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Monterey Jazz Festival welcomes new artistic director

Darin Atwater at a piano.
Damien Carter
/
Monterey Jazz Festival
Darin Atwater, a former child prodigy on the piano, is the new artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival.

The 67th annual Monterey Jazz Festival will welcome over 300 artists, almost 30,000 fans, and one new artistic director to the Monterey County Fairgrounds this weekend.

Darin Atwater was a child prodigy on the piano.

“I don't remember a time that I wasn't playing the piano,” Atwater said. “I was sort of off and running from the age of four.”

Also an accomplished composer, vocalist and arranger, among other roles, Atwater is planning some pretty prodigious programing pointed at shaking up the fans, but not the foundation, of the oldest continuously running jazz festival in the world. Atwater likens his composition of the festival to a culinary adventure, creating new discoveries to whet the appetites of festival fans.

“I think cuisine does this more than anybody else,” he said, “You're just sort of open to trying new things. I think that's the same thing with our ears and just being at a festival, where it's almost like a bazaar, where you're able to just go in and experience new sources, sounds… new artists.”

Atwater's audio appetizers will be supplemented with main courses featuring the more traditional tastes usually found on the Monterey menu. At the top of Atwater's not-to-be-missed acts on the festival's main Jimmy Lyon Stage is S.F. Jazz.

“For me, it's S.F. Jazz because they're able to sort of amalgamate the extension of the American popular song and just bring fresh arrangements, fresh original ideas to it.”

Also atop Atwater's offerings on the festival's five fairground stages is Joel Ross.

“I love what Joel Ross is doing. He's an up and coming vibraphonist, but he's just sort of got that Milt Jackson Hutchison... vibe.”

Atwater has connected the entire festival under the umbrella theme of “Crescendo in Blue.”

“Principally, I wanted to sort of riff off of Duke Ellington's Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue and the sort of joy, the moment at Newport, where Paul Gonsalves was supposed to play 12 choruses and it ended up being 27,” he said. “So the idea of that lilt, the beauty and the lilt and the power of jazz in its highest form in terms of the joy and optimism which that moment spoke to, was just like an unleashing of joy that sort of ignited that moment. So I wanted to [see] how do we re-inject the festival with this? Everything that we're going through daily, it's like the whole ideology of the blues. You know, we face adversity with optimism. Everything that we're facing as human beings. How do we sort of incubate ourselves over three days and just remind ourselves that this music is really embedded and deeply nested in the feeling of joy?”

Atwater said he also wanted to evoke the whole idea of the feeling of the festival – the fairgrounds, Monterey and blue sky.

“So I'm thinking of Ella [Fitzgerald]'s version cover of the Irving Berlin song. I mean, again, that feeling of lilt and joy and optimism. And then we're playing on, you know, of course, one of the symbolisms and compositional devices of the Crescendo, the rising.”

Atwater said he’s also thinking about how to rise into this next iteration of the annual festival.

Listen to the full conversation with Darin Atwater below.

Full interview with Monterey Jazz Festival artistic director Darin Atwater

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Paul Fingerote is living a life-long dream of “being on the radio” in his role as Fill-In Host on KAZU, a position he sought when he first volunteered to answer phones during a membership drive at the station.
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