I am enjoying the jazz extravaganza, three days at North Sea Jazz Festival. It started yesterday with the Fergus McCreadie Trio yesterday. An absolute highlight. Going through this moody folk inspired modern jazz, and going from lyrical blizz to astonishing interplay. The first song clocked well beyond 30 minutes, but no minute was too much. Good first choice amongst the options available.
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Second concert was the Kenny Barron Trio/Quartet. Amazing these 80 years old artists which still manage to inspire and play well. I found the trio part a bit better than the quartet version with the sax player. While Barron played well, I had the feeling that especially the drummer was sometimes a bit wrongly placed, making it sometimes less tight, to then come back to a nice tight outfit. So mixed feelings with this concert while it was good to hear Barron live.
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The next concert was Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. The master immediately kicked off with a dazzling solo performance. But after that left the ground to the other players giving everybody room for a moment of glory. While very good and very sophisticated, at some point in time I needed something else - so I moved on to a different stage.
Please help me to enable you to bring impressions of the festival, by responding to a post. Otherwise the limitations of the forum kick in and I can’t publish anymore, assuming you appreciate my impressions……
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The next one was actually a combination of two shorter experiences. First saw Andrew Cyrille with also Bill Frisell included. While artistically exciting, I found it too much noodling on the square centimeter. So I went on to see the last part of the concert with Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter. This was very enjoyable. He moved the complete audience and the part I could see was a great concert, should have skipped the try of Andrew Cyrille……, and get something more of Kurt. This always forms the challenge of these kind of festivals to collect as many moments which are magical and avoid as much as possible “normal” or even average moments….
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The next one up was the concert of Bill Frisell. Again a pure highlight. He played with the band of the album Four the music of the album. Pure bliss - it have been extended versions of the songs of the album. However no moment it was boring. The unique combination of instruments, the artists and the interplay…., just great.
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The last concert of yesterday was also the highlight of the evening. The Marco Mezquida Trio from Spain. I knew them already from records - so I was happy to see them live. They played so lyrical in combination with heavy foot tapping. A bit of a variant of the traditional piano trio in which the bass was replaced by a cello. The venue was packed and almost nobody felt the need to move to another stage. Happy that I could move from standing to sitting in the mid of the concert. If you don’t know them have a listen to their last album, a gem.
As mentioned before if you help me with a reply I can also publish the next two days of the festival.
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Richard Thompson a couple of weeks ago, exactly 53 years after I first saw him (with Fairport Convention at Bath Festival). It was a fantastic evening and he was absolutely on top form. A superb choice of songs too, including ‘I Misunderstood’, ‘Walking on a Wire’, ‘Wall of Death’, ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’, ‘I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight’, ‘Beeswing’, ‘Keep Your Distance’, and of course ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’.
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Good position in the crowd you have there.
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Love Supreme, last weekend
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huh? What do you mean? I am not aware of any forum limitations. 
Steve C
Must admit i was concerned about the track listing
I got into HM at the time of Highway to Hell so I saw all the Maiden albums as they were released
Indoors I can confess I normally look towards the first 5 albums and maybe live ones here and there
Last night was bit of an eye opener so this afternoon/ evening I treated myself and the neighbours to a whole selection of newer and mainly unplayed albums
I was up on level 4 directly in front of the band, the SQ was excellent, comparable with indoors but in different ways
Lyndon
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We was in section 107 not sure what level that was but as with you straight in front of the band. My introduction to HM was Back in Black gave up on Maiden after Peace of Mind. My wife’s the big Maiden fan so I’ve ended up buying her all the Maiden albums and got back into them again.
Now reporting about the 2nd day of the North Sea Jazz Festival, while eagerly anticipating the 3rd and last day. By the way people didn’t understand the limitations of the forum, there is a limit to how many posts you can create after each other on the same thread - that’s why I request responses to not hit that limitation…., and as I like to split the post to give every concert the room it deserves.
The first concert of yesterday was with Jan Garbarek. I never had seen him live, so it was already out of that reason a great experience. The concert was also great - sometimes putting you in a trance of sound impressions. All masters of the trade delivered the goods in a very seducing way. I had to change close to the end, otherwise I would definitely have stayed for the full two hours, it was that good…
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The next one I initially hadn’t selected, but I was happy I did. Charles Tolliver had had again written down the score of John Coltranes Africa Brass and directed a quartet with an extended horn section under his guidance to perform the music again. And it was a blast. Binker Golfing did a fantastic job in taking a lot of the solo parts on sax, the overall performance was tight and I was very very happy I was part of it.
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