The program of this year’s Atlantic Jazz Festival was notable for its intelligent deployment of several bands with overlapping stylistic concerns – the Paradox Trio, Zubot and Dawson, Michael Occhipinti, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Tim Posgate’s Horn Band and others. Scheduling conflicts meant that I missed the “Roots Summit” big band drawn from all the bands’ personnel, but cross-pollination was evident throughout the festival as musicians alternated between the bandstand and the audience. This festival-within-the-festival coexisted with a wide array of other musics in which hardcore mainstream jazz was only one component: swing-revivalists, vocalists, world music, flamenco and Latin jazz.

The festival offered several glimpses of Don Palmer, one of the East Coast’s best jazz musicians. His wry, Konitzian alto playing was showcased in an unusual duet with his former student, the tenor saxophonist Mike Murley. Murley gave a sublimely limber account of “You Are Too Beautiful” – worlds away from his work with the jazz-funk band Metalwood, who gave a punishingly loud midnight concert at Gottingen’s Marquee Club. A concert by Alive and Well (Palmer, bassist Skip Beckwith, and drummer Jerry Granelli) proved uneven, and seemed underrehearsed. A guest appearance by the guitarist Scott MacMillan – best known for his orchestral Celtic Mass for the Sea – threw up a fine “B.B. Blues” in duo with Palmer. But I was less impressed by the other guest, singer Jay Clayton, and left shortly after she began reciting e.e. cummings.

Lack of preparation was again evident in a trio with Granelli, bassist Glen Moore and clarinetist François Houle, but the music was effectively atmospheric. Houle blew obliquely into his clarinet to create shakuhachi tones, or played two clarinets at once, aulos-like.

The instrumentation of Tim Posgate’s Horn Band – trumpet, two reeds (usually tenor and baritone) and guitar – at different moments suggests the skewed chamber-jazz of Bill Frisell’s Quartet CD or the rich sonority of the WSQ. Despite Kenny Kirkwood’s forceful baritone and some bursts of sandpapery electric guitar from the leader, the overall feeling was light and bright, especially in the charming tribute to Quebec folksong, “50% Pure Wool,” its melody whistled in unison with a flute. An excellent concert – but perhaps bettered by a gig at the Khyber Café by Posgate, Kirkwood and Houle. From the grainy electric guitarscapes of “Magic Mountains” to the knotted reading of “Solar,” this was consistently enthralling. Next evening featured a quartet of Houle, clarinetist Bob Stevenson, violinist Jesse Zubot and bassist Andrew Downing: worthwhile and intent musicmaking, but never quite catching light.

The most stimulating mainstage concert was a doubleheader of Downing, Turcotte, Zubot and Dawson and the Paradox Trio. The first group joins bassist Andrew Downing and trumpeter Kevin Turcotte from Toronto with the quirky Vancouver roots-music duo of Jesse Zubot and Steve Dawson, the latter wielding Hawaiian guitar, dobro and ukulele. D.T.Z.D.’s chamber-jazz, with its touches of folk, country and klezmer styles, is informed by the examples of Frisell, Douglas and Bar Kokhba, but still possesses a very individual sound, sweet and twangy. Their set ended perfectly with a wistful countrified take on, of all things, “Stomping at the Savoy.”

Matt Darriau’s Paradox Trio (actually a quartet) plays a syncretic music most importantly informed by Balkan folk musics. Darriau, a flavourful alto saxophonist, also played flute and goatskin bagpipe; the other bandmembers were cellist Rufus Cappadocia, dumbek player Seido Salifoski, and – instead of Paradox’s regular guitarist Brad Shepik – Dave Fiuczynski, sporting a red doubleneck instrument. At one point Darriau tossed off a set of entirely idiomatic variations on a Cape Breton melody, a miniature illustration of the curiosity about folk musics of all kinds that fuels Paradox’s music. Fiuczynski is a laconic, misterioso player, qualities captured well in his enigmatic composition “Purple Vishnu,” played as an encore. The same qualities informed a Cappadocia-Fiuczynski duet next evening. Cappadocia’s cello often had a dark sonority; but he also pulled off a fine polyrhythmic pizzicato solo influenced (as he noted) by African griot music. A subsequent trio of Cappadocia, electric violinist Hugh Marsh and drummer Barry Romberg was sometimes diffuse but gradually firmed up, ending on a delicate, blues-drenched free-tempo improvisation.

John Pizzarelli’s trio gave a winning performance that, as he noted, drew sustenance from the trios of both Nat King Cole and Oscar Peterson; while the Robin Nolan Trio bridged Django-style swing and novelty guitar. The brisk, stylish neo-hard-bop of Roy Hargrove’s quintet was notable for an excellent rhythm section performance: among the young Turks onstage, the veteran pianist Larry Willis stood out for his sheer grace and unfailingly apposite comping. A very different slant on 1960s jazz was shown by the Yves Léveillé Quintet from Montreal. Léveillé’s calling-card is his Shorter-influenced composing; the music would have benefitted from a grittier and more individual front line (he is not a notable soloist himself), but this was nonetheless a solid concert.

The Cuban pianist Omar Sosa performed an ambitious melange of Cuban music and a variety of American musics – post-bop jazz, hiphop, rock, funk, &c. Deploying these elements with flair and intelligence, he sometimes built them up in simultaneous layers, sometimes sharply juxtaposed them via a hand-signal to the band. The jazzier bits revealed Sosa as a fine pianist with a nice touch and a style midway between Chick Corea and Randy Weston.

Despite a tentative opening and a stale setlist, the Joe Morello Quartet delivered an excellent concert of mainstream jazz with no sense of routine. Little-known pianist Noreen Grey was a real discovery: unpredictable, almost impish, she demonstrated a keen ear and a fluently two-handed style. Even the inevitable nod to Morello’s role on Time Out, with covers of “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and “Take Five,” sounded fresh as paint.

Inevitably, I missed a number of promising concerts, such as those by Michael Occipinti, Joel Miller, Claudia Acuña, Jeri Brown and the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band. Nonetheless, what I caught confirmed my sense that Halifax’s festival is one of the best midsize jazz festivals in Canada.

Nate Dorward

Coda, Nov 2001-Feb 2002