Big names line up for Waiheke Jazz Festival

Mitch Wood is part of the line-up at Easter on Waiheke. Picture / Waiheke Jazz Festival

Waiheke once again becomes a Mecca for music lovers as the island turns itself over to its annual Easter festival of jazz, organised by pianist-cum-promoter David Paquette.

Always a financial risk at the whim of the weather, the festival has survived and thrived to become a major attraction on Auckland's events calendar.

For three days the charming bay at Matiatia, just a minute's walk from the ferry, will play host to international and local musicians playing jazz from across the spectrum.

Among the many local acts on the bill are the always popular Nairobi Trio who took the sound of Stephane Grappelli and the Hot Club of France as their starting point and extended the idea into their original and inventive music; and the Grand Central Band fronted by singer Chris Melville.

Also appearing at the all-day parties from Good Friday through to Easter Sunday will be the Chris Mason-Battley Group, Tropical Downbeat, Meech and Co (trumpeter Lindsey Meech and friends) and others.

One of the international guests is trombonist-singer Dan Barnett from Australia who appears with his big band and kicks the festival off with a concert on the Thursday night. Trained at the New South Wales Conservatorium, Barnett has studied and played with some of the biggest names in Australian jazz including James Morrison, Don Burrows and George Golla, as well as American musicians Bill Cunliffe and Steve Turre.

He has appeared with Morrison, rock band Dragon, guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, jazz humorists George Washingmachine (who appeared at a previous Waiheke festival) and has sung Australia's national anthem at various sporting fixtures.

His smooth style is somewhere between Frank Sinatra and Harry Connick Jr and he brings with him Elena Stone, recently voted Australia's female jazz vocalist of the year.

From the United States comes Orange Kellin's New Orleans Blues Serenaders. Arranger and clarinettist Kellin is a regular fixture in New Orleans' Bourbon St clubs. He co-founded the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra in 1967, a few years later played with Louis Armstrong at Satchmo's 70th birthday concert in Newport, appeared on the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby, and isfrequently a guest soloist with New Orleans' legendary Preservation Hall Band.

The band's singer and dancer Vernel Bagneris has worked on Broadway, choreographed sequences for Ray - Taylor Hackford's acclaimed biopic of Ray Charles - and wrote, directed and starred in the original off-Broadway production as well as the recent Broadway production of One Mo' Time. He has appeared in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law and had a starring role in Herbert Ross' Pennies From Heaven with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters.

The famous New Yorker jazz writer Whitney Balliett said of Bagneris that he was "one of those musical-comedy performers whom you get to see only two or three times in your life; laid-back, effortless, and swinging".

Also from the US is rock-a-boogie pianist Mitch Woods who plays boogie woogie and jump jive styles. Born in New York, he played in Greenwich Village clubs in the 60s, by the 70s was in San Francisco picking up on Louis Jordan's lively style, and formed his band the Rocket 88s (which he is bringing to Waiheke) in 1980.

Woods also performs in New Orleans styles and for his concert on the Saturday night the stage will have two pianos, the other reserved for festival organiser Paquette and guests Wil Sargisson and Conal Fowkes.

That kind of juggling of acts has been a hallmark of the Waiheke Jazz Festival and this year on the Sunday night there will be a celebration of the voice with the international guests - Stone, Barnett and Bagneris - lining up alongside Grand Central's Melville.

Many of the acts will also be appearing in dinner-hour concerts at the historic Harbour Masters Restaurant. And as always, everyone gets up for a jam at the final night big bash on Sunday.

When: Easter Weekend, from Thursday, April 13