(Reprinted from the 11 July 2023 edition of Downbeat online)

The Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival, now in its 46th year, hosted 21 topline acts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center the weekend of June 24-25.  SPAC, a historic venue nestled in the verdure of Saratoga State Park in upstate New York, accommodates up to 25,000 concertgoers, who mill leisurely between the Amphitheater (the sheltered main stage) and the Charles R. Wood Discovery stage (a smaller, tented outdoor space), or sprawl comfortably on SPAC’s capacious lawn (fully exposed to the elements, umbrellas at times required). From any of these perches, one can readily absorb the festival’s many musical cross-currents.

Let’s say that at the top of Day One, you had a down-front seat in the Amphitheater. You’d have watched as drummer/bandleader Cindy Blackman Santana propelled her combustible band through their set, with jazz scions Felix Pastorius on bass and Ravi Coltrane on sax. (Blackman Santana took the earliest spot so that she would have time to make it up to Niagara Falls for an evening gig with husband Carlos Santana.)  Just half an hour later, pianist Chucho Valdés would follow with his quartet, hopscotching from one exhilarant tune to the next, referencing a Mozart sonata here (“Sonata in C Major, No. 16,” to be exact), descending into a seductive tango blues there (“Lorena’s Tango”), improvising extendedly to a polyrhythmic Cuban clave, and finally, mashing up several standards in a feel-good medley (“When I Fall In Love,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” “People,” “But Not For Me,” “A Train”).

Next, you’d have seen audience members jumping up to dance to Tower of Power, the 10-person funk-soul group, as they plunged into several of their horn-blasting hits from the 1970s—“Down to the Night Club” and “You’re Still A Young Man,” for instance, and “Don’t Change Horses In The Middle of a Stream,” with an interpolation of James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s World” (the tune that landed lead singer Mike Jerel a top spot on The Voice in 2020). You might then have noted that the main thing that high-velocity guitarist Cory Wong and beat-driven vocalist Angélique Kidjo share as musicians in back-to-back sets is a relentlessly joyous connection with their listeners. Finally, by the time that Snarky Puppy reached the main stage at the end of the first day, you would be primed for the persistent undergirding rhythm, the tensile motion, and the soupçon of whimsy in their program.

From the lawn on Day Two, perhaps, you’d have been able to see close-ups of Pat Metheny on any of several Jumbotrons as his fluid fingerings raced across all manner of guitars (multi-neck, acoustic, electric). You might also have mused about his self-designed Orchestrion and how it works and marveled at the skill of his superb Side-Eye sidemen.  You’d then have heard Hiromi and her Sonicwonder ensemble as they finessed jazz-pop grooves and settled now and again into exquisite harmonic designs. You’d also have been sure to notice how the mood shifted with the appearance of St. Paul & the Broken Bones, with their modern soul sound and gut-stirring vocals by front man Paul Janewey. And if you love blues singer Bonnie Raitt, whose tune “And Just Like That…” won Grammys for Best Song and Best American Roots Song this year, you’d have thrilled to her career-spanning set list—besides the aforementioned, earlier chart-toppers like “I Can’t Make You Love Me” as an encore and, most notably, “Angel From Montgomery,” in an ode to her friend John Prine, who passed from Covid in 2020.

But maybe you prefer your jazz undiluted and contained. You might have opted for some of the Jazz Discovery Stage offerings, like the straight-ahead Skidmore Jazz Institute Faculty All-Stars; pianist Emmet Cohen’s superb modern jazz trio; Melissa Aldana’s free-falling, sax-led group; drummer Mark Giuliana’s coolly measured band; guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel’s blistering quintet; or South African Nduduzo Makhathini’s experimental improvisations on piano.

On the Discovery Stage you also would have heard some spectacular singers—Claudia Acuña, in glorious, impassioned voice; Jupiter & Okwess, championing rousing Afropop sounds; singer/guitarist Carolyn Wonderland, in a Raitt-adjacent blues-based set; and singer/trombonist Glen David Andrews, brimming with New Orleans bonhomie. You might, too, have been in the spillover crowd that thronged to hear Samara Joy—afterwards waiting patiently in a snaking line to buy an album and get a signature. If you then wondered why Joy, in all of her popularity, wasn’t booked on the main stage, you’d be forgiven.