Excerpts from the story:
- Blessed with its second day of breezy, balmy weather, the Detroit International Jazz Festival drew a huge turnout of humanity that flowed from Hart Plaza to Campus Martius Park, buoyed on high spirits - and kept on flowing both directions even after the last concert had ended in early evening on the Campus Martius stage.
- The 2005 festival has plausibly widened the frame of a Detroit jazz festival to include blues, gospel, funk, r&b and the classic Motown sound. There was plenty of great jazz to be savored Saturday, and plenty more coming in the next two days. But there's also something distinctly new and fresh about this year's festival. It's simply more fun.
- That was the crazy thing Saturday night. Even with jazz stars like organist Joey DeFrancesco and pianist McCoy Tyner performing on the plaza, and no music at all to be heard at the Campus Martius end of Woodward, the street remained jammed with folks just having a good time, enjoying the gentle breeze.
- Pianist McCoy Tyner, one of the festival's main attractions, showed the stuff of legends in a performance with his trio that proved how even edgy bop can have an intimate feel. In a fetching solo, Tyner the bebop lion took a mellow turn down a path of jazz impressionism. Other Saturday highlights included an eloquent, often exotic set by the French-born vocalist Ilona Knopfler and a colorful exercise in fusion jazz by synthesizer wizard Joe Zawinul and the band he calls the Zawinul Syndicate.
- Read the full story at: The Detroit News
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