Michelle Simms-Burton for DC Metro Theater Arts – The East Coast has the Newport and DC jazz festivals. The Midwest claims the world’s largest free jazz extravaganza, the Detroit Jazz Festival. The South showcases jazz and R&B talent at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. The jazz at sea festivals occur each January. But the West Coast has the acclaimed Monterey Jazz Festival celebrating its sixty-second year this September.
If you ever wanted to attend the Monterey Jazz Festival but for logistical reasons you haven’t, try enjoying some of its finest musicians with the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour, presented by Washington Performing Arts at the Music Center at Strathmore on March 21.
Led by musical director, pianist, and composer Christian Sands, the sextet will include three-time Grammy-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant; trumpeter Bria Skonberg; tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, who is the 2013 winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition; Yasushi Nakamura on bass; and Jamison Ross on drums. Sands and Nakamura recorded together on Sands’ latest album, “Facing Dragons.”
Sands promises attending the concert will be “a whole lot of fun,” with the sextet performing some jazz standards as well as compositions by him. In an egalitarian and inclusive fashion, each band member will also present a piece of their choosing.
The makeup of the sextet reflects Monterey Jazz Festival’s efforts to address the criticism levied at “the jazz world and beyond […] for a lack of women instrumentalists being represented on the stages of major festivals and clubs,” according to its website. The band includes three innovative and world-class female musicians.
As music director of Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour, Sands’ job is to get “everyone’s vision on the same page. Everyone is from the same tree, but we are different branches. My job is to put it all together.” Melding the talent of accomplished and keen musicians may not be the easiest of tasks. However, all of the musicians, according to Sands, have previously played together in “various configurations, but this is the first time we are hitting the grind and presenting the show together.” This sextet previously performed together at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2018.