North Sea Jazz 2011 – Day 2

About a month ago, I posted about my first day at the three-day weekend of the North Sea Jazz Fest in Rotterdam. Here, finally, is the second day. I’ll try my best to get around to the third (and longest) day, but I find myself unable to avoid going into far greater detail than necessary. Anyway, here’s day 2. Also to note: the photos embedded and linked to in this post were taken by yours truly, unlike those from the previous post (I didn’t bring my camera on the first day).

When we last left off, I had finally made it back to my bed in Amsterdam around 4am after leaving Rotterdam around 1:30. The first group I wanted to see on Day 2 started at 4:30 in the afternoon, so I pretty much rolled out of bed around noon and went back to Central Station to get down to Rotterdam by then.

The 4:30 act I wanted to see was the Universtiy of Kentucky Jazz Ensemble. Personally, I had no reason to see them other than the fact that a friend of mine was once a music student at UK and recommended I go check them out and try to say hey to the drummer if I could. I checked them out, and they were great. I wasn’t blown away, but they clearly deserved to make the trans-Atlantic trip to play at the festival. Unfortunately the set up was such that I couldn’t flag down a member of the group to say hello, but I had better acts to get to anyhow.

The first big name of the day that I was psyched to see was Sergio Mendes. I can’t honestly say that I was a Sergio Mendes fan before the jazz fest, but I had been familiar with some of his more popular hits with Brasil 66. I even arranged “Mais Que Nada” for steel band back in college (but, like many of my arrangements, it was more for my own practice than to actually perform), and sure enough they played that tune. Unfortunately, Mendes recently collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas on the song (which, in my opinion, butchered the tune with bullshit BEP watermark lyrics and over-simplified rhythms) and this was the version he chose to perform with a substitute hiphop artist. Thankfully, many of the self-refferential BEP lines were removed.

I managed to get another good spot for this concert, which was held (if you remember from my Day 1 post) on one of the two large stages in the Nile hall. I was maybe a dozen people from the stage directly in front of where Mendes was perched at the ivories. To the right were three female vocalists and everything was backed by standard percussion/bass/guitar fare. So, as I admitted before, I didn’t know most of the songs, but I enjoyed for their Brazilian samba grooves and catchy lyric hooks. It’s just the kind of music that’s inherently danceable and easy to pick up quickly. It wasn’t until I passed a booth selling music from the festival and saw the cool artwork on an apparently new Mendes release that inspired me to hunt down the songs I had heard. I think “Emorio” from the Bon Tempo album is a new favorite of mine from Mendes.

There is one other thing I must mention from his performance. I know a friend of mine who practices capoeira enjoys Mendes’ music (he, too, is a percussionist) and knew he was jealous I was seeing him perform. But to pour salt on the wound, during one tune the auxiliary percussionist came to the front of the stage to perform capoeira moves and play pandero. It was great to see yet another musical legend like Mendes still grooving away at his age.

Next I simply shuffled over to the other Nile stage to get a good spot for Ben l’Oncle Soul. In planning my weekend at the festival, I had decided to look into Ben simply because the schedule was a bit dry at this point in the day and he seemed interesting. The Frenchman (whose name means “Uncle Ben’s Soul”) is described as a gospel/soul/funk/blues/hiphop mix who grew up listening to Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles. This is all apparent in his songs, and in his stylistic covers of hit songs like Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” and the Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There”. His debut album of original tunes is pretty good too, and I have to say my favorite tune is “Soulman”.

Again, I managed a pretty good spot to watch this unique talent perform. In the weeks leading up to the show, I grew to enjoy his music and knew the lyrics (even the French ones) to a few of his songs. He brought a lot of energy to the show, which had him sweating through his shirt as he ran around, and even out into the audience (and right by me). He played lots of the songs I had grown to enjoy, his well-known covers, and even a few new ones that I can’t remember. He seemed to enjoy hyping up the crowd by either running into the audience and dancing, vamping on the end of a tune for several minutes at varying energy levels, or even sitting down at the keyboard. I was surprised at the number of young girls in the crowd who knew all of his lyrics – I’ve never known a soul singer with a Motown flair to have that kind of following. Right on.

After that I hit a lull in my Saturday schedule and decided to take it easy on the risers in the back of the Nile hall. The next artist up in the hall was Chaka Khan – not someone I was terribly psyched to see but watched for a bit anyhow. She blew through some tunes, eventually singing the only one I cared about, “Ain’t Nobody” and after I snapped a few pictures of the screen she was on, I bailed to go walk around the festival grounds for a bit. I perused the food and beer tents, and devoured a traditional Dutch pancake (pannekoeken) filled with chocolate syrup and doused in powdered sugar. Yum.

I made my way back around to Nile in time to, again, get a decent spot to see the next big name on the ticket: Seal. Seal is one of those artists that I am not an avid follower of, but I liked his hits, so when the opportunity came to see him I said, “sure, why not?” Unlike most artists at the show, he actually went to the trouble to assemble a stage set and perform his show full-out. He, thankfully, performed some covers, including “It’s A Man’s World” and “Knock on Wood”, so I wasn’t completely lost. Eventually, of course, he performed “Kiss From A Rose” and “Crazy”, which were cool to see live. I had a lot of fun photographing Seal as he moved around on stage. The lighting was just right to get some pretty cool shots. One thing I found from taking pictures at the Jazz Fest was getting shots of fans as they snap photos and take videos with their phones and cameras with LCDs on them, like this shot of Seal performing.

He was cool to see, but I was actually more excited to see another group I had recently grew to enjoy since finding their name on the show schedule. Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue is a high-energy group that combines New Orleans brass sounds with hiphop, funk and soul sounds to make a really unique blend. It’s mostly instrumental, and has heavy, head-bobbing beats. I got a great spot just a few feet from the stage in the small Congo room where I saw Robert Randolph the night before.

Trombone Shorty is a virtuoso trombone and trumpet player and his band of horns, guitar, bass and percussion was a blast. There’s even a few videos of the group’s performance at NSFJ up on YouTube, so check those out to see just was I was a few feet from. I managed to get some great of shots of Shorty and his band thanks to my close proximity to the stage. They are really entertaining to watch and their music is fun – I highly recommend checking them out if you enjoy good things.

After that, it was 1am so I hurried over to Rotterdam Centraal, caught the train back to Amsterdam and rode the night bus back to my place.

And that was Day 2.