As a rule, the Monterey Jazz Festival casts a wide net, and not just when it comes to presenting an array of jazz idioms and kindred musical traditions. Over the last three decades at least, no one instrument has dominated the fairgrounds, with pianists, saxophonists, trumpeters, and guitarists all sharing the spotlight in any given season.
What stood out most about the 68th edition of the world’s longest-running jazz festival was the outsized role played by vocalists, who shared top billing with the festival’s stellar instrumental performers. From the main Arena to the intimate confines of the 300-seat Pacific Jazz Café, the human voice took center stage at just about every one of MJF’s venues at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, Sept. 26-28.
Reopening Dizzy’s Den, a fan-favorite indoor space that had been offline since the pandemic, the festival’s first major act Friday afternoon was a ravishing duo set by the father-and-son tandem of bassist John Clayton and pianist Gerald Clayton. Opening with Dizzy Gillespie’s standard “Con Alma,” they played with casual, conversational virtuosity, leaning into a series of gorgeous melodies. There’s no better bassist in jazz with a bow in his hand, and on Cuban composer Martín Rojas’s “En la Orilla del Mundo,” his arco rendering of the melody was breathtaking.
The consistently stellar roster of pianists was another thread running through the weekend, with much of the action taking place at the Pacific Jazz Café (presented by SFJAZZ). Benny Green’s irrepressibly swinging set once again confirmed his status as one of the finest solo practitioners on the scene.
A 10-minute glimpse of the Christian Sands Trio with his younger brother, Ryan Sands, on drums and deservedly ubiquitous bassist Yasushi Nakamura left a vivid impression of the group’s exquisite dynamic control and joyous bounce, as they bounded through Thelonious Monk’s bebop anthem “In Walked Bud.”
The long-running trio of organist Larry Goldings, drummer Bill Stewart, and guitarist Peter Bernstein, a group that has been at the forefront of exploring new possibilities for organ trio, gave a consistently captivating set that opened with Irving Berlin’s “They Say It’s Wonderful,” which flowed seamlessly into an abstract version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.”
The wave of extraordinary piano prowess was inextricably linked to this season’s significant Cuban contingent, a display that began with the Alfredo Rodríguez Trio. The Quincy Jones protégé has gained a huge online following by posting videos of the group transforming pop tunes into wondrously detailed vehicles for Cuban jazz. The centerpiece of Rodriguez’s Pacific Jazz Café set was an extended remodel of “Hotel California” that turned the hit into a rococo rhythmic palace on Havana’s El Malecón.
Pianist Jorge Luis Pacheco’s trio was billed as playing a tribute to the Buena Vista Social Club project, though the two pieces I caught represented state-of-the-art Cuban jazz rather than interpretations of pre-revolution idioms. Enlisting the audience in a call-and-response, he transformed the piano into a tuned battery on a song celebrating salsa queen Celia Cruz. Similarly, a too-brief sojourn with pianist Dayramir González’s trio featured an extended reinvention of Moisés Simons’s epochal “El Manisero.”
One of the reliable pleasures of Monterey is experiencing musicians for the first time. Among the welcome discoveries was Yilian Cañizares, a Cuban violinist and vocalist long based in Switzerland (all of the Cuban artists at the festival live outside their homeland). Striking in every way, she focused on original material with her trio that seamlessly integrated her incendiary bow work with her warm but unflappable vocals. She’s a powerhouse and seems poised to break through in North America.
In a very different way, Baltimore trumpeter Brandon Woody also announced his arrival as a creative force with a quintet powered by drummer Quincy Phillips. Playing with mostly the same musicians as featured on his Blue Note debut For The Love Of It All, he integrated his horn into a dense rhythmic matrix without sacrificing intensely distilled lyricism.
Bay Area artists were also well represented, with strong sets by Edgardo Cambón y Candela and the Marcus Shelby New Orchestra focusing on his Negro Leagues baseball tribute Black Ball.
But this year belonged to the divas. The depth of the jazz vocal universe was well represented by the big four: Dianne Reeves, Lisa Fischer, René Marie, and Carmen Lundy.
Reeves, long recognized as a spiritual successor to the throne of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, held court in the Arena Saturday afternoon and sounded as glorious as ever. She’s worked with the same cadre of players for decades, and her level of communication with pianist John Beasley, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Terreon Gully, and Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo is nonpareil. Their dreamy version of “Lazy Afternoon” conjured a lush meadow in the midst of the rodeo stadium.
Perhaps the most unexpected set was by Echoes of an Era, a project inspired by a 1982 album. As a budding teenage jazz fan at the time, I was fascinated by the album, which paired funk star Chaka Khan singing standards with an all-star post-bop band including pianist Chick Corea, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and drummer Lenny White (who also produced the session).
White recruited a different all-star cast for this Echoes echo, with saxophonist Javon Jackson, pianist Orrin Evans, bassist John Patitucci, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, and vocalist Lisa Fischer. She isn’t a jazz vocalist per se, but jazz is a significant part of her musical DNA, and it was fascinating hearing Fischer apply her vast palette of colors and textures to standards like “I Hear Music” and a supremely dramatic version of “I Loves You, Porgy.” Wow.
With her band Experiment In Truth, René Marie presented “Jump In the Line: A Tribute to Harry Belafonte” Sunday in the Arena. It’s a program that exemplifies jazz’s ability to absorb and reconfigure material from different traditions. Celebrating the humor and rhythmic vitality of the calypso songbook with the insistent sales pitch “Coconut Woman” and battle-of-the-sexes “Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” Marie turned each piece into a delirious romp (courtesy of arrangements by Trinidadian trumpeter and percussionist Etienne Charles, a former member of the SFJAZZ Collective).
Carmen Lundy isn’t as well known as Reeves, Fischer, or Marie, but she belongs in their company as a masterly jazz artist who’s focused on developing a book of original songs. Performing Saturday in Dizzy’s Den with a stellar band led by pianist Julius Rodriguez, she deployed her inviting upper register on pieces like the roaring anthem “I Am Woman.” Her gift for setting catchy melodic lines to surging rhythms animated the buoyantly affirming “Better Days.”
With completely different repertoires, sounds, and approaches, these four veteran artists represent the breadth of the contemporary jazz vocal scene. And coming up in their wake, the rising generation was also out in force. Ekep Nkwelle, a powerhouse vocalist based in New York City, played a commanding set in the Pacific Jazz Café (with Julius Rodriguez and bassist Jermaine Paul — half of Lundy’s band — and drummer Domo Branch). Lucía, a stunning 24-year-old singer from Veracruz who’s on the cusp of stardom, sounded magnificent in Dizzy’s Den, her voice luxuriant and rich in every register.
Accompanied by pianist Edward Simon, bassist Dan Feiszli and drummer Mark Ferber, she combined musical sophistication and unerring taste with wide-eyed surprise at her ascending career, a winning formula. And Tyreek McDole, who won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2023 (the year after Lucía’s triumph), was equally impressive on Friday in the Pacific Jazz Café playing a set filled with rarely interpreted tunes. On Tadd Dameron’s standard “If You Could See Me Now,” he crooned with deep-diaphragm authority, floating over a swirl of drummer Gary Jones III’s brushes and telegraphic chords by Caelan Cardello (a pianist to keep an eye on).
The reign of vocalists included a moving set Sunday afternoon on the outdoor Garden Stage by Nnenna Freelon, a charismatic singer celebrating her best album in years, Beneath the Skin, accompanied by a world-class quartet led by veteran pianist Alan Pasqua. In a band she co-led with her former husband, bassist Michael Olatuja, Alicia Olatuja delivered a pop- and soul-oriented set in the Pacific Jazz Café early Sunday afternoon, showing off her exceptional vocal prowess but not her improvisational chops. And vocalist Camille Thurman, who’s equally formidable on tenor sax, played a sensational Saturday set in the Café with a quartet led by her husband, Oakland-reared drummer Darrell Green.
Finally, the inordinately entertaining Swedish singer and multi-instrumentalist Gunhild Carling gave a master class in making early jazz repertoire sound fresh and urgent. Performing Saturday night on the Garden Stage with a seven-piece combo featuring her daughter Idun Carling on trombone and vocals and her son Viggo Carling on drums, she moved between trumpet, trombone, Swedish bagpipes, recorder, and bass, while delivering a steady stream of hilarious wisecracks and non sequiturs, pairing absurd hijinks with outrageously good musicianship. Based in the South Bay for the past several years, she plays Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society on Nov. 2 and SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab May 23–24, 2026.
Amid all the music, it was easy to miss that 2025 was a transitional year for Monterey, marking a shift after Darin Atwater’s unexpectedly abbreviated one-year tenure as artistic director in 2024. Friday night, a very brief onstage announcement in the Arena introduced the festival’s new artistic team, with pianist Gerald Clayton expanding his role from mentor and Next Generation Jazz Orchestra director to the festival’s artistic adviser. Jason Olaine, who got his start booking Yoshi’s in the 1990s, is coming on as artistic consultant. Bruce Labadie, this year’s interim artistic programmer, a fixture on the South Bay music scene as a leading booker for more than four decades, got a well-deserved shout-out for making 2025 the year of the singer.
