Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival will bring contemporary artists, legends to the city
Photo by Cory Dewald
Drummer Nate Smith is one of the performers set for the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.
Courtesy of the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival
1970s hitmakers the Average White Band will be at the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival this weekend.
Courtesy of the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival
ON THE COVER: Chief Adjuah, the jazz trumpeter formerly known as Christian Scott, is set to appear in the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.
Guitarist Pasquale Grasso is among the artists participating in the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.
Ron Carter, a bassist and esteemed jazz veteran, is one of the headliners of this weekend's Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.
Bassist Stanley Clarke is one of the headliners for this weekend's Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.
Stanley Clarke has said that he is, above all, a bass player.
“I’m a bass player before any other name like jazz musician, rock musician, funk musician, jazz-rock musician, fusion musician,” Clarke told the site Guitar.com in 2014. “Really, the overall tag for me is that I’m a bass player, and that’s what I do, I play bass.”
The versatility of the 71-year-old Philadelphia native can certainly be measured in the variety of genres he has worked in over the course of a half-century career. Growing up in a household with an opera-singing mother, he initially set his sights on being the first Black musician in the Philadelphia Orchestra. Then, he met jazz pianist Chick Corea and changed course, quickly becoming one of the premier bassists in jazz.
A member in the 1970s of the fusion outfit Return to Forever, the number of A-listers he has played with over his career is formidable – Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey and Gil Evans. He stepped out of the jazz world to join Paul McCartney on two of his early 1980s albums, and be a part of Animal Logic, a band led by Stewart Copeland, the drummer for The Police. In 1981, he and the keyboard player George Duke scored a Top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the sunny pop song “Sweet Baby.”
Clarke recently returned to the road after an extended layoff due to COVID-19. In a phone interview two weeks ago, he explained while taking a break in Clearwater, Fla., that it was “really good” to be back in front of audiences again, and he will be in Pittsburgh this weekend as one of the headliners for the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, which kicks off Friday and wraps up Sunday.
Ron Carter, another jazz bassist of considerable accomplishment, will open the festival with an 8 p.m. concert at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center Friday. The 85-year-old was a member of the pioneering Miles Davis Quintet for five years in the 1960s, and played alongside giants like Eric Dolphy, Cannonball Adderly and Thelonious Monk. Clarke will play Saturday at 8:45 p.m. at Highmark Stadium on the South Side. Other performers scheduled throughout the weekend are Buster Williams, the Average White Band, the Dan Wilson Quartet and Incognito featuring singer Maysa Leak.
Presented by the August Wilson Center, the inaugural Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival was in 2011. It came eight years after the demise of the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, which later came to be known as the Mellon Jazz Festival, and brought acts like Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins and Diana Krall to the city. This year’s jazz festival is following on the heels of the Highmark Blues and Heritage Festival, which was set for Thursday and Friday at Highmark Stadium. According to Janis Burley Wilson, the CEO of the August Wilson Center, she believed Pittsburgh would provide fertile ground for a renewed jazz festival given the city’s past support of jazz festivals and the city’s own jazz-steeped history – luminaries like Stanley Turrentine, Mary Lou Williams, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Billy Strayhorn all hailed from Pittsburgh.
The festival “attracts people from all over the country,” Wilson said. The blues and jazz festivals are “a really good four days of music,” she added.
COVID-19 has still unsettled the concert industry more than two years after it emerged, with some shows and tours being canceled or rescheduled due to the virus. Wilson acknowledged that pulling together both festivals was “a struggle. We didn’t know what to expect.” The upside of the majority of the shows being at Highmark Stadium is that “there’s plenty of room to spread out. People aren’t right on top of each other. You don’t have to worry about viruses.”
Clarke also played at the 2019 Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival and has performed at scores of jazz festivals throughout his long career. He believes that, unlike rock and pop concerts where audiences come to hear familiar favorites, jazz aficionados come to appreciate the versatility of the musicians.
“I don’t think people come to hear a particular song,” he said.
Along with a return to the road, Clarke said he is working on a book that will offer photographs and recollections of his decades in music. And while it will be something of a career summation, Clarke said he is not planning on hanging up his bass guitar anytime soon.
“As Duke Ellington used to say, bop ’til you drop. I may bop a little less, but I’ll still be bopping somewhere.”
For additional information on the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, go online to pittsburghjazzfest.org.