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Fall 2007 Highlights
The music on Youssou N'Dour's new album Rokku Mi Rokka is "able to captivate even the most jaded listener, world music fan or otherwise" —Ernest Barteldes, SF Weekly (11/28/07)
Youssou N'Dour is "one of the biggest African and world music superstars" —San Francisco Chronicle (11/25/07)
Youssou N'Dour is a "full-fledged national hero [making] contemporary pop that sounds both local and global, and highly individual....His voice represents Senegal and West Africa to much of the outside world....His band's grooves plug in and rev up some dizzyingly danceable Senegalese traditions." —Jon Pareles, The New York Times (11/18/07)
"[Caetano] Veloso is too restlessly creative to settle into any one groove for long...His latest [album], a rocker entitled Cê, is as charged-up as anything released this year." —Max Goldberg , Flavorpill
Cristina Branco is "one of the most elegant voices of fado."
—San Francisco Chronicle (11/8/07)
On Herbie Hancock's new album: "River is an impressionist revision of the different musical hues suggested by Mitchell's poetry." —Ezra Gale, SF Weekly (11/7/07)
CéU is "a single-monikered singer with a soft, insinuating voice and a penchant for reggae, jazz and R&B filtered through gauzy, Brazilian electronica textures." —Andrew Gilbert , San Francisco Examiner (11/1/07)
Anoushka Shankar "is not just Ravi Shankar's daughter and Norah Jones's sister—she's a revolutionary sitarist in her own right." —Amy Hough, San Francisco Bay Guardian (10/31/07)
"The SFJAZZ showcase 'Desert Guitar Summit' [featuring Tinariwen and Vieux Farka Touré] highlights the blood ties between old-school American blues and modern Africa." —Sam Prestianni, SF Weekly (10/31/07)
"Youssou N'Dour won a Grammy for Egypt,...a masterpiece in a career filled with them. His follow-up is an immediate Grammy contender in its own right.... Crackling with rhythm and joy,...this is world music that truly can be heard, loved and understood around the globe." —David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle (10/28/07)
"I always perform (Ali's songs) because it's my way of paying tribute to my father and at the same time, when I play his songs in my show, I feel much more calm, much more at peace with myself onstage." —Vieux Farka Touré, son of Ali Farka Touré, interviewed by Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle (10/28/07)
"The [Kronos Quartet] has been a relentless champion of new works...and has further separated itself from the pack by engaging in adventurous collaborations with forward-thinking musicians and composers"
— Jim Harrington, San Jose Mercury News, (10/25/07)
"This unique collaboration provides two points of interest. The first is the playlist, an alluring mix of "Anomaly," Monk, Tom Verlaine of Television fame, electronic producer Amon Tobin, and whatever else is left in the musical grab bag. The second is how the [Kronos] Quartet's sonorous and gripping string movements merge with [Glenn] Kotche's sparse, melodious composition, itself an engaging and powerful experiment." —Kevin Lee, San Francisco Bay Guardian (10/24/07)
"[Ornette] Coleman's music is clearly accessible, a dynamic combination of exquisite ballads and bold, sometimes brash, wilder explorations."
—Sam Prestianni, SFWeekly (10/24/07)
"Knowing that 'Anomaly' would be premiered at the San Francisco Jazz Festival all along I think influenced a sort of freedom and democracy in the piece that I feel is a key, inherent quality of jazz." —Wilco drummer and composer Glenn Kotche on the World Premiere of his piece with Kronos Quartet, interviewed by SFist.com (10/23/07)
Marcus Shelby "brings deep social and political awareness to his large-scale, indeed epic compositions." —Derk Richardson, San Francisco Chronicle (10/18/07)
"The festival's program tracks the organization's quarter-century evolution into a cultural juggernaut." —Andrew Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News, (10/17/07)
The November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine says "serious fans will be spoiled by choices" at the 25th Anniversary Jazz Festival, which "stretches the definition of jazz." —O, The Oprah Magazine (November)
A Critics Choice Concert from Marcus Shelby and Jon Jang, "two of the Bay Area's most adventurous composer-performers, whose new major works are inspired by great women." —Larry Kelp, East Bay Express (10/17/07)
A Datebook feature calls Marcus Shelby "an elegant cat in the Duke Ellington vein whose music draws on the rich sounds of Ellington and his main man Billy Strayhorn, Miles Davis and Gil Evans." —Jesse Hamlin, San Francisco Chronicle (10/16/07)
A San Francisco Chronicle Datebook cover story says the Fest "has catapulted into the front rank of world jazz festivals, rivaling behemoths like Umbria and Montreal, and pretty much owning the U.S. field."
Also an exclusive Festival Timeline —David Rubien, San Francisco Chronicle (10/14/07)
Pharoah Sanders is "capable of producing scorching cascades of unfettered passion, as well as serene, gently-flowing improvisations that whisper like prayers to the unseen and unknowable." Critics Choice Concert!
—j. poet, East Bay Express (10/10/07)
A starred preview calls Jacky Terrasson "a wickedly inventive pianist."
—Nate Chinen, The New York Times (10/5/07)
The paper's San Francisco destination guide calls the Festival "an internationally acclaimed jazzapalooza." —USA Today (9/27/07)
On Kneebody: "This audacious jazz-rock-funk band makes the most of its hybrids, often savoring the crunch of collision." —Nate Chinen, The New York Times 
Preview of 25th Anniversary Festival calls fall "jazz nirvana."
—Jim Harrington, Oakland Tribune 
A review of his new album, River, calls Herbie Hancock "one of the most accomplished and inventive modern-jazz pianists." —Steve Futterman , The New Yorker
A review of Caetano Veloso's reissued first album, Caetano, calls it "a watershed, representing one of the most remarkable artistic leaps between any two LPs in pop." —Sean Manning, San Francisco Bay Guardian
Fall 2007 Reviews
- How innovative funding transformed city's jazz scene (requires free registration)
By Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, July 22, 2006
Multimillion dollar organizations such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, in New York, and SFJAZZ, in San Francisco, remain the exceptions in the low-budget world of jazz.
- Wilco’s Kotche to Team with Kronos Quartet at S.F. Jazz Fest
By Fred Mills, Harp Magazine, June 28, 2007
The 25th Anniversary edition of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, slated to run September 22—November 30 will have a high-profile entry this year: Wilco drummer Glen Kotche collaborating with the Kronos Quartet on October 25 and 26.
- Date Lines: S.F. Jazz Festival Celebrates 25th year
By David Weigand/Delfin Vigil, San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2007
Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Ahmad Jamal, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Fred Hersch are among the artists signed up for the 25th anniversary of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, which opens Sept. 22 and continues through Nov. 30.
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