Considering that it was the year of Woodstock, Altamont and the Isle of Wight, it might seem perverse to argue that the most consequent music event of 1969 took place in the sleepy East Bay suburb of Concord. But in the Bay Area, the Concord Summer Festival spent six days in late August showcasing mainstream jazz at its best, with significant nods to musical tangents from Cuba and Brazil.
There was nothing epochal about the program, which included pianists Erroll Garner, Vince Guaraldi and George Duke, vocalists Carmen McRae and Mel Tormé, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and guitarist Bola Sete, the Buddy Rich Band, the Willie Bobo Sextet, and the Stan Kenton Orchestra. But the event, which soon came to be known as the Concord Jazz Festival, sowed seeds that shaped the Bay Area music scene for decades, leading to the creation of the Concord Jazz record label and the construction of the Concord Pavilion, still one of the region’s largest open-air venues.
Last presented at the Pavilion in 2004 as the Fujitsu Concord Jazz Festival, a corporate alliance that facilitated fruitful Japanese gigs for many American players, the Concord Jazz Festival returns to “the house that jazz built” on Saturday, Aug. 3, for its 50th anniversary concert. The show is a celebration of the festival’s legacy, presented by Live Nation and Concord Jazz, which is now part of the Beverly Hills-based Concord Music Group. The day-long event includes several artists long associated with the label, including pianist, composer and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Chick Corea and conguero Poncho Sanchez.
The label’s future is also well represented by Snarky Puppy drummer Jamison Ross performing with Patti Austin and the Legendary Count Basie Orchestra, and bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, who celebrates the release of her new album “12 Little Spells” with her sextet featuring the vocals of avant-garde soul singer Starr Busby and Catherine Brookman (also a noted composer and Lorde collaborator).
“It’s a good cross section of what we’re doing,” says Concord Label Group President John Burk. “Chick Corea is one of the greatest living jazz legends and he’s been associated with Concord since 1995; Poncho Sanchez, the torch bearer for Latin jazz, has been on Concord since the early 1980s, longer than any artist in the system; and then there’s two of our really exciting young artists, Jamison Ross and Esperanza.”
The festival’s headliner is pop jazz saxophonist Dave Koz, who joined the Concord roster with his hit 2010 album “Hello Tomorrow.” He leads a smooth jazz supergroup featuring saxophonist Gerald Albright, trumpeter/vocalist Rick Braun, R&B singer Kenny Lattimore, and Postmodern Jukebox trombonist/vocalist Aubrey Logan.
If there’s a breakout star on the festival’s roster, it is the charismatic 28-year-old vocalist Jazzmeia Horn, whose given name seems to have preordained her for an improvisational life. She positively ruled the stage at her SFJazz Center performance last month kicking off the San Francisco Jazz Festival, scatting with the agility of an Olympic gymnast and delivering ballads with simmering intensity and exquisite precision. The show served as a sneak preview of her upcoming Concord Jazz release “Love & Liberation,” due out Aug. 23, a follow-up to her 2017 debut album, Grammy Award nominee “A Social Call.”
Horn’s first album focused on tunes associated with her primary influences, particularly Betty Carter. Her sound and phrasing is still indebted to the late, great Carter, particularly on signature songs like “Getting to Be a Habit” and “Tight,” but Horn fully comes into her own as a songwriter on “Love & Liberation,” a project focusing on her impressive originals.
“This is a different concept,” she says. “It’s a call to awareness. Liberating yourself is an act of love. When you’re free, being exactly who you want to be — whatever your orientation, race, color, creed — you have zero cares about people’s notions and thoughts. You’re liberated.
“So much music today is about ‘smoke weed, get money, f— bitches.’ I want to be a light. I’m here to try to bring that balance in my art.”
In many ways Horn extends the Concord Jazz label’s legacy as a champion of jazz vocals.
After auto dealer and jazz fan Carl Jefferson launched the Concord Jazz Festival in ’69, he started hearing from jazz artists about the rapidly dwindling opportunities to record. A man of action, he created the Concord Jazz label in 1972; it carved out an identity as the home of young players inspired by pre-bop and small-group swing as well as veteran vocal stars like McRae, Tormé and Rosemary Clooney.
Jefferson particularly loved singers. He launched the careers of Nnenna Freelon and Karrin Allyson (who is scheduled to perform at Feinstein’s at the Nikko in San Francisco on Aug. 23-24), and put San Francisco’s Mary Stallings on the national jazz radar with three stellar albums. The label’s presence in the Bay Area provided a huge boost to the local scene, whether introducing younger players like guitarist Bruce Forman, pianist Marcos Silva and saxophonist Mary Fettig, or documenting established stars such as Cal Tjader, Pete Escovedo and Stan Getz.
The city of Concord is celebrating Jefferson, who died in 1995 at age 75, and his Concord Jazz legacy with Take 10, a series of concerts and events around the city from Thursday, Aug. 1, through Aug. 10. The free concerts at Todos Santos Plaza include a mini-festival on Sunday, Aug. 4, featuring the Mary Fettig Quartet, Steve Snyder’s Big Band, the John Santos Sextet, Soul Sauce and L.O.V.E. (Levels of Vocal Expression).
50th Anniversary Concord Jazz Festival: 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 3. $20-$95. Concord Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. www.livenation.com
During Concord Jazz’s three-decade run in the East Bay, the record label documented many of the region’s resident masters. Here are 10 of the label’s biggest albums:
Cal Tjader, “La onda va bien,” 1979 (Concord Picante)
Bruce Forman, “Full Circle,” 1984
Mary Fettig, “In Good Company,” 1985
Marcos Silva and Intersection, “White & Black,” 1988 (Concord Records’ Crossover)
Buddy Montgomery, “Live at Maybeck Vol. 15,” 1992
“Dick Whittington Trio in New York,” 1992
“Jessica Williams at Maybeck,” 1992
Denny Zeitlin, “Live at Maybeck Vol. 27,” 1993
Mary Stallings, “I Waited for You,” 1994
Pete Escovedo, “E Street,” 1997
