# Winter Jazzfest 2023 marks its return for the first time since the start of our pandemic era: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/01/23/winter-jazzfest-2023-marks-its-return-for-the-first-time-since-the-start-of-our-pandemic-era-videos-photos/
- Published: 2023-01-23T00:02:24+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**“The past replays itself,” sang Sara Serpa in The Loft at City Winery late Friday
night, “Over and over again.” Singing with pinpoint clarity over a desert groove
in 7/4 time, Serpa was stating the core message of “Antiquity,” an enthralling new
song by Linda May Han Oh.**

It arrived some six hours into the 2023 Winter Jazzfest Manhattan Marathon, which
must be why that lyrical axiom — while offered in admonishment, as Oh explained 
before her solo bass intro — stirred such reassuring feelings. Putting aside the
perils of historical recurrence, Winter Jazzfest was _back_, in person and in full,
for the first time since the start of our pandemic era. Any resemblance to the untroubled
Winter Jazzfests of yore was something to be cherished.

There was plenty to evoke that precedent on Friday and Saturday, in the respective
and equally jam-packed Manhattan and Brooklyn marathons. The first such flashback,
for me, was a stand by the Donny McCaslin Quartet at (Le) Poisson Rouge, which has
functioned as the nerve center of this festival since its move to Greenwich Village
in 2009. McCaslin’s quartet — known outside jazz constituencies as the band from
David Bowie’s _Blackstar,_ with the leader on tenor saxophone, Jason Lindner on 
keyboards, Tim Lefebvre on electric bass, and Mark Guiliana on drums — models an
ideal of whiplash ferocity and straining endurance, with every output pushing into
the red.

“There’s always an element of danger, which I’m totally into,” said McCaslin, grinning,
before the band’s bravura closer: “[Stadium Jazz](https://youtu.be/1ztAUZq-qss),”
a vaulting anthem from the more-than-decade-old album _Casting For Gravity. _In 
the jostling mass at LPR, its pressing energies felt both in the moment and out 
of time: an on-demand replay, if not a portal.

![ The Donny McCaslin Quartet, with Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre, McCaslin and Mark
Guiliana, at the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/
d148ddb/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5484x3661+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url
=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2F86%2F87%2F5bd6d0824e82af95c4423df3686b%2Fbmf-
1026.jpg)

Jonathan Chimene / The Donny McCaslin Quartet, with Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre,
McCaslin and Mark Guiliana, at the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

But for every scene that suggested a Winter Jazzfest Classic, there were others 
that could only have emanated from our present coordinates — meaning not only an
_au courant_ musical offering, but also the rebounding of live performance in overcrowded
indoor settings. One example: the magnetic pianist Julius Rodriguez, who was all
of 21 during the initial COVID lockdown of 2020, played a marathon show that felt
like a victory lap at The Opera House in Williamsburg on Saturday night. Rodriguez
is now a major-label artist of burgeoning acclaim, and his set — full of clever 
reformulations like a cha-cha version of the standard “Midnight Sun” and a go-go
gloss on Herbie Hancock’s “Actual Proof” — radiated breezy confidence even when 
its greater design felt glib or undercooked.

![ Brandee Younger at The Opera House, during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](https://
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+0+0/resize/880x837!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2Fd1%2F76%
2F8fc71c564918a55fd8becf36306c%2Fbrandee-younger-1-of-3.jpg)

David Kaufman / Brandee Younger at The Opera House, during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

Harpist and composer Brandee Younger, who followed Rodriguez on the same stage, 
balanced old and new, with help from bassist Rashaan Carter and drummer Allan Mednard.
Opening with “Unrest,” a two-part invention supported by a grant from the Jazz Commission
Coalition, Younger went on to unveil something from her forthcoming second Impulse
album: a gracefully arpeggiated love song titled “You’re a Girl For One Man Only.”
Her trio, responsive and assured, mixed these in with selections from Somewhere 
Different, released in 2021.

Along with breakout jazz vocal star Samara Joy, Younger and Rodriguez also co-headlined
a Verve Music Group showcase on Monday night. That show sold out — as did an opening-
night DJ set by Gilles Peterson and an all-star memorial for trumpeter jaimie branch.
Such varied offerings underscore the dawning maturity of Winter Jazzfest, which 
began as an insider’s affair (pitched to the Association of Performing Arts Professionals,
with whose conference it still coincides) and now resembles a conventional jazz 
festival, with a mandate to uplift and invigorate the music’s status quo. According
to longstanding custom, and the convictions of Winter Jazzfest founder Brice Rosenbloom,
the concerts were complemented by Jazz Talks organized around topics of social justice
and industry practice. (Full disclosure: I moderated one, ‘The State of Jazz Radio
in the Digital Age.’ No compensation was involved, beyond the rich insights shared
on the panel.)

My engagement with this year’s Winter Jazzfest focused on the marathons, which spanned
14 stages in total, seven for each borough. Past experience and present considerations
led me to sample music at only six of these stages, where I heard a dozen bands.
That’s about half as many as I caught in some previous Winter Jazzfests, a reduction
partly explained by geography. The Manhattan Marathon, which used to encompass a
manageable swatch of the Village, sprawled out this year to almost the entire width
of the borough. So rather than pinging around like a pinball, I found myself picking
a radius and sticking with it.

This was a calculation: as any Winter Jazzfest veteran will tell you, strategy is
a key component of the experience. For me, that also meant eschewing a few surefire
highlights, either for the sake of crowd avoidance or because of the benefit of 
prior exposure. For example, I didn’t seek out Makaya McCraven at Superior Ingredients,
or Immanuel Wilkins at LPR. (I was fortunate enough to catch each artist a few times
last year.) I also passed on Orrin Evans with an all-star group at Zinc Bar. (I’d
just had the pleasure of seeing him in Philadelphia, at Solar Myth.) And I didn’t
even try to get into The Jazz Gallery or The Bitter End. (Or Zinc Bar, for that 
matter.)

![ Linda May Han Oh at The Loft at City Winery, during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bb3ff65/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7952x5304
+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2F93%2Fc6%
2F1f991c4146a5b45ec116c1f0116f%2Fdsc00553.jpg)

Jonathan Chimene / Linda May Han Oh at The Loft at City Winery, during the 2023 
Winter Jazzfest.

The upside of this approach was that I heard more full sets than usual at Winter
Jazzfest, settling into a natural rhythm. Linda May Han Oh delivered the most illuminating
of these, with an exceptionally intuitive band: in addition to Serpa on vocals, 
it featured Greg Ward on alto saxophone, Matt Mitchell on piano and Obed Calvaire
on drums. (This was part of a showcase for Biophilia Records, which should release
Oh’s new music in the foreseeable future.)

My second favorite was a rare appearance by vibraphonist Joel Ross’ Parables, drawing
from the 2022 Blue Note release _The Parable of the Poet. _A nine-piece ensemble
stocked with first-tier talent — like Wilkins, trumpeter Marquis Hill and trombonist
Kalia Vandever — Parables unfurled a shimmering canvas of sound, wholesome in its
affect and calmly euphoric in its intention. Toward the middle of the suite, between
a pair of uplifting solos by Hill and flutist Gabrielle Garo, I leaned over to a
friend with a snap judgment: “It’s like Mingus without the menace.”

I couldn’t have said the same of Irreversible Entanglements, which dropped a spiky
depth charge at Superior Ingredients, sounding righteous and raucous. Anchored by
the twin-screw propulsion of bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes, the
group created a dynamic platform for the spoken-word polemics of Moor Mother, the
most galvanizing presence I encountered all weekend. “The rhythm is gonna get you,”
she intoned late in their set, making that promise sound a lot less festive than
[Gloria Estefan did back in the day](https://youtu.be/CZkjeJKBI0M). “Dialogue of
the drums,” Moor Mother went on, giving urgent voice to an ancient yet ever-present
exchange.

That dialogue was a defining factor in my Winter Jazzfest experience, never more
literally than in an after-hours throw-down by drummer Nate Smith, with Lindner 
and Lefebvre, at Superior Ingredients. Drummer E.J. Strickland brought similar intensity
to a City Winery performance by Lakecia Benjamin, whose gold lamé bodysuit was about
as attention-grabbing as her fiery alto saxophone tone. And Blaque Dynamite, aka
Mike Mitchell, kept the beat roiling during a subsequent set by trumpeter Maurice“
Mobetta” Brown, whose most memorable flourish was [a wily mashup](https://youtu.be/eepvgiUj9Bo)
of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Future’s “Mask Off” — two Top 5 singles by dominant
hip-hop artists, enhanced with a sneaky allusion to Roy Hargrove’s _Crisol_ (to 
be specific, the main riff from “O My Seh Yeh,” a Frank Lacy tune).

Each of these choice moments, and countless others that I missed, spoke to a belief
that improvised music is alive and thriving — in the face of ongoing economic insecurities,
cultural inequities, and epidemiological hazards. This notion prevailed even in 
a bittersweet key, as when Louis Cato, the recently installed bandleader on _The
Late Show with Stephen Colbert_, punctuated a rousing cover of Curtis Mayfield’s“
Keep On Pushing” with a shout-out to presenter Meghan Stabile: “Thank you, Meghan.”

Cato was onstage at Brooklyn Bowl as a featured guest of the Revive Big Band, which
Stabile helped create with trumpeter-bandleader Igmar Thomas. That concise but heartfelt
nod to Stabile, who died last year at 39, was later echoed by Pete Rock, the eminent
hip-hop DJ, during his deeply satisfying set with the Soul Brothers.

“She opened a lot of doors for a lot of artists,” Pete Rock said of Stabile, eliciting
a wave of cheers and applause. That’s a mission in obvious alignment with the Winter
Jazzfest at large, as we’ve seen over nearly two decades now, even when viral conditions
compelled a virtual pivot. Opening doors for artists is this event’s original _raison
d’être_. Judging by its return to form this year, that should continue to be the
case as it rolls onward — over and over again.

Copyright 2023 WRTI.

![Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh,  Mary Halvorson and Terri Lyne Carrington during'
New Standards Live,' at the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/
dims4/default/2613504/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1500x1167+0+0/resize/880x685!/quality/
90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2F74%2F35%2F4039baa045da8cda233e2ebc799c%
2Fdsc-3323.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh, Mary Halvorson and Terri Lyne Carrington
during ‘New Standards Live,’ at the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![ Caroline Davis performing on 'New Standards Live' at the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c9794a5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1500x1043
+0+0/resize/880x612!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2Fef%2F19%
2Fd4dd83ae4afaba133bf6ed527b7e%2Fdsc-8330.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Caroline Davis performing on ‘New Standards Live’ at the 2023 Winter
Jazzfest.

![ Michael Mayo performing on 'New Standards Live,' as part of the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e51595b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1500x1107
+0+0/resize/880x649!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2F6e%2Ff9%
2F3130e2144fa388cddbe99d644baf%2Fdsc-7525.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Michael Mayo performing on ‘New Standards Live,’ as part of the
2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![ Kalia Vandever, center, performing on 'New Standards Live,' as part of the 2023
Winter Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/44579d3/2147483647/
strip/true/crop/1500x1000+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.
brightspotcdn.com%2Fa0%2Ffb%2Fc039364a4bba89f1dd4995675740%2Fdsc-5223.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Kalia Vandever, center, performing on ‘New Standards Live,’ as 
part of the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![ Ivanna Cuesta performing on 'New Standards Live,' at the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1482059/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1500x1000
+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2Fb9%2Fb7%
2F50dd8e684914a4a8c3c8fe17b1ea%2Fdsc-5216.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Ivanna Cuesta performing on ‘New Standards Live,’ at the 2023 Winter
Jazzfest.

![ Angelica Sanchez performing on 'New Standards Live,' part of the 2023 Winter 
Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/02e976b/2147483647/strip/
true/crop/1500x1000+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.
com%2Fc6%2F21%2F1405497e40d190ffea3b520eeaa2%2Fdsc-8293.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Angelica Sanchez performing on ‘New Standards Live,’ part of the
2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![Tia Fuller performing, as Veronica Leahy looks on, in 'New Standards Live,' part
of the 2023 Winter Jazzfest. ](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f665de1/
2147483647/strip/true/crop/1500x1086+0+0/resize/880x637!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%
2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2Fb1%2Fad%2Febb31eeb451cb580fc4e58d24a2c%2Fdsc-6535.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Tia Fuller performing, as Veronica Leahy looks on, in ‘New Standards
Live,’ part of the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![ Helen Sung performing on 'New Standards Live,' part of the 2023 Winter Jazzfest](
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/50f4315/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1500x1086
+0+0/resize/880x637!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2F83%2Fd7%
2Ff685b5344455ba6ac696adc4cbac%2Fdsc-6815.jpg)

Steven Sussman / Helen Sung performing on ‘New Standards Live,’ part of the 2023
Winter Jazzfest

![ WRTI's Josh Jackson introducing a set at (Le) Poisson Rouge during the 2023 Winter
Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a284676/2147483647/strip/
true/crop/5464x3648+0+0/resize/880x588!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.
com%2F01%2Fe6%2Ff66febd04008a730c9bbcdeeb585%2Fbmf-0922.jpg)

Jonathan Chimene / WRTI’s Josh Jackson introducing a set at (Le) Poisson Rouge during
the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![ Immanuel Wilkins with his band at (Le) Poisson Rouge during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest
Manhattan Marathon.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/89d93ad/2147483647/
strip/true/crop/5840x3899+0+0/resize/880x588!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.
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Jonathan Chimene / Immanuel Wilkins with his band at (Le) Poisson Rouge during the
2023 Winter Jazzfest Manhattan Marathon.

![ Maurice "Mobetta" Brown at City Winery during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](https://
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+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2F3f%2F6e%
2Fefc00b744be6bf5a406abfe64392%2Fdsc00723.jpg)

Jonathan Chimene / Maurice “Mobetta” Brown at City Winery during the 2023 Winter
Jazzfest.

![ Brandee Younger, with Rashaan Carter and Allan Mednard, at The Opera House during
the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ace3c36/2147483647/
strip/true/crop/5316x3290+0+0/resize/880x545!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.
brightspotcdn.com%2Ff9%2F84%2F4333fa0f4c03a1634b41fcdd5cc0%2Fbrandee-younger-2-of-
3.jpg)

David Kaufman / Brandee Younger, with Rashaan Carter and Allan Mednard, at The Opera
House during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

![ Julius Rodriguez at The Opera House during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest](https://
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David Kaufman / Julius Rodriguez at The Opera House during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest

![ Julius Rodriguez with his band at The Opera House during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.](
https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/48b4b17/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6024x3182
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2F319290d946c2b27782c1e8196765%2Fjulius3-opera.jpg)

David Kaufman / Julius Rodriguez with his band at The Opera House during the 2023
Winter Jazzfest.

![ Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre and Donny McCaslin at (Le) Poisson Rouge during the
2023 Winter Jazzfest.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7f80b54/2147483647/
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Jonathan Chimene / Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre and Donny McCaslin at (Le) Poisson
Rouge during the 2023 Winter Jazzfest.

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