As more than 130,000 attendees revel in mid-century modernism during Modernism Week, it’s important to remember that it isn’t just architecture being celebrated.
The Palm Springs International Jazz Festival is part of this year’s Modernism Week’s programming, featuring jazz greats and rising stars of the genre. After a VIP reception on Thursday, Feb. 20, the festival will run from Friday, Feb. 21, through Sunday, Feb. 23. All of the concerts will be hosted at the Annenberg Theater at the Palm Springs Art Museum.
During a recent phone interview with PSIJF artistic director Lowell Pickett, he explained how the festival got its start a little more than five years ago.
“(Michael Seligman) moved to Palm Springs after retiring; for 40 years, he was the producer of the Academy Awards,” Pickett said. “He also did other things, too. He produced Kennedy Center Honors, and he put together the only primetime show on network television that I’m aware of that’s centered around jazz. It was in the late ’90s, called A Celebration of America’s Music, and it was an all-star thing. He’s always had a strong love for jazz, and … Palm Springs seems like a natural spot for it. I felt for a long time that Palm Springs would be a natural spot for jazz. It’s close to the West Coast, but it doesn’t compete directly with Los Angeles and San Francisco and the San Jose Jazz festival. There’s such a rich tradition along the coast of presenting jazz.”
The first Palm Springs International Jazz Festival took place in November 2019.
“Tracy Conrad is very involved in architectural preservation in Palm Springs, and in historical preservation,” said Pickett. “… She and Michael worked together on this with a fellow named Derek Browell, who had done production work on a number of different pretty high-level live productions, like the Emmy Awards and then a lot of corporate events.”
The festival become part of the Modernism Week lineup last year. Pickett explained how he got involved.
“I met them a few years ago, and we joined up,” Pickett said. “I’ve had a long history in presenting music in general and jazz in particular, both in Minneapolis and in Phoenix, that goes back about 40 years. I’m pretty familiar with what’s going on the West Coast. I have been on the board of the Western Jazz Presenters Network for a while. … All these pieces just sort of came together and crystallized. Tracy had worked with Modernism Week a lot, so because of her involvement with Palm Springs Modernism Week, Mark Davis, who does a lot of the programming for Modernism Week, loved the idea of incorporating and folding the Jazz Festival under its umbrella.”
Modernism Week is centered around the beauty of mid-century modern architecture, but over the last few years, the programming has grown to include more and more musical events.
“Last year was the first time that it was on Modernism Week’s platform,” Pickett said. “They, of course, take over the theater in the Palm Springs Art Museum for about 10 days during Modernism Week and program it very heavily. (Last year), they gave the festival the last two days, Saturday night and all day Sunday, and we reached an audience: All the shows were full. We had Herb Alpert, Lani Hall, and The Cookers. … The name of it is the Palm Springs International Jazz Festival, so there has always been an international component to it, and Sona Jobarteh certainly provided that last year. She’s an astounding kora player from West Africa.”
This year’s festival has expanded to three days. Pickett shared details on each of this year’s shows.
8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 21: Chucho Valdés featuring Irakere 50 and Arturo Sandoval: “Irakere was a legendary Cuban band that really transformed Afro-Cuban music,” Pickett said. “It brought modern components into a music that had this incredibly strong traditional base. Irakere just blew the doors off what the previous conception of Afro-Caribbean music had been, and it was founded by three primary people who have become well-known to worldwide audiences.
“Chucho Valdés … in Cuba, there’s something in the water down there. The musical education is astounding, and there’s this long line of Cuban pianists who just seem to swallow a piano whole with their hands. Valdés is sort of the pre-eminent living player now in that tradition.
“Arturo Sandoval was one of the founders of Irakere, and he is well-known to worldwide audiences, because he very visibly defected from Cuba. Dizzy Gillespie assisted in that defection. (Sandoval) was one of the first, if not the first, high-profile Cuban musicians who defected. The Cuban music educational system doesn’t put strong walls up between different genres. It all becomes music—the blend of European classical traditions, Cuban dance music, American jazz and even American rock influences. … Arturo Sandoval is a trumpet player, one of the pre-eminent trumpet players in the world, but he also is a great keyboard player. He’s a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.”
Pickett said this opening-night show is “a big, big deal. The night adjoining our concert, which is in a 450-seat auditorium, they’re playing to 3,000 people in San Francisco.”
7:30 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 22: Diane Reeves: “Diane Reeves is, without question, one of the greatest living jazz singers,” Pickett said. “The New York Times commented that she’s the most admired jazz singer since Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. … She is at that level, absolutely—without question, one of the definitive jazz masters in music. Her quintet features Romero Lubambo, and he’s one of the pre-eminent Brazilian jazz guitar players. There’s a very, very close relationship between Brazilian music and jazz. … Romero Lubambo is a brilliant practitioner of that continued marriage between Brazilian music and jazz.”
3 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 23: Cécile McLorin Salvant: “Diane Reeves was in a generation that carried forward that Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday tradition. … Then there’s a younger generation, and the first person to come along that really turned heads at that same level, and it was a few years ago, is Cécile McLorin Salvant,” Pickett said. “Three of her records won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocals. She’s a French-American singer. She’s brilliant, and she’s a MacArthur Genius Award winner. They’re so-called Genius Awards that you don’t apply for. She brings another flavor to what’s going on in jazz right now, and she’s also one of the eminent artists in jazz right now.”
7:30 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 23: Charles Lloyd with guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Gerald Clayton, and bassist Reuben Rogers: “I’m not objective when it comes to Charles Lloyd, so I admit that I think he’s one a handful of the pre-eminent saxophone players on this planet right now,” Pickett said. “He’s 86 years old, and he first came to prominence in the late ’60s when he had a group called the Charles Lloyd Quartet that featured Keith Jarrett on piano. He was one of the first jazz artists to sell more than a million copies of an album, and there was a piece called “Forest Flower” that became a big deal with people who were buying a lot of albums then in the pop world. He was based in California, and a lot of the San Francisco musicians of that time became enchanted with Charles. He performed at the Fillmore, and he was doing festival dates with people like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. It was so successful financially that the record company wanted Charles to replicate that … and Charles walked away from it.”
Pickett said that Lloyd continues racking up accolades today, including being named DownBeat magazine’s Artist of the Year in both 2023 and 2024.
“Artist of the Year is not for a lifetime body work; that’s for current work,” Pickett said. “No other artist I’m aware of has gotten that kind of honor with that many years in between, and it just underscores the continued level of creativity and virtuosity that comes out of this man.”
As for the musicians performing with Lloyd?
“The quartet includes Gerald Clayton, who’s one of the rising stars of jazz piano. In fact, at the inaugural San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival last fall, they commissioned a piece by Gerald that had its own presentation. It was a solo piano piece suite based on Jelly Roll Morton’s stuff.
“Bill Frisell is on guitar. The three pre-eminent jazz guitar players are Pat Metheny, John Scofield and Bill Frisell. Bill Frisell has a quality that’s unlike any other player. It’s a sound that’s immediately recognizable; it’s incredibly musical. … There was a book written about Bill that came out at the beginning of COVID, and the subtitle is The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music.”
Pickett said his goals for the Palm Springs International Jazz Festival are to do more community outreach, and for the festival to become one of the West Coast’s signature jazz events.
“There is this incredible history in Palm Springs,” Pickett said. “Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Van Heusen—all sorts of musicians have spent time there. … (Today), there are a lot of musicians who are living in Palm Springs now or spending time there, both from the rock world and the jazz world. The same attributes that drew people 40, 50 years ago to the valley are still there now.”
The Palm Springs International Jazz Festival runs from Friday, Feb. 21, through Sunday, Feb. 23, at the Annenberg Theater at the Palm Springs Art Museum, at 101 N. Museum Drive, in Palm Springs. The Chucho Valdés show is sold out, but tickets to all other shows are available as of this writing, starting at $75 to $85; VIP all-access tickets are $1,000. Learn more at psjazzfest.org.
