All that jazz arrives for a fest

Now in it's third year, the 2005 Summer Jazz Festival cannot compete with the Taichung Jazz Festival held in the fall, but it does boast a reputable, albeit brief, list of talented musicians.

Lee Huey-mei (李惠美) head of the programming department at National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center and the department in charge of organizing the jazz festival, said lack of government or corporate assistance put a limit on how grand the event could be.

Originally Lee intended to link the series with BENQ's jazz festival in Bali (八里) or Taipei City government's outdoor concert last month, but in the end nothing surfaced so organizers ditched the idea and proceeded with their own plan -- to hold a series of four performances.

"We wanted to hold a free outdoor concert in the courtyard [at the CKS Memorial Hall] but without any confirmed dates or schedule of perfor-mers we couldn't receive any funding from the [Taipei city] government. Basically we are now trying to build up our own reputation so that we can expand into a larger event," Lee said.

To help establish the event, organizers asked for input from members of the local jazz scene. Music critics, record company representatives and jazz musicians such as saxophonist, Dong Sun-wen (董舜文) were approached to help select which artists to invite, Lee said.

As with the previous two years, the series is set at four performances, with the focus on promoting crossover acts.

"We selected a performance lineup fit to satisfy the musical palettes of contemporary, classical and fusion jazz fans," Lee said.

Opening the show tomorrow night is the most internationally renowned of those on the bill, Kenny Garrett. At 45 years of age, the alto saxophonist has amassed a stellar resume playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and working with legend Miles Davis. He's sat with everyone from the New Jersey symphony to pop artists Sting and Peter Gabriel and even experimented with hip-hop working with music artist Guru on the "Jazzmatazz" project in the late 1990s.

Fellow American, but current UK resident, Stacey Kent is a female crooner who gets listeners to swoon with her renditions of jazz and pop track songs. She can also deliver a track as if sung by the original master.

Australian native James Morrison is a multi-instrumentalist who has performed with internationally acclaimed musicians including Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie and pop artist Whitney Houston. This time he will be accompanied by a quartet of fellow Aussies. The Idea of North is a choir-based vocal group that performed in Taipei last year. According to Morrison it is the "best contemporary acapella quartet in Australia."

Topping off the series is a welcome return to Taiwan for the Klazz Bro-thers and Cuba Percussion, which played at the Taichung jazz festival last year. The ensemble gained acclaim a few years ago for its Cuban jazz-inspired reworking of classical pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach and other masters. The German based trio, Klazz Brothers, built their reputation working with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, while percussionists Alexis Herrera Estevez and Elio Rodriguez Luis' accreditation stems from Cuba's premier group, the Havana Ensemble.

The only setback to bringing a list of jazz all-stars, apart from the financial burden, is that shortly after the program is released the tickets are sold out. As of press time, tickets for both Kenny Garrett and Stacey Kent were nearly all sold out and tickets for the remaining two shows were at 30 percent remaining occupancy.