The bright future of jazz was on display in New Jersey during the weekend of May 17 and 18. The first-ever Ross Farm Jazz Festival on Saturday, May 17, featured performances by the jazz bands of Basking Ridge’s Ridge High School and three New Jersey college jazz programs: Rutgers, Montclair State, and William Paterson. Thanks to guitarist Dave Stryker — the Festival’s featured performer — for coordinating the college concerts. He teaches at all three institutions.
The Ridge Big Band and Quintet performed a variety of jazz favorites including Count Basie and Sammy Nestico’s “Hay Burner”, “Lover Man” (Jimmy Davis, Roger “Ram” Ramirez, and James Sherman), and Chick Corea’s “Armando’s Rhumba”. The latter tune was recorded on Corea’s 1976 Polydor album, My Spanish Heart.
Among the selections by Rutgers’ Jazz Guitar Combo were Dizzy Gillespie’s “Groovin’ High”, Victor Young’s “It Could Happen to You”, and Kenny Barron’s “Voyage”. The Montclair State Jazz Quintet’s set included Pat Metheny’s “Questions and Answers” (the title track of his 1990 Geffen album), Arthur Schwartz’s “You and the Night and the Music”, and Stryker’s “Came to Believe”, featured on his 2020 Strikezone Records album, Blue Soul recorded with saxophonist Bob Mintzer and the WDR Big Band.
The William Paterson Brecker Brothers Ensemble performed several tunes written by Michael Brecker such as “Straphangin'”, “Bathsheba”, and “African Skies”. “Straphangin'” was the title track of a 1981 Arista Brecker Brothers album that also included “Bathsheba”. “African Skies” was one of the selections on “Out of the Loop”, a 1994 GRP recording that was the last Brecker Brothers studio album. It won Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Performance and Best Instrumental Composition, for “African Skies”. (Photo above: WPU Brecker Brothers Ensemble, from left, pianist Nick Scheider, guitarist Sally Shupe, saxophonist Nathan Brenson, trumpeter Josh Mercado, and drummer Luke Richards).
On Sunday, May 18, the Big Swingin’ Big Band co-led by pianist Caelan Cardello and trumpeter Jonny Gittings finished to a standing ovation from the crowd at Wayne, NJ’s Our Lady of Consolation Church. Each of the 17 young instrumentalists had at least one solo on such tunes as Count Basie’s “Blues in Hoss Flat”, Thad Jones’ “Interloper”, and Steve Davis’ “Optimism”.
The instrumentalists were joined on three selections by the brilliant young vocalist Kate Kortum, who energized the audience with the Nat King Cole hit, “The Late Late Show”, the Hoagy Carmichael/Johnny Mercer standard, “Skylark”, and Lionel Hampton’s “My Little Red Top”. (Photo below: Kortum and Cardello)
(Previews of both of these events appeared in the May 2025 issue of Jersey Jazz Magazine).
PHOTOS BY SANFORD JOSEPHSON
