Dee Dee Bridgewater and the Next Generation of Jazz: A Spectacular Performance at the Rheingau Music Festival

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Status: 08/06/2023, 05:14 p.m

Out: Marcus Hladek

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Dee Dee Bridgewater and the next generation of jazz at the Rheingau Music Festival in Wiesbaden.

Their names are Cosmo, Zeb, Skylar, Noah, André or, quite classically, Henry. The red trousers and black jackets ensure the uniform look of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra Jazz (NYO) under the chirping from the chestnut trees in the Kurpark Wiesbaden, but hairstyles, skin colors and above all faces are as diverse and curious as can only be imagined.

When the 22 musicians around 17 are not spending the summer playing as a meticulously screened US youth big band in the concert shell in the Kurpark – at the Rheingau Music Festival – or Lucerne, Berlin and China jazz, they found at home maybe a mushroom or chess club at their high school or music school, like Cameron and Vincent. Or they help out at a free clinic in the county like Tansy, teach algebra to classmates or, like Grace, tease the family by planting giant pumpkins in the front yard.

Quite normal, extremely gifted

Almost everyone loves fantasy as well as jazz. Some play baseball, table tennis, or soccer as seriously and competitively as their instrument. So they are just normal, extremely talented young people from all over the USA, although the seriousness of life may have touched one or the other more. The powerful Preston Rupert from Orlando, Florida, for example, elicits a breathtakingly clear articulation of incredibly high notes from his trumpet in “A Night in Tunisia”: it has to come from somewhere.

Or José André Montaño of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC His health could easily make him a victim of stupid school bullies. Instead, he forces his hands, which often cut through the air like windmill blades, to technically breathtaking runs on the piano. No wonder New York’s Kennedy Center counts André among the “Upcoming Fifty Leaders.” Colleague William Schwartzman (Santa Monica) inherited his secret mandala from his grandfather; since then he has been meditating often.

Concerts like this one are often advertised as “Dee Dee Bridgewater with…”. After all, she is considered a musical heir to Ella Fitzgerald, received the highest awards and also played in Broadway musicals. If pieces by Dizzy Gillespie and a medley with music by Ray Charles and Nina Simone were among the highlights of the evening, it was probably because the 73-year-old worked with both.

Above all, what sets her and NYO leader and trumpeter Sean Jones apart is their pedagogical ability to stand behind young musicians in order to let them make wonderful music. Bridgewater performed late in the second part of the evening of fourteen tracks. From the third track at the latest, with Ellington’s “Carnegie Blues” or Carla Bley’s “Lawns”, the finely modulated moods became more and more enchanting. The interpretation of Gillespie’s “Things to Come” let the level explode in metropolitan frenzy.

For long stretches you forgot to have a temporary young band in front of you. Then maybe the cheeky red sunglasses in the gorgeous hair of the great double bass player Laura-Simone Martin from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, caught your eye, or you lost yourself in a ringing joke about Sean Jones’ birthday. “Every once in a while,” Jones says, “they remind you they’re teenagers.”

2023-08-06 15:16:23
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