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Getting lifted with the women of Jazz Jubilee |
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Friday, 17 July 2009 |
By Catherine Billey
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
 Mammoth Times Photos/Catherine Billey When left-handed bass player Jennifer Leitham took the stage at the ski museum on Friday afternoon, she was clearly enjoying herself - and was also a huge hit with the audience.
Only the strictest of curmudgeons could have resisted such a rallying cry at the recent 21st Annual Jazz Jubilee in Mammoth Lakes.
With something like 30 performing acts and only Friday to attend, I decided to focus on the women of Jazz Jubilee and made a point of seeing, along with Yve Evans and Temple of Folly, Sue Palmer’s Motel Swing Orchestra, the Jennifer Leitham Trio and Cami Thompson & the Cosmopolitans.
Thompson offered a line-up of tunes in tribute to Oscar Hammerstein II whose lyrics, she said, have been very influential in her life.
“This man is a real hero to me,” she announced to an audience that nearly filled the Big Top on Friday. “He strove his whole life to write about social issues. He was a very progressive thinker.”
This made me want to find out more about the man and seek out more of Thompson because when she began to sing, I understood what I’d read about her four-octave range.
Although Thompson’s training includes background in jazz, pop, musical theatre and classical music, she grew up with the “sound of music,” she said. Appropriately, she launched into a lovely version of “My Favorite Things” – both in tribute to those early roots, and to Hammerstein.
“The important thing as a jazz artist, is we look at the Great American Song book,” she said in a phone interview from San Francisco. “It’s beyond jazz. It’s more the collection of America’s voice of popular music from the 1920s through the 1950s and even 1960s.These songs are remarkable because they allow individual interpretation and stylization, and it seems to be accepted by the crowds at Mammoth with great enthusiasm.”
Thompson said it was a “dream come true” to be back at Jazz Jubilee – and for the first time as leader of her own band. Previously, she was with Mike Vax and the Great American Jazz Band.
“I love that festival. I love the spirit of the community there,” Thompson enthused. “It just seems that the volunteers really get how being of service to this festival completely generates the ability for us as performers to feel like we belong there. It’s more than just a job. It is really about sharing our passion.”
Down the street at the Ski Museum, the “Queen of Boogie Woogie” – as she is known in her homebase of San Diego – pianist and leader Sue Palmer and her Motel Swing Orchestra transported a smaller but enthusiastic audience with sounds reminiscent of jazz cafes in Paris in the 1930s in the years when Josephine Baker made her mark with banana costumes. A couple of swing dancers made their mark on the dance floor, noted by Palmer as being two of the best in San Diego, providing a picture-perfect reminder that hers is music to move to.
In introducing her band, Palmer noted that she has been playing “since we were little girls” with drummer and vocalist Sharon Shufelt for 30 years. Vocalist Deejha Marie then joined them on the stage, and they launched into “St. Louise Blues” and “Dancing Cheek to Cheek.”
Also at the ski museum Friday afternoon, the Jennifer Leitham Trio took to the stage with modern jazz.
Leitham has been called “the left-handed virtuoso of the upright bass.” Word on the street in Mammoth, even before she took to Jazz Jubilee stages, was that her trio was the ticket to see.
“Jennifer Leitham is a virtuoso bassist, composer and arranger,” said Mammoth local Koji Kataoka, former bassist for the Vince Guaraldi Trio and Quartet, who also sat appreciatively in the Ski Tent audience and later called her performances exhilarating. “She is a hardcore jazz performer who is also a marvelous ambassador for the art form of jazz – with her wide range of repertoire to attract crossover audiences. She is equally at ease with tempos so fast that one cannot tap their feet, to the slow moving ballads. In each case, every note is totally distinguishable with deep meaning and clarity. Her intonation is impeccable.”
A faculty studio artist for Cal State Long Beach, Leitham smiled throughout her gig as she communed with her instrument – her clear enjoyment of performance absolutely infectious to her audience. She has recorded with Mel Torme, Doc Severinsen and Gerry Mulligan. In between songs, she noted that her new CD, “Left Coast Story,” has been released – for those who missed her show.
Tierney Sutton is another of the giants among the women of the 21st Jazz Jubilee, but I was unable to attend her one performance on Saturday with her band. Sutton has twice been nominated for a Best Vocal Jazz Album Grammy. The band has been together for fifteen years and recorded eight CDs. Well, maybe next year – when I’ll no doubt take root at some venue on each of the four days of the festival.
I must confess, however, that I finished Friday evening off in a departure from my assignation with Jazz Jubilee’s women, to enjoy the quintessentially masculine violinist/composer Tom Rigney and his Cajun/zydeco/blues band Flambeau.
“Clint Eastwood with a fiddle,” noted a most enthusiastic volunteer for the festival, Jarrett Smith, as we rocked out together to his rousing rendition of “House of New Orleans.” |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 24 July 2009 )
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