Big Apple jazzes up festival

Fri., Feb. 3, 2006

By Jim Kershner jimkershner@comcast.net

The Spokane Falls Community College Jazz Festival will have a New York feel this weekend as it welcomes two Big Apple guest artists: saxophone master Dick Oatts tonight and the influential Hilton Ruiz Sextet on Saturday.

The show will also have a pronounced Latin flair on Saturday as Ruiz and his sextet perform a tribute titled “Steppin’ With Tito Puente.”

Ruiz has ideal credentials for such a tribute. This celebrated pianist, raised in New York in a Puerto Rican family, was one of the original members of the Tito Puente Jazz All-Stars and he collaborated often with Puente before his death in 2000.

Today Ruiz is one of the acknowledged leaders of the contemporary Latin jazz scene. His music is infused with Afro-Caribbean rhythms as well as Brazilian influences.

Ruiz, a versatile all-around jazzman, also has worked with Freddy Hubbard and Charles Mingus. He calls himself the “original bebop Latin pianist.”

Reviewers have noted that he doesn’t just use his fingers – he sometimes uses elbows and palms to “slap the keys like he was playing bongos.”

“He juxtaposed resounding, motionless chords and whisking single-note runs (and) pitted Afro-Caribbean rhythms against an unbridled swing pulse,” said critic Mike Joyce of the Washington Post.

He arrives with a sextet that includes two other big names as well: trumpeter Lew Soloff (the original trumpeter for Blood, Sweat and Tears) and saxophonist-flutist Lew Tabackin, winner of eight Downbeat magazine awards. Tabackin is also known for his groundbreaking big band collaborations with his wife, Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Tonight’s concert features another widely respected saxophonist and flutist. Oatts is artistic director of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, which holds forth most Monday nights at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village.

Oatts will perform with the SFCC Jazz Ensemble, directed by Brian Ploeger, and with SFCC faculty members Danny McCollim, Eugene Jablonsky and Rick Westrick.

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