Detroiters know the annual Detroit Jazz Festival is ultra-cool.
Now, guitarist Pat Metheny, this year's artist-in-residence, calls it “the hippest jazz festival in the world," according to a report in Variety, the weekly entertainment trade magazine.
Pat Metheny at the 2015 festival's first night Sept. 4. (Copyrighted photo by Rod Arroyo)
Steve Chagollan, an assistant managing editor, writes in Variety:
According to organizers, the 36th edition, which ended Sept. 7, attracted approximately 275,000 attendees over the course of its four days, a 25% increase over last year’s festivities. (Specific attendance figures are difficult to compile, given that it’s a ticketless event.) But as the programming proved, it’s not the quantity, but the quality that counts.
Metheny, who played in four different settings, including two with his dynamic drummer Antonio Sanchez and his mentor Gary Burton, was most certainly the biggest draw. His Sunday evening duet with Detroit native Ron Carter at the Wayne State University Pyramid stage was so packed that latecomers could only hear, but not see, what emanated from the concaved arena. . . .
One thing that sets the Detroit Jazz Fest apart from its rivals is the event nature of the programming, which featured the world premieres of Perez’s “Detroit World Suite” and the North American premiere of Metheny’s “Hommage,” a tribute to bassist Eberhard Webber, which reunited Metheny with his former colleague in the old Pat Metheny Band, drummer Danny Gottlieb, after 31 years. (Before his set, Metheny talked about visiting Detroit as a pre-teen with his dad, who was a Dodge dealer in Missouri, as if he were seeing New York for the first time.)
