North Sea Jazz 2011 – Day 3

And now, the exciting conclusion to our three-part journey to North Sea Jazz 2011 in Rotterdam last month.

Again, after getting home very late and passing out as the sun came up, I rolled out of bed and down to the train station to get back to the festival. My first stop was one of the smaller indoor venues to see a group that seemed interesting from their description. Hidden Orchestra is an electronic jazz group from Edinburgh that combines lots of cool sounds with some heavy guitar, winds, strings and dual drum kits. I wasn’t allowed to photograph their performance, but the image at the top of this post is of the stage before they began.

I’m not real big on electronic music, but like any genre, I have artists I enjoy. In this category, I do enjoy the French group Air, and Hidden Orchestra was sort of like Air but a bit harder and more intense. The pieces were lyric free and sample/riff-driven and seemed to have some deep artistic heartbeat behind them, almost like the group took itself a bit too seriously. But still, I found some of their tunes enjoyable before I took off. A good example of a tune I found myself bobbing my head to is “Dust”.

I skipped out of that room after a half-hour or so to go catch a bit of music from Dr. John & the Lower 911, an amazing group from New Orleans. I’ve largely become familiar with Dr. John by simply watching the HBO series Treme, so it was pretty cool to catch a bit of his set. I snapped some photos while he played, but I was just stopping by before heading into Nile for the first big act of the day.

I can’t say I was that familiar with Raphael Saadiq before the festival, but I knew I wanted to see him. I had heard enough of his stuff to know I wanted to check him out in person, and I say it all came out as a push. I wasn’t blown away and won over by his performance, but he has a few catchy tunes and his general style is pretty cool. However, it seemed like every other song he performed was a heartfelt love ballad that had the ladies swooning. I’d rather hear the stuff with a good beat, so his show was a bit of a wash for me. I did enjoy “Heart Attack” though. Saadiq sounds like a young Stevie Wonder. Just sayin.

Next I switched halls to see Raul Midón and Richard Bona. I first discovered Midón several years ago when he made his TV debut on the Dave Letterman show. That performance, and the song “State of Mind” pretty well summarizes his peculiar style. Midón is a blind man who plays acoustic guitar very unconventionally by slapping his hands around the strings to create new sounds and rhythms. Oh and he sings and imitates trumpet sounds while doing it. He’s an amazing talent.

I didn’t know who Richard Bona was, but he’s apparently a badass bass player who, when teamed with Midón, brews up some funky music. Here’s a video of one the songs they performed, “O Sen Sen,” which has a Latin feel to it. I can’t remember if I heard this tune of if I had left already. One thing I noticed while watching the pair play and taking photos was that by this point in the festival my feet were aching incredibly. Standing for hours at a time three days in a row was not being received well by my feet, and my shoes weren’t helping.

That’s necessary to set up what happened next. Midón and Bona were scheduled to play until 8:15, but I wanted to get a good spot to see the next act on my schedule, which started at 8:45. I know I had to leave early to get a good spot, and so around 7:30 I left and I did pretty well. I was center stage about a dozen people from the front. Not bad, but it was packed pretty tight, so it was pretty uncomfortable, especially with the aching feet. I stood in that spot for about 75 minutes waiting for the next act while Tom Jones played on the next stage over. So I got to see Tom Jones (who performed an awesome rendition of “You Can Leave Your Hat On”), but he wasn’t who I was waiting for.

After what seemed like an eternity, Snoop Dogg took over the stage and proceeded to tear the roof off of the place. It was unreal. It was probably one of the whitest audiences he’d ever played for, but it was a blast. The set featured all of the hits from “Doggystyle” and I managed to get some good shots amongst the mayhem in the crowd.

It was an amazing show. Snoop had a dog mascot with him on stage, lit up a joint, held a moment of silence for Nate Dogg, and of course was joined by dogpound members and his numerous sexy dancers. Like I said, it was amazing. Dare I say, legendary.

Snoop was by far the best act I saw at the entire festival, but that wasn’t the finale of the final day. After Snoop, I scooted out of the then packed hall to go see a separate show for which I had to separately buy tickets. It was a nice way to calm down after the adrenaline of Snoop, and the room had seats. It was the same place I saw the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra two nights earlier, but this time some true jazz legends were taking the stage.

To put a pretty little bow on the festival weekend, I had tickets to see Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter pay tribute to Miles Davis with some other great musicians. It’s not everyday something special like this happens, so I felt very fortunate to be able to see it. Hancock on the piano and keyboards, Shorter on the sax and the rest of the group ripped through some straight ahead bop tunes like nobody’s business. It was incredible and a great way to end the festival.

After three days, a pair of sore feet, roughly 20 acts seen and almost 300 miles travelled by train, I can say I had one of the best weekends of my life down in Rotterdam basking in the music of the North Sea Jazz Fest. It was well worth the cost of admission.