Gary Bartz, Bilal @Enjoy Jazz in Heidelberg

So a very healthy looking 85-year old Gary Bartz took to the stage on Friday night in Heidelberg during this year’s Enjoy Jazz Festival, which ended on Saturday with a sold-out show by Anouar Brahem. The festival, which ran from October 2nd until November 8th this year, drew 22.000 visitors, with half of the concerts selling out. Gary Bartz dedicated a couple of tracks to the great D’Angelo, who recently passed away much too young. So the band didn’t have a set list, according to Mr. Bartz, and after the very pleasing and heartwarming “How Does It Feel”, he delved deeper into his vast repertoire by adding songs from his NTU Troop discography, some standards, and a couple of tunes from his brilliant new album “The Eternal Tenure Of Sound: Damage Control”, like Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Fantasy”. There was a beautiful trip down memory lane with the addition of “Rainbow Connection” to the set, the lesser-known Paul Willliams/Ken Ascher tune from the Muppet Movie soundtrack.

His alto sax playing remains deeply passionate and intact, with robust bursts of joy and pain and longing and trust. He paraphrased a few lines from a couple of tracks, like the immortal “I’ve Known Rivers” from the album of the same name from 1973. He segued from one piece to the next, letting it loose from time to time, veering into ballad territory without getting too schmaltzy, and always staying on course, leading his group to seemingly surprising terrain with all of them mastering the proceedings in intrinsic fashion. Gary’s music and sound has this downright visceral quality to it; it is a little wonder how he manages to come up with such an amazing tone and sound. He literally has inherited this healing force which has become sort of a rarity these days.

The second part of the evening had singer Bilal and his band performing tracks from his last album “Adjust Brightness”, just recently nominated for a Grammy, but also delving deeper into his catalog with pieces like “Soul Sista” from his debut “1st Born Second”, which came out back in 2001. His performance actually reminded me of early Prince, complete with a surefire falsetto holler here and there and with heavy use of electric guitar, which at times was a bit too intimidating. I couldn’t stay for the final part of this evening, which had Adrian Younge, the producer, composer, and arranger who founded Jazz Is Dead, the rebellious company which is against everything too overproduced and sterile.