First Festival Sponsored by GE Vernova After 27 years under Freihofer Logo

By the time New Orleans giant Trombone Shorty blasts his last notes Sunday night on his slide-horn, 21 other acts – jazz, semi-jazz, or not jazz at all – will have played the 48th Saratoga Jazz Festival at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Biggest and by most measures best jazz blast hereabouts, it’s the first sponsored GE Vernova, and an enticing mix of instruments, voices, styles and sounds.

Trombone Shorty – Seen here playing The Egg in September 2023

On the two stages, this one skews young, mostly; a few including saxophonists Gary Bartz (84). Al Di Meola (70), Cassandra Wilson (69) and Kenny Garrett (64) are around non-musician retirement age.

Veronica Swift. Photo supplied

Veronica Swift (31) and Julius Rodriguez (26) clock in at the opposite demo. But this year’s line-up lacks the youth movement box-office power of last year’s hit, Icelandic pop singer Laufey (26) who drew hordes of fans younger than commonly turn up here. (She plays SPAC Aug. 9: A Night at the Symphony with the Philadelphia Orchestra – between a Gershwin and Bernstein program Aug. 8 and classic rockers Chicago Aug. 10.)

Staggered start times allow fleet-footed fans to catch at least some of everybody. Tough choices remain, however; choosing between acts playing simultaneously on the Amphitheater (I’ll call it the Main, in reviews) and Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage (likewise, the Wood). Tasting at least a bit of every artist, you’ll walk about 11,000 steps daily, in a beautiful place full of happy people, and worth it for what awaits on both ends.

Bria Skonberg – Playing A Place for Jazz last fall

The lineup includes superb singers Cassandra Wilson – my pick set of the Festival – Gregory Porter, Veronica Swift and Nicole Zuraitis; plus Bria Skonberg who also plays trumpet as well as she sings.

Terrific guitarists play both days: bluesman Gary Clark Jr., fusion force of nature Al DiMeola, funk-riffer Cory Wong and Dave Stryker (in the Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars). Wilson’s band also features fine guitarists Marvin Sewell and Brandon Ross.

Al Di Meola. top. Photo supplied

Cory Wong, second from top. Photo supplied

La Excelencia. Photo supplied

Bands range from trios, notably Michel Camilo’s, to the 11-piece La Excelencia.

Gary Clark Jr. Photo supplied

Stylistic border-patrol purists might object to the zydeco of C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band, blues by Gary Clark Jr., Cory Wong’s fiery funk; maybe Lettuce, too. But I expect to enjoy all four. 

Brandee Younger. Photo supplied

There’s a harpist, Brandee Younger; and a turntablist, DK Logic; the all-women ensembles Artemis and the String Queens, and the elder-statesman saxophonists Gary Bartz and Kenny Garrett. But apart from the Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars, perennial favorites for their virtuoso tribute sets, no local acts will appear.

DJ Logic. Photo supplied

The crowds, however, are heavily non-local, pilgrimaging to Saratoga primarily from Northeastern cities; but also even from overseas. These are the most rainbow crowds this side of Schenectady’s Music Haven, and about the friendliest, too.

SATURDAY SET TIMES

Amphitheater Stage

1 p.m.: Kenny Garrett – Now 64, the Detroit saxophonist played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Miles Davis and others, and has led his own bands since 1984

1:45 p.m.: Michel Camilo Trio – Dominican-born pianist and composer, classically trained, bebop-inspired

3:30 p.m.: Veronica Swift – She began singing with her jazz musician parents Hod O’Brien and Stephanie Nakasian 

5:15 p.m.: Lettuce – Upbeat funk, with horns, by energetic Boston band 

7 p.m.: Gregory Porter – A bass-baritone voice like butter, especially great on ballads, famed for his hat

9 p.m.: Gary Clark Jr. – Texas blues guitarist, fire and soul, variety and force

Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage

11 a.m.: The String Queens – Classically-trained, soul-inspired string players; one of two all-women crews today

12:20 p.m.: Julius Rodriguez – Young Juilliard-trained pianist of Haitian descent

1:40 p.m.: Nicole Zuraitis – Grammy-winning singer and pianist with classical training and big-band experience 

3 p.m.: Keyon Harrold – Trumpet ace with jazz pedigree as one of 16 musical siblings, and crossover ambitions; first gig was with rapper Common

Artemis – Pianist/leader Renee Rosnes at left, playing A Place for Jazz last fall

4:20 p.m.: Artemis – All-woman virtuoso quintet of composers and bandleaders in their own right(s)

5:40 p.m.: C.J. Chenier & The Red Hot Louisiana Band – Accordion-playing and singing son of Zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier

SUNDAY SET TIMES

Amphitheater Stage

12:30 p.m.: Al Di Meola Acoustic Band – Last time here, he played solo; now he brings a fuller sound

2:10 p.m.: DJ Logic & Friends – Innovative turntable artist hybridizes hip-hop with jazz

3:50 p.m.: Cassandra Wilson – Celebrating her best ever album, “New Moon Daughter,” 30 years after release

5:30 p.m.: Cory Wong – Fiery funk guitar with fast urban energy

7:15 p.m.: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue – He owns the honored Sunday night closing-set spot at Jazz Fest in his hometown of New Orleans; here, too

Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage

11:45 a.m.: Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars – Educators and performers play “lessons” from jazz tradition

1:10 p.m.: Brandee Younger Trio – Young harpist, fresh from a triumphant recent show at The Egg with Ravi Coltrane

2:40 p.m.: Bria Skonberg Quintet – Virtuoso, versatile singer and trumpeter

4:10 p.m.: Gary Bartz – Veteran saxophonist, the Festival’s oldest performer (See https://hokesjukebox.com/2025/06/25/jazz-master-gary-bartz-looks-back-and-ahead/)

5:45 p.m.: La Excelencia – New York salsa dura (rhythmic Latin jazz) big band: 11 players including lots of percussion

Gary Bartz. Photo supplied

Veteran Saxophonist Plays Sunday at 48th Saratoga Jazz Festival Presented by GE Vernova

Saxophonist Gary Bartz was 36 when SPAC presented its first jazz festival; he’d just released “Music Is My Sanctuary,” his 13th album in 10 years. His 31st as a leader hits next month.

“Before AND after,” he laughed when asked if he’d practiced his horns before our phone interview last week, or would do so afterward.

“Before AND after,” he stressed, as hard-working at 84 as when he came up with the Big M’s of jazz, mentors and band-mates Max Roach, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner. Bartz played SPAC’s jazz festival in Tyner’s band years ago, and plays Sunday leading his own.

Bartz recalled a star-studded history over the phone from home in Oakland, musing on the physics and mysticism of music.

Gary Bartz, at right, plays alto saxophone with McCoy Tyner, left, at piano. Photo supplied

“I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody this, but I dreamt I had played with Miles before I had ever played with him,” Bartz said. “So, when I started playing with him, it was like I had already played with him so I wasn’t in awe, like most guys were.”

Bartz said, “I started studying when I started listening. The greatest study of all Is listening, even more than playing your instrument, because you can do that 24 hours of the day.” He said, “You can dream music even if you can’t play it, but you can dream you’re playing it. When you get to play a song, when you get to the horn, you’ve already done it.”

CHARLIE PARKER DREAMS

His jazz dreams began at Sunday dinner in his grandmother’s Baltimore home, where his uncle Leon “Sharp” Bartz also lived – “Sharp” because he brought back from New York visits both sharp clothes and records unavailable in Baltimore. 

“One of those Sundays, I put on a Charlie Parker record and that was it – and it still is,” said Bartz.”I didn’t know it was a saxophone, I didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, I didn’t know what it was. It was just the most beautiful thing I had every heard and I made up my mind right then: That’s what I want to do.” 

He was six years old.

Lessons with a Mr. Holloway downtown taught him to read music, play pop songs and transcribe records by Charlie Parker, Tiny Bradshaw and Louis Jourdan. “Those were the best teachers because you can’t really teach this music,” Bartz said. “The only way to learn this music is to do it.”

Bartz left Baltimore after high school for Juilliard whose Eurocentric curriculum “made me understand the universality of music,” said Bartz.

He said, “Music is nothing but sound, put in a pleasing manner that people like; it sounds good.” He said, “How you do it, that’s up to the individuals. You can do it like Sly Stone, you can do it like Stravinsky.”

When Bartz met trombonist Grachan Moncur III and drummer Andrew Cyrille at Juilliard, “Becoming friends with them, I found out about the jam sessions and started meeting musicians and learning New York.”

SOUNDING LIKE HIMSELF

“As young musicians, when we were coming up, our main thing was to sound like ourselves,” he said. “We wanted people to hear us and immediately to say, ‘Well, that’s so and so.’ You hear a note or two of Miles Davis and you know that’s Miles. You hear Bird or Dizzy or Bud Powell and you know them, within a few notes. That’s what we were looking for.”

“He was my idol,” said Bartz of Wayne Shorter, recalling how trumpeter Lee Morgan introduced them when Bartz sat in a Morgan gig featuring Shorter. “Wayne took a break on ‘A Night In Tunisia’ and it changed my life. Just that one break…It made my eyes pop with the melodies. Whenever I think of Wayne, I think of possibilities.”

Bartz learned fast in his first bands; Max Roach, then Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Abbey Lincoln was singing with Roach then; years later, Bartz often worked with singers, notably Andy Bey. Bartz’s evolving style includes bebop note cascades, sensitive ballads and close accompaniment for singers and fellow players.

Bartz said. “It was easier when I started playing with McCoy and Miles and other people because I had already been taught the proper way by Max and Art. I was very lucky, that was a golden age.”

Max and Miles inspired Bartz as bandleader. “They were similar in the way that they treated their band members, like family,” he said. “It was always comfortable.”

Thelonious Monk strongly influenced Bartz as composer. Bartz wrote “Uncle Bubba” on McCoy Tyner’s “Dimensions” album to honor Monk and Sonny Rollins. “I loved the way Monk and Sonny played together,” he said. Monk’s nieces and nephews called him Uncle Bubba, as did Lester Young’s, as Bartz learned later. “To me, the name Uncle Bubba was universal because I’m sure many families had an Uncle Bubba.”

SPIRIT IN SOUND

Bartz has called Malcolm X and John Coltrane Buddha figures for “the way they made me feel, that I was in the presence of a spiritual being.” Bartz sees music as spiritual, mystical. “The Sufis believe that the big bang happened because of a note,” he said. “Like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan could sing a note and make a glass shatter; that’s how powerful sound is.”

Bartz learned how powerfully unifying music can be alongside Miles. “Playing the Isle of Wight in 1970 (with Miles’s Bitches Brew band), there were over 600,000 people, and I saw how music unites.” 

To build that unity, Bartz emphasizes deep knowledge through shared focus. 

TOTAL FOCUS

“I need a band that can hear and that knows the music so they don’t have to turn the pages and look at (sheet) music,” said Bartz. “If you are reading something and trying to listen, part of your brain is on the paper, the other part is in the melody. This music needs total focus, and it has to be your full attention.”

Over 30 albums as leader and 100 as sideman, Bartz has used that focus to build unity while maintaining his independence. “I appreciate the fact that I was able to record what I wanted to record,” he said. “Wait until they hear the new record! I think they’re gonna be shocked!” 

Called “Damage Control,” it’s due next month; recorded in Los Angeles with many musician friends. “Maybe people won’t be so shocked,” he mused, reconsidering. 

“They know I might do anything.”

Gary Bartz. Photo supplied

Bartz plays Sunday at 4:10 p.m. at the Charles R. Wood Discovery Stage with Kassa Overall, drums; Paul Bollenback, guitar, and Reuben Rogers, bass.

Information and tickets: http://www.spac.org.