I'm Kyle Kellams. With me via Zoom is Rob Wells, who is the host of The Jazz Scoop heard on 91.3 KUAF on Saturday nights. Lover of all things jazz, including live music. You may recall earlier this summer we had a couple of conversations with him as he got ready for the Newport Jazz Festival. It's happened. Rob, did it live up to your expectations?
Wells: Oh, it exceeded my expectations, Kyle. No doubt about it. It was just an outstanding experience. You had 10,000 people each day at the festival. It was a sellout. All three days, we had this broad mix of traditional jazz.
Main stage started out Friday with Ron Carter, who did an absolutely terrific performance at age 88. And then there were a lot of nontraditional acts. The Roots were a headliner. De La Soul was another featured artist. A lot of young hip-hop, soul, pop artists. There was Raye and Flying Lotus.
I spoke with Christian McBride, the artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival, about the selection of these nontraditional jazz artists.
“I find it somewhat—I mean, I understand it—but when people say, well, Newport isn't all jazz like it used to be, I often wonder what Newport Jazz Festival they are talking about. George Wein always threw a couple of what we would call disruptors. Chuck Berry played the Newport Jazz Festival. Frank Zappa played the Newport Jazz Festival. Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, the Allman Brothers. To have someone who is not necessarily a jazz artist has been standard fare for the history of the Newport Jazz Festival.
“They read the books about sort of the romantic era of the ’50s—the Miles Davises, the Dave Brubecks, the Gerry Mulligans, the Duke Ellingtons. But that was 70 years ago. Things change. And I don't think we've ever left the roots of jazz at all. That's what this festival is all about.”
Wells: He's a major figure in jazz and American culture. Really. He's won nine Grammy Awards. In addition to being the artistic director at Newport, he's also the artistic director of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s James Moody Festival and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. He hosts an NPR program called Jazz Night in America and a program on SiriusXM.
So it was a lot of fun to talk to him. I found myself surprised at how often I had misread some artists that I didn't know about in my listening before the festival. And that's what makes hosting The Jazz Scoop so much fun—I get to chip away at that knowledge base.
My first oversight was a young vocalist named Tyreek McDole. He's 25 years old, Haitian American, and he's one of two men who’ve won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. The guy is incredible. A lot of people rave about Kurt Elling as the top male vocalist, or one of them. But Tyreek McDole actually made a pretty strong claim for that.
Kellams: We're doing a wrap-up of some of the artists that really made an impression on you, Rob.
Wells: Oh God. I mean, Tyreek McDole—our hearts were full. It was such an emotional and wonderful performance. This was his debut, with Caelan Cardelo on piano and Emmanuel Michael on guitar.
McDole has a degree in jazz performance from Oberlin, and Gary Bartz, Eddie Henderson, and Billy Hart were among his instructors. That was a cut from his brand-new album called Open Up Your Senses. It's a very solid album. Kenny Barron makes an appearance on piano. I'll be playing a lot of Tyreek McDole on The Jazz Scoop in the coming weeks.
As we were preparing for this, you made some notes for our conversation and said there was also a performer, Willow, that was a surprise for you.
Wells: A complete surprise. I listened to her material beforehand. It just didn't resonate with me at all. But one of my younger friends, Chapin Graham, told me I really should check out Willow.
She's 25 years old, the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. The festival crew actually had to clear out the chairs from the quad tent before her set. The tent was jammed, standing room only. She had this incredible emotional connection with the audience.
Her band was all young women, many women of color, elite musicians who could play fusion, soul. It was great.
Wells: One person I was really looking forward to seeing is Adam O’Farrill, a trumpeter from Brooklyn. He comes from a very deep lineage in jazz. His grandfather was Chico O’Farrill, one of the architects of Afro-Cuban jazz. His father is Arturo O’Farrill.
I got to interview Adam. He’s playing with the pianist Hiromi. Maybe listeners don’t know about Hiromi, but I’ll share these two facts: When she was 17 and Chick Corea was in Japan, they met and the next day she was on stage performing with him. And she is one of the very few pianists ever to play a solo set on the main stage of the Newport Jazz Festival, which I got to see a number of years ago.
Adam O’Farrill is now in her band. He’s an avant-garde trumpeter from Brooklyn. Here’s a segment from the interview, talking about what it’s like to play with Hiromi.
Wells: First time I saw you at Newport, you were with Rudresh Mahanthappa doing the Bird Calls. That was an amazing gig. What are the similarities between playing with Rudresh and Hiromi?
"They're both very confident bandleaders. They strike this balance between having a strong vision as a bandleader and composer, but also leaving a lot of room for their bandmates to color in and find their own approach. To both of them, there’s a lack of fear, a lack of hesitancy toward improvising."
Wells: So Adam O’Farrill and his trumpet work, it’s pretty interesting. He plays through a lot of effects. He has several effects pedals on the bandstand with him that he can operate in real time. He’s not just hitting stompboxes. He’s turning knobs and so forth, and he’s very deliberate about what he’s doing. So we had an extended talk about his musical influences, his playing techniques, and I plan to play that on future editions of The Jazz Scoop.
But one thing that really struck me about O’Farrill and his playing is Hiromi in previous performances has always tried to integrate a synth and an acoustic piano. And now O’Farrill is filling this role that she tried to do herself, so she can kind of concentrate more on acoustic piano. And O’Farrill is now a major soloist in her band. It’s really neat to see how they brought it all together. Their performance was absolutely outstanding.
Kellams: And you talked to a lot of people.
Wells: I did. I got a chance before the show. I interviewed Ekep Nkwelle, who is a vocalist from New York, made her debut as a bandleader at Newport. I picked her out after hearing her perform on a David Murray album earlier this year. And she had an amazing band. Julius Rodriguez on piano, who I’d seen earlier.
And here’s a clip from this interview where she talks about the influences on her singing and the influence specifically of the great Abbey Lincoln.
"I found some other women such as Betty Carter, Nina Simone, Ernestine Anderson, Dinah Washington, Jean DuShon. But I would say Abbey Lincoln when it came to me breaking out into who I really am. Her voice, especially the work that she did with Max Roach and then the work that she did later on—her own stuff, her own originals, her own compositions such as Caged Bird. If you’ve seen any of my performances, you’ve seen me perform that song."
I think of that road to freedom that she went through, singing the Great American Songbook, singing standards, being an actress, being kind of portrayed as this one thing, as this beautiful, pristine woman with a pretty voice, great figure, all those things. Then transitioning to her work with Max Roach and activism and then kind of moving into her own thing. Still activism, but also folk songs and things like that. Just transitioning more into who she was. That journey, I thought it was beautiful. It was so nuanced.
Wells: She doesn’t have an album out, but being of that age, there’s a lot on YouTube, so you can check her out. There’s a really fine video on the Jazz at Lincoln Center website, and that’s where she sings The Best Is Yet to Come. And there are other videos from her performances in Europe. I did find one really great recording with her live at Emmet’s Place. This is Emmet Cohen, who’s another person I interviewed, and we’ll talk about him on future editions of The Jazz Scoop.
Kellams: One of the great things about the festival is you do have the standard with the new. And I just love hearing In a Sentimental Mood. But we’ve also been talking about people who are exploring how to push boundaries.
Wells: Yeah. And Cecile McLorin Salvant will always push boundaries. And what’s amazing is she has her feet in the Tin Pan Alley catalog. And then she closed the set with an electronic kind of disco piece.
To give you a sense of Cecile McLorin Salvant. I was supposed to interview Emmet Cohen. He said, can we hold off until I see Cecile’s set? Ah. That’s awesome. And I was like, well, I want to see it too. So that’s fine. But many jazz musicians stopped by to watch her. She did this interpretation of John Henry, the folk ballad. Yeah. That started out a cappella. And then this amazing band came in to support it and pulled it off.
So Cecile McLorin Salvant was about ready to announce the final song, and a group of women in the crowd started yelling, “Snap, snap, snap, snap!” And they were referring to Oh Snap! which is a new single on Salvant’s new album. And it’s a pretty radical departure from her earlier work. It’s very technical. It sounds kind of like Donna Summer, if she was to record a new disco album today. Very techno electronic.
Cecile McLorin Salvant turns to her drummer, Kyle Poole, and says, ‘Hey, you know this song?’ And not only did he know it, he had the drum synth bed already on his laptop next to his drum set. And that’s how you get to be a drummer at the Newport Jazz Festival. You’re ready. Exactly. You’re ready. And Kyle Poole is always at that level. He’s great.
So she has Sullivan Fortner on piano, who’s really a very fine acoustic pianist, but he switched over to an organ. And then Yasushi Nakamura on bass, who had played with several other bands already that day. And off they went playing Snap! And I don’t know, maybe it was the first time all these guys had done it together, and it was this amazing experience to see someone switch gears to a completely new genre. She hadn’t done any techno music at all during her set. But to be able to keep that thread still in the jazz world.
Kellams: An amazing festival that you helped capture for listeners here. I mean, I know it’s 11 months and two weeks away. Want to do this again next year?
Wells: Oh, are you kidding? This was incredible. Yeah. No, I’m going to do it again. I mean, it’s allowed me to gather more material for The Jazz Scoop and for KUAF at a level of depth that was not possible before.
Kellams: Thanks so much for going. And again, I’m going to offer this invitation. Let’s not wait for Newport next year. As you find out other jazz worth sharing, let us know.
Wells: Yeah, absolutely. I have a couple pretty major artists lined up for interviews, so we’ll be in touch.
Kellams: Rob Wells, as always, thanks.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
