Among the international artists scheduled to perform are Elizabeth Kontomanou (France), the Kenny Barron Trio (USA), and Lionel Loueke (Bénin/USA). A highlight of the event will no doubt be the performance of steel pan master, Andy Narell (USA), who will team with calypso legend, Relator (Trinidad) to perform innovative “PanJazz” selections from their new album, University of Calypso.

Muriel Wiltord, director Americas for the Martinique Promotion Bureau/CMT USA, commented on the festival, stating: “Over the years, the Martinique Jazz Festival has attracted some of the biggest names in jazz and scores of their fans to our shores. We look forward to more of the same in 2009 and beyond.”

Jazz luminaries who have performed at the Martinique Jazz Festival in years past include the Marsalis brothers, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Paquito d’Rivera, Chucho Valdes, and many more.

Martinique Jazz Festival performances will be held primarily at L’Atrium, in the capital city, Fort-de-France, with additional concerts and events held in the towns of Sainte Anne, Sainte Marie, Lamentin, Riviere Salee, Sainte Luce and the La Pagerie Museum in Trois-Ilets, childhood home of Empress Josephine.

The Caribbean island with French flair, The Isle of Flowers, The Rum Capital of the World, The Isle of the Famed Poet (Aimé Césaire) – by any one of its many names Martinique remains one of the most alluring and enchanting destinations in the world; as unforgettable as a summer romance or a first kiss. Named “Best Gourmet Island of the Year 2008″ by Caribbean World Magazine, Martinique is an overseas region of France that stirs the passions with distinctive culinary delights, awe-inspiring natural beauty, a rich cultural history, warm smiles and so much more. Napoleon’s bride, Empress Josephine, was born and raised here. The Pompeii of the Caribbean, St. Pierre, is found here. The finest French products, from Chanel fashions to Limoges porcelain, are readily available here. La Route des Rhums, a tour of the world’s finest rum distilleries based on France’s famed Route des Vins, is offered here. A special place, to be sure, with so much to offer – Martinique c’est magnifique!

Hiromi chronicles just a few of these places where she has experienced the almost mystical exchange between performer and audience on Place To Be, her new CD on Telarc International, a division of Concord Music Group. The album, her first solo piano recording, is set for release on January 26, 2010.

“Some places have such a special vibe, ” says Hiromi. “Sometimes a melody emerges in and around a place without me having to think about it at all. I can just walk down the street and I hear it.”

From New York City to Sicily, Bern to Boston, Vegas to Germany – several of those beautiful places are captured on Place To Be.

In addition to being a musical travelogue, Place To Be also represents a personal milestone for Hiromi, who recorded the album just days before her thirtieth birthday in March 2009. “I wanted to record the sound of my twenties for archival purposes, ” she says. “I felt like the people whom I met on the road during my twenties really helped me develop and mature as a musician and as a person. I feel very fortunate to have spent this part of my life traveling to all these places and making people happy. This record is a thank you to them.”

Place To Be caps an unprecedented run of releases for Hiromi. In 2009 alone she released two live DVDs as a leader, accompanied her mentor Chick Corea on the live double album Duet, and joined Stanley Clarke on his latest studio effort Jazz in the Garden. In recent years Hiromi has played festivals the world over including Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Playboy Jazz and this summer the Toronto Jazz Festival where the Globe and Mail said she “left the audience slack-jawed in amazement.”

Based on the performance that Joe Jackson and his long-time bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton put together at the House of Blues Wednesday night, it’s safe to say this trio has not only grown but has managed to do so without losing that revolutionary passion that kicked off their careers 30 years ago.

The crowd was small, but responsive as they heard Jackson open with “Steppin’ Out,” played a bit more aggressively than the languid studio version. He immediately veered into a breathtaking “Invisible Man” from the band’s latest release, “Rain,” before Maby underlined their take of “Fools In Love” with a rumbling, menacing bassline.

Playing under subdued lighting with minimal amplification, Jackson and his cohorts ran through a list of songs from their long career together with little respite. Jackson was self-deprecating and gracious, eliciting chuckles from the crowd as he introduced material from early in his career (“This one is old. When I mean old, I mean really f****** old,” he laughed before “Fools in Love”) and as he apologized or ending the set with “A Place in the Rain” (I know that’s the last thing you want to think about here is more rain”). Predictably, much of the material suited to a piano drum and bass trio came from Jackson’s catalog recorded after his breakthrough “Night and Day” album, which had a more sophisticated jazz piano feel than the first three albums.

Newer material, from the trio mixed well in the set. Jackson positioned the fear and paranoia of his “Cancer” coda (Everything/Gives you cancer) against the hedonistic warnings of Rain’s “King Pleasure Time” and its Taxman/Mr. Thief bass riff while still keeping the tight tempo intact.

There were also some very English moments, such as “Rush Across the Road” and the brooding “Solo,” but the audience took them in stride as the band navigated the setlist.

The quieter moments did not stop the group from bringing up some of the angst in “One More Time,” from Jackson’s “Look Sharp” debut, or from kicking up the percussive attack on a spirited “On Your Radio” from the group’s sophomore effort, “I’m the Man.” Maby and Houghton had a chance to cut loose a bit as well as Jackson led them through a cover of David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters,” complete with falsetto chorus and freak-out instrumental break.

As an additional treat (to make up for his meteorological faux pas), Jackson kicked off the encore with Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” The band then inverted the arrangement for “You Can’t Get What You Want,” pulling out the instrumentation in favor of a minimal drum patter and shakers for the first two refrains before blasting the piano and bass to the forefront during the solo section and rave-up finish.

“Is She Really Going Out with Him” turned into the strongest sing-along of the night. After repeating the final chorus a half-dozen times, Jackson had to smile and gesture for an end as the crowd seemed completely happy to sing along with the pop gem as long as the band was willing to keep playing. After a touching “Slow Song,” Jackson walked to the lip of the stage and thanked the audience with a bow and clasped hands, a seemingly heartfelt gesture to the fans who he had just treated to a solid, emotional performance.

The audience replied in kind, with smiles, applause and a feeling that they had been part of a very special performance.

Cool jazz had several sources and tributaries. Arrangers Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan developed their initial ideas working for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, which featured such then-unheard-of instruments (for jazz) as french horn and tuba; the added forces permitted Evans and Mulligan to explore softer emotional and timbral shading than had been typical of swing-era big bands. Another variety of “cool jazz” was that of the pianist Lennie Tristano and his students, notably the saxophonists Lee Konitz (who spent some time in the Thornhill band) and Warne Marsh. Tristano’s music is very different from what Evans and his colleagues were doing: its “coolness” was a matter of emotion (Tristano required saxophonists to play with a “pure” tone and to concentrate on melodic development and interaction rather than overt emotionalism), but his emphasis on sometimes ferociously fast tempos and on pure improvisation rather than arrangement was closer to bebop.

The classic mixture of these various influences was during the 1949-1950 sessions now best known under their later title: Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool (1950). Despite Davis’s top billing, this was in fact a collective project that drew together many players and arrangers/composers from the period: Davis, Evans, Mulligan, Konitz, John Lewis, Gunther Schuller, and Johnny Carisi, although according to Evans, Miles Davis was the musician who best represented this style of jazz. Issued only shortly after bebop had begun to establish itself, this recording offered an alternative aesthetic that was initially unpopular – it originally sold poorly and the band did not last long – but slowly established itself as a jazz classic.

Despite its beginning in New York, cool jazz later became identified strongly with West Coast jazz. Californian group The Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded the popular Cool Jazz album Time Out in 1959, which scored number two on the Billboard “Pop Albums” chart. The Cool Jazz influence stretches into such later developments as bossa nova, modal jazz (especially in the form of Davis’s Kind of Blue 1959), and even free jazz (in the form of Jimmy Giuffre’s 1961-1962 trio).

Friend of Unfair Park Peterk, always on the lookout for vintage Dallas photos of note available on eBay, sends our way this morning a genuine (and genuinely cool) relic: a photo of the Camp Dick jazz combo. And what, you might be asking, was Camp Dick? Well, writes  Art Leatherwood in the Handbook of Texas Online, “Camp John Dick Aviation Concentration Camp, also known as Camp Dick, was a personnel holding pool for graduates of ground training schools. It was located on the State Fairgrounds in Dallas from January 1918 until January 1919.”

A little further digging turns up this nugget concerning its connection with General Jimmy Doolittle, who led the first raid on Japan following Pearl Harbor: “Commissioned a second lieutenant on March 11, 1918, Doolittle was assigned to Camp John Dick Aviation Concentration Camp, TX as a flying instructor.” I think I just found my Halloween costume.

Freddie Hubbard, perhaps the most important jazz trumpeter of the past 50 years, as well as the most adventurous, died Dec. 29, 2008, in Sherman Oaks Hospital in Southern California, where he was in intensive care following a heart attack on Nov. 26. He was 70.

Hubbard breathed fire and mused lyrically on his horn throughout his peak years. He has left a luminous legacy that underscores his innovations as an artist and his rowdy behavior onstage and off, despite the past decade-and-a-half when his trumpeting vitality and mastery waned. From the time he emerged on the national jazz scene in the late ’50s, he made a huge impact.

Sonny Rollins enlisted Hubbard into his band, impressed by his talent. “Donald Byrd was playing with me, but he left to do another gig,” Rollins said. “So I got Freddie. I showed him off to Donald, saying, ‘Here’s someone better than you.’ There wasn’t anything Freddie couldn’t do.”

Wayne Shorter, who played with Hubbard in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, said that the trumpeter was in the same league as Lee Morgan and Miles Davis during the early ’60s. “He could have been a classical player, too, because he could read and perform anything,” Shorter said. “I met him in 1959 at a jam session in the back room of Small’s Paradise. Freddie was one of the guys. He had a cocky, devil-may-care attitude and he was from the same place as Wes Montgomery and J.J. Johnson, so that was something. When we joined up with Art Blakey, we had the experience of seeing each other’s development. When Lee left Art’s band, there was a feeling of sadness, a slump. But when Freddie came in, he solidified the band again.”

Hubbard made his mark not only with his bandmates and friends, but also with entire generations of trumpet players who followed in his wake. Almost immediately after Hubbard’s death, trumpeters who were moved by him posted blogs on their web sites. Brian Lynch, who performed with him during special “life-changing” Blakey shows, wrote: “He was and is my greatest hero. Since the first time I heard Red Clay at 14 years of age, Hub has personified the music to me.”

Dave Douglas’ post on greenleafmusic.com articulately delved into the more technical aspects of Hubbard’s playing while asserting that he was “the most imitated [trumpeter] of the last half-century.” Douglas wrote that Hubbard’s exhibition of joy and freedom in his playing came from his seemingly effortless trumpet prowess: “In the high range, his control of air was so sublime that his lines sometimes defied the laws of physics and harmony, resolving in odd ways just by the dint of his total domination of the instrument. Freddie grabbed the opportunity of those alternate fingerings to pop in and out of chromatic chord and scale ideas. His attack was always precise, and his dodging and darting lines flowed like water through a sluiceway.”

Douglas praised Hubbard’s inventive harmonies and his genius with rhythmic propulsion, while adding, “Freddie’s impact is so profound that you don’t often have to mention him when noting a young player’s influences. Freddie is always there. He had a lot to say, and we all soaked it in.”

Terell Stafford noted that Hubbard touched on almost every style in jazz, citing his work with Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz, 1960), Eric Dolphy (Out To Lunch, 1964), and his CTI and Columbia fusion days in the 1970s. (Hubbard also performed on such landmark recordings as Oliver Nelson’s The Blues And The Abstract Truth, 1961, Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, 1964, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, 1965, and John Coltrane’s Ascension, 1965.)

“You hear stories about how Coltrane dedicated himself to his craft, but Freddie was always doing that, too,” Stafford said. “That’s why he was such a genius, from genre to genre, challenge to challenge. I loved his fire, articulation, harmonic power, sound and approach. And his compositions were incredible. I’m not taking anything from Miles or Clifford Brown, but Freddie made such a huge impact on the generation behind him and in the colleges and workshops today.”

When she was 17, Ingrid Jensen caught Hubbard live two nights in a row at a club in her native Vancouver, British Columbia. “I was infatuated with Freddie’s trumpet playing, and I had no concept of how he could play the instrument the way he did,” Jensen said of the early-’80s shows. “On the second night during the set break, Freddie approached me at the bar and said, ‘You’re a trumpet player, aren’t you?’ He told me that if I came by his hotel the next day, he’d give me a lesson.”

She calls this lesson one of the most important days of her life. “When he heard me play, I guess he thought that I was going for something,” she said. “He had me play some exercises, and he sent me home with some material to practice. I kept practicing because I wanted to play like Freddie, to get that consistency of a vocal sound—those warm, round, long tones that were like Coltrane. I wanted to get to a place in my own playing where I could maintain that beautiful sound throughout all the registers of the horn.”

One of the younger players on the scene, Christian Scott also bows down to Hubbard’s sound. “The first time I heard him was when I was a kid,” he said. “It was the most compelling sound on the trumpet I had ever heard. It was powerful and slick. When I heard Ugetsu with Art Blakey, I lost my mind. I went out and bought every album I could by Freddie, and tried my best to transcribe.”

While Scott never met Hubbard, he was still influenced by him, “in the context of being a trumpeter—how he articulated and how he built solos,” Scott said. “He and Lee Morgan were heavy in my hard-bop/bebop playing. I think, wow, I’m 25, but listen to what Freddie was doing when he was 22.”

Hubbard also inspired an entire class of young musicians who weren’t trumpeters. Javon Jackson was immediately pulled into the trumpeter’s playing the first time he heard him. “He was such a strong performer and he could take these great extended solos,” the saxophonist said. “He was the bridge of so much information. He came from the Clifford Brown style. He absorbed Trane’s linear style and he embodied Sonny Rollins’ rhythmic feel in his phrasing.”

Jackson played in Hubbard’s band in the early ’90s and became friends with him. “Freddie was like a father to me,” he said. “He treated me like a son. Just last October I went to see Freddie at his house. We had dinner and then we watched videos. It was like going home. It was about the music but also real personal. He left a lot to musicians. It’s a serious school of higher learning. He’ll live through us artists who continue to celebrate him.”

Christian McBride said that Hubbard was a key to bringing Coltrane’s style of fluidity and clarity on the saxophone to the trumpet scene. He also weighed in on Hubbard’s output as a composer. “Freddie may not have produced the sheer volume as Wayne Shorter or Andrew Hill, but his music was meaty,” the bassist said. “His tunes had great melodies, lots of great chord changes, sophisticated harmonies and tempo changes, and were sheer fun to play. It’s like you can feel the music in your blood. Just think of the tune ‘Red Clay.’ It’s got juicy changes and is funky—it is something to hold on to.”

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