The Monterey Jazz Festival finished up last night. On the weekend I saw Maceo Parker, George Young, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, Brian Blade, Herbie Hancock, Ernie Watts, Tom Scott, the Next Generation Band, Kurt Elling, Anet Cohen, Spencer Day, and Terrance Blanchard.

I had wanted to see Maceo Parker for a long time. Had been listening to him since I was eight years old when I got the CD ‘Roots Revisited’ which is more jazz than most of his music. Maceo Parker was a sideman with James Brown and others for a while, but has been doing his own thing. He seems to be playing in Europe a lot. I bought his CD ‘Roots and Grooves’ later that day.

George Young was great. He played a set of jazz including tunes like ‘Take the A Train.’ The audience really loved his music, and he has quite a local following since he lives here too.

Christian McBride‘s quintet was amazing. He had bass, drums, sax, vibes, and piano. He told us about how the drummer used to play with Freddie Hubbard and that was how he got introduced. The group played more of a straight-ahead bebop style. They really played well together.

Anat Cohen mostly played jazz clarinet and a little tenor sax. I had never heard of her, but she sounded great.

Joshua Redman and Brian Blade together and Brian Blade also played with his own group later on. Hadn’t seen him live before, he played some cool stuff. Brian Blade picks up on everything the other musicians are playing and responds really well.

The Terrance Blanchard group also sounded really good. He had some jokes about the sax player from Tucson, Arizona. He called him the president, treasurer, etc of the Tucson jazz society. Basically because there isn’t much jazz in Tucson. During the set, Herbie Hancock was sitting in the room and went up to play with the group on the last song.

The Next Generation Band, led by Paul Contos, sounded great. They played this song called ‘The Chicken’ which featured the saxophone section. The five sax players got up one by one and were improvising and then Paul joined in on soprano.

Tom Scott did a tribute to Cannonball Adderley and put a new twist on some of those songs. He also had a vocalist that sounded pretty good.

Maria Schneider did her thing with her jazz orchestra. Her grammy winning tenor sax player played some crazy riffs.

Spencer Day is a vocalist who sang some of his newer songs. Hadn’t heard from him before, but he sounded good. The band really grooved well together. The bass player and guitar player would also join him on vocal harmonies at points.

Kurt Elling was the last act I saw and was amazing. He had Ernie Watts on saxophone. Elling puts on a great show, very entertaining. Jamie Cullum came out for a surprise duet performance too.

Here’s another Review of the Monterey Jazz Festival that I found. They saw a few of the same musicians that I did, but also some other parts.