ignores the reality of jazz music and its evolution. Miles Davis did not sound like Louis Armstrong. Nor did John Coltrane mirror Coleman Hawkins. The music evolves and expands to explore new territory. And, yet, there is a thread that ties them all. The spirits of the past always – to some degree – inhabit the present. None of this is to say contemporary artists are mere copycats. They are all individuals with their own ideas, influences, and beating hearts to guide sound as it speaks to them. Yet, hues of tradition flow through the veins of even the most ardent revolutionaries. Indeed, rebellion itself is not without its own antecedents. In this three-part review of the 2024 Newport Jazz Festival, we draw a few of the many through-lines from performances past to the warriors who push the art form forward today. In this first offering, we cover Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio<\/a>, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Galactic with Irma Thomas, Bill Frisell Four, and Andr\u00e9 3000’s New Blue Sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Luke Stewart Silt Trio and Thomas Chapin Trio (1995)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weekend’s performances began at the intimate Harbor Stage with a trio of bassist Luke Stewart, saxophonist Brian Settles, and drummer Warren “Trae” Crudup III. The idea of a pianoless trio in this format is hardly new. Such is most common in a group led by a saxophonist. Sonny Rollins, for one, did significant work in the area. It is far less common to see a chordless three-person setting led from the perspective of a bassist. But as the Festival’s Artistic Director Christian McBride, himself a master of the low end, proclaimed in announcing the ensemble, “People still say it is unusual to have a bassist band leader, but the bass has been in front for a very long time.” And while there were moments of incredible interplay among the entire group, it was clear it was Stewart’s strings leading the outing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(C) T. Jordan Hill – PostGenre Media<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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The opening piece was built around the rich and dark tones of a gliding bow emulating a plane flying overhead. The cleared space carved by the leader opened passages for Settles and Crudup to glide ahead before turning frenetic. At other moments during the set, Stewart played with dynamics from quiet moments of solitude to aggressively rumbling propulsions. Seemingly free form rhythms that glued together the trio even as they went in different directions. Throughout, intricately crafted melodies surfaced for those careful enough to look for them. Although at the forefront of Washington D.C.’s free improvisation scene, it is the emergent compositions that truly set the performance apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(C) T. Jordan Hill – PostGenre Media<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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In hearing Stewart’s performance, one could not help but draw parallels to Thomas Chapin’s performance at the same festival twenty-nine years earlier<\/a>. Presented two years before his untimely passing, the performance found the saxophonist-flutist joined by bassist Mario Pavone and drummer Michael Sarin. Yes, it is one of the more archetypal sax-led versions of a chordless group. However, the approach the trio took to rhythm and dynamics uniquely mirrors those presented by Stewart. There was a wild abandon in the cadences of Chapin’s rhythm section that pushed you hard out of your seat. Dynamics constantly shifted between the tenderness of Chapin’s flute and the urgent explosiveness of double saxophones. And yet the melodies of pieces like “Night Bird Song” remain downright mesmerizing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If both Stewart and Chapin teach us anything, it is that the song form still matters. You can loosen up patterns. You can shift roles in the band. You can experiment with different timbres and approaches. If that underlying piece is well-written, it will always shine through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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