Artistic director John Clayton has packed the main concerts of the Lionel Hampton festival with so much talent that when the evenings end, the posted 10:30 p.m. closing time is a distant memory. Friday’s concert theme was “Masters and Mentors.” It wrapped up at 12:45 a.m after an energetic, often hilarious, vocal set by Jon Hendricks, his daughter Aria and the impresssive emerging singer Sachal Vasandani. Vasandani was affecting in a slow “How Am I To Know” and joined the Hendrickses to summon up the sound and spirit of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in “Centerpiece” and “Everybody’s Boppin’.” The ranking master of the evening was
pianist Hank Jones, playing beautifully in his 90th year. His two-piano duet partners, sixty-odd years younger, were Gerald Clayton and Taylor Eigsti. Each of the three also played a solo piece. John Clayton joined him on bass and Jones performed “Satin Doll” with notable vigor, Clayton bowing a solo.
Opening the concert, Hamond B3 organist Atsuko Hashimoto and drummer Jeff Hamilton backed the venerable tenor saxophonist Red Holloway. Holloway’s patented choruses had some members of the audience singing along. Hashimoto and Hamilton developed a tidal wave of swing in their tag ending to “It’s The Good Life,” leading Holloway to ask, “How do you follow that?” He answered with “Shiny Stockings” and the suggestive “Locksmith Blues,” recruiting the audience in a call and response routine.
Not many years ago Sara Gazarek regularly attended the festival as a student musician. Her career on the rise, she returned Friday night as a professional, singing three songs, with particularly good articulation and smooth control in “More.” Dee Daniels, a perennial artist at the Hampton Festival, followed with three pieces in her powerful gospel-influenced style. Then Gazarek and Daniels, fellow Seattlites, collaborated in a duet on “You Are My Sunshine.” Pianist Josh Nelson contributed a fine solo.
Next up were two new trombonists and one revered veteran. Ismael Cuevas and Ryan Porter, young Los Angeles players discovered by Clayton, each played an original composition. In his “Baila Hacia Este,” Cuevas employed sunny, dancing phrases. With his big, blowsy tone, Porter drew broader strokes in “Sortie.” Then Curtis Fuller arrived for a stunning solo on “Caravan,” a feature from his days with Art Blakey. The set ended with the three combined in a medium-tempo blues, trading phrases in a rousing trombone conversation. They were backed by pianist Bill Charlap, bassist Peter Washington, guitarist Graham Dechter and Hamilton, a fully employed and unfailingly interesting house rhythm section.
Now, attempting to stay abreast of a festival with too much music: Thursday night’s concert began with bebop by the festival all-star rhythm section and ended with a set of irresistibly funky pieces by Roy Hargrove’s RH Factor. In between, listeners in the University of Idaho’s Kibbie Dome heard bright young players, including a surprising chamber group. Charlap, Dechter, Washington and Hamilton warmed the crowd with Dizzy Gillespie’s “Groovin’ High.” Hamilton, a listening drummer, paid Dechter the compliment of building a solo break around a phrase the guitarist created near the end of his improvisation. 
The house band’s Friday night feature was “Stompin’ At The Savoy,” with a solo by Washington that deserved the extended applause the near-capacity crowd gave him.
The vibraharpist Warren Wolf joined the all-stars both nights. Thursday, he played pieces closely associated with the festival’s namesake. Wolf estabished a melodic approach to the familiar changes of “How High The Moon” for two lyrical choruses before he introduced complexity, double-time flourishes and lightning speed with the mallets. He began his long solo on “Indiana” at top speed, incorporated a couple of effective stop-time choruses and couldn’t resist a “Donna Lee” quote near the end. Wolf illuminated his Friday night set with the quartet in a sensitive duet with Charlap on the verse to “Lush Life.” For a sample of this stimulating young player’s approach to the vibes, click here.
The rhythm section stayed in place to accompany three alto saxophonists, one whose professional career is launched, two in their teens. Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Morfin tore into his “Praise The Lord” with an unaccompanied virtuoso cadenza, then a solo with Charlap, Hamilton and company that was a melange of Jimmy Dorsey high notes, Jackie McLean bebop, Earl Bostic expansiveness, Ornette Coleman abstraction and, possibly, other alto players I missed because they went by too fast. When Isaiah finds Morfin, he could be formidable. Tia Fuller, riding on success with her CD Healing Space and a tour with the pop singer Beyonce, was fast, modal and immersed in shifting meters on “Breakthrough.” At her workshop earlier in the day, Fuller mentioned admiration for Kenny Garrett that was apparent in her energetic performance. 
Then came Grace Kelly, a high school sophomore who at fifteen has arrived at maturity, personal and musical poise and a completely formed conception. I encountered her in a jam session at this festival last year and struggled to accept that this little girl was producing bebop of the quality I was hearing. Later, a CD confirmed that the impression was not generated by the wine I was drinking. A year older, Ms. Kelly is even better. Her playing on “Filosophical Flying Fish” and in jamming with Morfin and Fuller on “Flyin’ Home” was among the best at the Hampton festival, regardless of style or age.
With her set of four pieces mostly from the 2006 CD I’ll Be Seeing You, violinist Regina Carter thrilled the audience–and kept the full attention of the musicians and assorted hangers-on in the backstage listening area. The ingenious arrangements for her quintet, the swing and sense of adventurous fun, were infectious. The band turned “Little Brown Jug” and “A Tisket, a Tasket” into chance-taking excursions through time-worn material harmonically updated to a state of freshness and surprise. Pianist Xavier Davis, clarinetist Darryl Harper, bassist Matthew Parrish and drummer Alvester Garnett were in synch with Carter’s skill and her enthusiasm. Davis’s chord choices in support of Carter’s heartbreakingly beautiful solo on Ravel’s “Pavanne For A Dead Princess” evoked Bill Evans, as did his own solo. The band’s closer was a transcription of Charlie Shavers’ arrangement for the John Kirby Sextet of Grieg’s “Anitra’s Dance,” uncannily accurate, swinging and delightful. This was forty minutes of superior chamber music.
Following intermission (now you’re beginning to believe that these were long concerts), festival favorite Roberta Gambarini sang three songs with the house rhythm section minus Bill Charlap. Her accompanist Tamir Hendelman took over the piano. Impeccable and musicianly as usual, Gambarini did lively versions of “Nobody Else But Me” and “I Hadn’t Anyone ‘Til You,” and a contemplative “Day Dream” enhanced by her remarkably faithful impression of a trombone solo, produced by clever microphone technique, hand placement and voice projection. Gambarini and Hendelman are all over the festival schedule, not only in concerts but also giving workshops and master classes.
Roy Hargrove opened his set with a plaintive flugelhorn solo belying the excitement that he and his RH Factor were about to unleash. Flugelhorn back on its stand, trumpet armed and ready, he launched into a set of latterday rhythm and blues laced with inventive jazz solos by Hargrove and the other members of an inspired funk band.
Thin as a whip, dressed in cap, shades, plaid shirt, jeans and red sneakers, Hargrove bopped, hopped and glided around the stage when he wasn’t playing. When he was playing, he was brilliant and when he sang, he was very good. Some years ago, I heard the first edition of RH Factor. I found it strained, fragmented, overamplified, annoying. This band is the real thing, an embodiment of rhythm, focused but loose, musical, enormously invigorating, great fun. Hargrove did not announce the names of the tunes. It didn’t matter. Pianist Gerald Clayton, baritone saxophonist Jason Marshall, alto saxophonist Bruce Williams and guitarist Todd Parsnow all soloed impressively, as did bassist Lenny Stallworth and drummer Jason (JT) Thomas. But it was the unified R&B totality of the group that made Hargrove’s forty-five minutes memorable.
In after-hours sessions at the main festival hotel, Hargrove and most of the members of his band jammed with guitarist
John Stowell, alto saxophonist Grace Kelly, members of the all-star Russian group so prominent at the Hampton festival, pianist Kuni Mikami, and trombonists Greg Schrader and Ismael Cuevas, to mention only a few. At one point, Stowell found himself as, in effect, the eighth member of the Hargrove band. Known for the sensitivity and finesse of his playing, for a few tunes he was as hard a hard bopper as Hargrove and his colleagues. Stowell raised a few eyebrows.