After half a century, numerous traditions have grown up around the Stanford Jazz Festival, like the season-ending all-star faculty jam session, the blues night led by bassist Ruth Davies (featuring the great Ruthie Foster this year), and pianist Taylor Eigsti’s annual confab.
A recent and very welcome addition to the festival’s roster of recurring concerts is the SJF’s 50/50 Jazz Orchestra, a big band evenly divided between women and men. Introduced in 2018, the 16-piece ensemble is usually joined by guest artists, and Saturday night’s concert in Stanford’s seasonally warm Dinkelspiel Auditorium included Bay Area vocalist Clairdee and New York reed maestro Ken Peplowski.
Under the confident direction of Fred Berry, who was honored at the start of the evening with the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Hero Award, the orchestra played a well-curated program with bravado and a good deal of finesse. Each piece had its own particular pleasures, which mostly started with the supple buoyancy of the top-shelf rhythm section (with pianist Glen Pearson, bassist Ruth Davies, and drummer David Rokeach).
The crisp section work was impressive, particularly for a band that assembles for an annual show, but what stood out most was the steady flow of moment-seizing solos by players who shine in any context, like altoist Kasey Knudsen, trombonist Jeanne Geiger and trumpeter John Worley.
Peplowski joined the group on tenor sax for Duke Ellington’s “The Intimacy of the Blues,” swinging persuasively with his signature breathy tone. But when he picked up the clarinet for the Isham Jones/Gus Kahn standard “The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else),” his liquid tone was stunning. There is simply no clarinetist on the scene playing with more poise, presence, and imagination.
One of the concert’s highlights featured the band’s youngest member, 17-year-old trumpeter Skylar Tang, on her piece “Kaleidoscope,” which won top honors last year at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington Festival. Standing in front of the band she navigated the rapidly shifting sections with aplomb. She also joined Peplowski up front for several pieces, like on Clairdee’s delectable version of Antonio Jobim’s “Quiet Night of Quiet Stars.”
Clairdee covered a deeply satisfying array of songs, gliding through a slow and sensuous version of “The Blues Are Brewing” while bringing self-possession to Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain,” one of the finest entries in an American Songbook subchapter once described by vocalist Wesla Whitfield as “Hello, I’m a doormat, step on me.”
The concert concluded with Clairdee gift-wrapping “Love Is Here to Stay.” Opening as a voice/piano duet with Pearson, the Gershwins’ timeless ode to enduring love sounded utterly fresh and immediate. With Tang and Peplowski joining Clairdee up front, the moment captured both the promise and delivery of the 50/50 concept.
