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Arts & Entertainment

Jazz Festival Another Hit for Healdsburg

The fifteenth Healdsburg Jazz Festival filled its venues and fulfilled its high expectations this weekend, the second of the annual 10-day festival.

“I don’t know how Jessica makes every year better than the last, but she’s done it again,” said Gloria Hersch, former chair of the Festival’s board of directors, speaking of artistic director Jessica Felix.

The setting was the “festival finale” at Rodney Strong Vineyards on Sunday afternoon, while the Azar Lawrence Quartet filled the balmy afternoon with hard bop jazz. Later, Sweet Honey in the Rock added their gospel-influenced repertoire to the program.

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Hersch’s stepson had been a headliner a couple nights earlier, on Friday, when the Fred Hersch Trio played to an enthusiastic audience at the Raven Theater. The pianist Hersch has played several times at the Festival, in various solo-duo-trio combinations. His father Henry Hersch has lived in Healdsburg for several years.

The next night, saxophonist Charles Lloyd told his full-house audience that “the deities were all here last night,” in appreciation of the pianist’s talent. Lloyd and Hersch discussed playing together at a later date, according to Gloria Hersch.

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But Saturday was all about Charles Lloyd, with a mid-day two-hour documentary about his peripatetic career, “Arrows Into Infinity,” co-directed by his wife Dorothy Darr and Jeffrey Morse. The film blended stills and footage from his earliest years in Memphis, then as a budding saxophonist in New York, to his rise to stardom in the mid-1960s that peaked with his “Forest Flower” LP recorded at Monterey Jazz Festival in 1967.

After his success, Lloyd eventually dropped out and moved to Big Sur, serenading the surf and seabirds with his music, briefly emerging several times and then re-entering the healing natural landscape of coastal California. His career has become more active over the past few years, but he showed himself a mature, thoughtful artist who still values his privacy and inner voice.

Jessica Felix was one of the on-screen witnesses in the film, describing her own growth beyond folk and rock into jazz through Lloyd’s work. “I tell people I wasn’t a flower child, but a Forest Flower child,” she said, a comment she repeated when introducing Lloyd and pianist Jason Moran to Saturday’s packed House at the Raven.

The Festival had some 17 events over 10 days, from Cuban-influenced combos at the Partake by KJ café to late night jams at the Hotel Healdsburg Lobby, culminating in the Sunday afternoon concert at Rodney Strong. The previous day temperatures reached 100° in Healdsburg at noon, but the weather rapidly cooled off to give Sunday’s open-air audience a perfect day to enjoy the music.

Sweet Honey in the Rock, currently a vocal quartet with an ASL signer who is official part of the group, and a guest bassist in Arthur McAllister, warily found their groove with the audience that had just been through some intense saxophone solos by Lawrence. By the end of the show, though, the audience was singing their part of the freedom songs that SWIR favors, raising their hands in support.

“Keep the love in your heart,” said Felix as she thanked the crowd, artists and sponsors one last time.

“Next year’s festival begins tomorrow,” she added.

Did you go to any Healdsburg Jazz Festival events? Do you think this year was the best yet?

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