Riffin' under the 'big tent'

A CURSORY GLANCE over the schedule for the 17th annual

Berks Jazz Fest

may send readers' eyes scurrying back to the top of the page to make sure that the J-word is, in fact, the lone genre in the title.

Sure, the 10-day festival prominently features the Berks' stock-in-trade smooth alongside traditional jazz, but tributes to Luther Vandross and the Rolling Stones? A Soul Summit featuring blues guitarist Susan Tedeschi and Mike Mattison, lead singer for the Derek Trucks Band?

What do any of these people have to do with jazz?

"Jazz is a big tent," explained keyboardist/producer Jason Miles, who is directing the Soul Summit and Vandross tribute concerts.

"Jazz has got to have a form of creativity flowing through it, something that always pushes you a little farther. Jazz musicians have always been the ones who have tried to be better and better at what they do and not stay in one place."

John Ernesto, general manager of the Fest, echoed those sentiments.

"There's so many jazz elements in a lot of music," he said. "When we sit down and do the festival, we try to balance the traditional jazz with the contemporary jazz and do some things that may border on the pop side.

"There's a challenge keeping it fresh every year. The talent pool in jazz that has the ability to sell tickets isn't that deep. So we're always looking for unique things that we can put together to be successful commercially, but to also give our fans something they can only see at our festival."

Over his three-year relationship with the Fest, Miles has created several such events, having paid tribute to Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis and Brazilian composer/performer Ivan Lins.

Like the tribute to Davis, with whom Miles worked on several of the legendary trumpeter's late-'80s albums, the Vandross tribute grew out of a personal relationship. Miles programmed synthesizers on eight of Vandross' albums, and he noticed an absence of the singer's former sidemen in the outpouring of tributes following the singer's July 2005 death.

"I'm trying to say this without being disrespectful to people," said Miles, "but I was looking at all these tributes, and they played the music, but in a lot of ways, they didn't realize the joy, the pain, the commitment that everybody put into Luther's career with him."

"Celebrating the Life and Music of Luther Vandross," which takes place Sunday night at the Sovereign Performing Arts Center, is co-led by Nat Adderley Jr., the singer's longtime music director, and features guitarist Doc Powell, bassist Tinker Barfield and drummer Buddy Williams - all staples of Vandross' band.

Vocals will be handled by Dionne Warwick and Cissy Houston - both of whom, Miles said, Vandross idolized - along with James "D-Train" Williams, subbing for the man himself, and Atlantic Starr's Sharon Bryant.

The Soul Summit, which will follow next Saturday, March 24, at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, is a sequel to last year's edition, inspired by Miles' affinity for R&B music.

The Soul Summit, which will follow next Saturday, March 24, at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, is a sequel to last year's edition, inspired by Miles' affinity for R&B music.

"I believe that Americans haven't been appreciating the music that we've been exporting all over the world," Miles insisted. "I want to bring soul music to the 21st century. And the people that are gonna help me do it are some of the people that helped create the music."

That includes, besides relative newbies Tedeschi and Mattison; former Average White Band drummer (and currently one of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers) Steve Ferrone; Reggie Young, who, as guitarist at producer Chips Moman's American Studios in Memphis played on Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto," Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man" and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," among many others; and Bob Babbitt, secondary bassist for famed Motown house band the Funk Brothers.

The Summit will be led by saxophonist Karl Denson, who has long fused rock with jazz, playing with Lenny Kravitz as well as leading his own band, Tiny Universe.

Miles justified the populist appeal of his shows by citing recent films such as "Babel" and "Pan's Labyrinth," which he said were artistic as well as popular.

"I don't want to do stuff that people aren't going to get," he said. "I view what I do as creative commerciality. I want to entertain, but I also want the conversation pumped up. I always feel like my shows resonate from the Berks."

Gerald Veasley also found a second home via the Berks Fest.

also found a second home via the Berks Fest.

The Philadelphia bassist started playing the festival early in its existence and has since lent his name to Gerald Veasley's Jazz Base at the Sheraton Reading Hotel, a weekly transformation of the hotel's nightclub into a jazz club; and annually holds his Bass Boot Camp during the festival.

The camp, an intensive weekend of workshops and master classes for amateur and semi-professional bassists, is entering its seventh year and has been a pleasant surprise for its founder.

"We designed it to be a musical/educational event," Veasley explained, "and it's ended up being more of a life event. Somehow this has evolved into a retreat for people who get to pursue the passion of their childhood and to reclaim a lost part of themselves."

Veasley's popularity at the Berks is unsurprising, given the way that his diverse career parallels the wide-open approach to jazz taken by the festival itself. He's played with jazz legend McCoy Tyner, fusion pioneer Joe Zawinul, smooth jazz forebear Grover Washington Jr. and soul singer Teddy Pendergrass, among others.

At this year's festival, he'll appear in several guises: leading his Electric Mingus Project, as part of a smooth-jazz super-bill featuring artists from the Heads Up label; as one of the participants of the 17th Anniversary Jazz Jam; and as a WJJZ All-Star during the smooth-jazz station's Fan Appreciation Concert.

Though he claimed not to worry much about labels, Veasley said that he liked the late critic Whitney Balliett's description of jazz as "the sound of surprise."

"I love that," Veasley said, "because when you can bring something fresh to what you're doing each time, I think that's the essence of what jazz is. It may not fit someone else's definition, but when it has that sound of surprise in it, you're making jazz, in my opinion." *

Send e-mail to bradys@phillynews.com.

17th Annual Berks Jazz Fest, today through March 25, 215-336-2000, www.berksjazzfest.com.