Review: Denver Jazz Fest 2026
It’s easy to get used to the lifestyle: a concert every night, and three on Saturday! That totaled eight concerts in six days. Shouldn’t life be like this all the time? Well, it was for almost a week in early April around Denver because of the second annual Denver Jazz Fest. I thought I was a diligent concertgoer as the afore-mentioned schedule attests. And yet, I didn’t even make it to a quarter of the concerts on offer during the course of the festival. For its second iteration, the Denver Jazz Fest sponsored 40 concerts in 15 venues over six days. The concerts took place all around Denver and in Boulder.
The quality matched the quantity. The festival presented a wide range of jazz from national artists as well as several local heroes. Some of the artists I missed but would have loved to see include Carmen Lundy, the Branford Marsalis Quartet, Rodney Whitiker, Orrin Evans, Hugh Ragin with Rico Jones and Ghost Note, among others.
Simultaneous concerts made it impossible to attend them all, and I’ll admit that had I tried a bit harder, I could have exceeded that 25% figure, at least by a little bit. In retrospect, I see my mistake. Because the DJF took place in my hometown over six days, I treated it as something I could do while maintaining my normal schedule. Although I made it to eight shows, I realize I could have attended several more, had I quit worrying about things like work and sleep and treated the week like a vacation. But it was a great time anyway, with a bountiful amount of great music. In fact, any more may have approached overdose proportions. But there’s no use wasting time obsessing over missed shows when I can revel in the memory of the many great shows I attended. Let’s get started!
Pat Metheny, April 7, Boulder Theater, Boulder
Pat Metheny is playing with a band again. He spent several years all by himself, releasing solo acoustic guitar albums and touring by his lonesome. Then there was the dalliance with his robotic Orchestrion in the early 2010s. It provided a big sound, and it was very clever, but it had the flavor of an emotional relationship with an AI chatbot. True, those excursions were interspersed with his first Side Eye project and the Unity Band. Additionally, those solo projects yielded some great music, but it’s good to hear him back at the helm of a band of real live humans.
He’s on the road with a quintet in support of his album Side-Eye III+ (Ubiquity Music, 2026). That album started as a trio project, but quickly expanded to meet the requirements of the music. For the album, Metheny eventually brought in another 15 musicians to fulfill his aural vision.
In concert, the core trio of Metheny, Chris Fishman, keyboards, and drummer Joe Dyson were joined by bassist Jermain Paul and Leonard Patton on vocals and percussion. As Metheny commented during one of his rare trips to the microphone, the two additional players allowed the combo to work in some classic Metheny tunes.
The setlist did, indeed, include some old favorites from the Pat Metheny Group days as well as assorted other musical tidbits. And, on most tunes, the band sounded as close to the PMG as Metheny has ventured in many years. That sound is characterized by highly melodic lines and frequent grand climaxes. It’s no wonder the PMG was so popular; who doesn’t like frequent grand climaxes? Also, most later iterations of the PMG included one or two vocalists who usually added ethereal wordless singing on top of the poly-rhythmic understory. Patton’s vocals recreated those effects nicely.
The concert was a review of much of Metheny’s career. The setlist spanned his entire recording career by including several tunes from Side-Eye III+ alongside the title track from his first solo album, Bright Size Life (ECM, 1976). Also included was “Phase Dance” from the first PMG album, Pat Metheny Group (ECM, 1978). Other PMG tunes included “Better Days Ahead,” “First Circle” and “Are You Going With Me?” Other songs came from Side Eye V1.IV (Metheny Group Productions, 2021); Secret Story (Geffen, 1992) and Song X (Geffen, 1986).
Much of the equipment on display Tuesday night, too, had been developed over the course of Metheny’s lengthy career. He spent much of the evening with his blonde hollow-body electric guitar, but also picked up his synth guitar several times. The Orchestrion had a cameo appearance as well. The original Rube Goldberg machine was at least two stories tall and looked like it was a slightly modified set from the TV show Hollywood Squares, only with musical instruments in place of the B-list television actors that populated the TV show’s tic-tac-toe board. Slimmed-down variations of the Orchestrion have appeared on Metheny tours since then. This year’s model is the most diminutive yet, consisting of only two xylophones and they gained the spotlight on only a couple of tunes.
Over the course of his career, Metheny has been known to veer far from the lush, melodic sounds of the Pat Metheny Group. His work with Ornette Coleman and John Zorn are examples. The noisy, but brief “Trigonometry” on Tuesday night sampled that side of Metheny. But, for the most part, fans of the Pat Metheny Group enjoyed this concert.
Set List
Drum Intro (Forward March); In On It; Bright Size Life; Don’t Look Down; Better Days Ahead; Timeline; Make a New World; Always and Forever; First Circle; Urban and Western; The Red One; Beyond; Phase Dance; Trigonometry; Zenith Blue
Encore
Solo Acoustic medley including America the Beautiful; Are You Going With Me?; Song for Bilbao
The Band
Pat Metheny: guitar
Joe Dyson: drums
Chris Fishman: keys
Jermaine Paul: bass
Leonard Patton: percussion & vocals
John Beasley, April 8, Classic Pianos, Denver
Pianist, composer and arranger John Beasley had two gigs at the Denver Jazz Fest, playing in two different contexts. Wednesday night, he played solo and two nights later, he was part of a sextet (see below). Wednesday’s gig was at Classic Pianos, a retail piano store that recently built an intimate performance space for occasions such as this. The gleaming Bosendorfer was on a riser at one end of the room and it filled the 65 – 70 seat space with the deep, nuanced sound that only a grand piano can, with, in this case, minimal amplification.
Beasley is a veteran of Miles Davis’s band, having toured with the trumpeter in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While he worked a little Miles into his set, he saved most of the Miles material for Friday night. The majority of his set on Wednesday was drawn from his current project with the SWR Big Band of Stuttgart, Germany, Invisible Piano (O-Tone Music, 2026).
The music on the album was inspired by Beasley’s trip to Staatsgalerie Stuttgart Museum. Gazing at the paintings in the gallery brought to his mind various melodies which he quietly sang into his phone. Later, he expanded those melodic fragments into full compositions. Utilizing the Steinway Spirio automated piano and a computer program that could transcribe the complicated piano parts he composed, he was able to transform his trip to the art gallery into full-blown big band charts.
By himself at the helm of the Bosendorfer at Classic Piano, he then shrank those big band charts down to solo pieces. “Concentric” had a bit of a minimalist vibe with repeating phrases, but constantly shifting patterns. “Danseur Espagnol” was inspired by a Pablo Picasso painting. The Beasley sonic version of the painting had a distinctive Spanish tinge. One song on Invisible Piano that wasn’t inspired by a surrealistic painting was James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Beasley also arranged that one for the SWR Big Band and played his solo piano version on Wednesday night. He reminisced about first hearing the song when he was about 10 years old and recalled how, even at that age, the melancholy aesthetic of the song spoke to him. His 2026 version of the song stated the melody and then he proceeded to play with it, turn it inside out and locate new and sometimes intricate variations on the well-known piece.
A highlight of the set was the appearance of Denver’s own Dianne Reeves to sing “Peace Belongs to Everyone.” Beasley and Reeves arrived in Los Angeles about the same time in the late 1970s, both fresh out of high school. They connected for many musical adventures in those early days, and they’ve been friends ever since. Performed during yet another Middle East war, the choice of “Peace Belongs to Everyone” seemed particularly appropriate. It’s also a favorite of Reeves. She performed that song last year when she was a performer at the First Annual Denver Jazz Fest during her duet set with guitarist Romero Lubambo. After living and working in Los Angeles for a few decades, Reeves has since moved back to her hometown, Denver, while Beasley remains based in the Los Angeles area.
Beasley rounded out his set with tunes by Horace Silver (“Quicksilver”), Thelonious Monk (“Ask Me Now”), and Miles Davis (“Milestones”).
Jeff Jenkins, April 9, Classic Pianos, Denver
Jeff Jenkins lived in Denver for over 30 years and was a vital part of the sparkling jazz scene during that time. Then, in 2023, he moved to Omaha, a move that seemed puzzling. But Jenkins has explained that he grew up in Nebraska (Nebraska City in southeast Nebraska). He had retired from his position with the University of Colorado and was looking for someplace a little cheaper to live. Also, Omaha and Denver are conveniently connected by interstate highways, making return trips such as this one reasonably easy.
Because 2026 marks the centenary of both Miles Davis and John Coltrane, many of the concerts during the Denver Jazz Fest were focused on music from those two jazz giants. Jenkins is a Monk fan and decided to focus on the music that Monk and Trane made together. Most of that occurred in 1957 when those two, along with the rest of Monk’s quartet, held down a consistent gig at the Five Spot in New York City. Apparently, no one thought to record any of those sessions. However, there are a couple of musical documents from that year. One is an album entitled Thelonius Monk with John Coltrane (Jazzland, 1961), recorded in 1957. Also, a recording of the quartet at Carnegie Hall from 1957 surfaced in 2005. Jenkins focused on tunes from that era.
Of course, as a jazz guy, Jenkins wanted to put his own stamp on Monk’s music and go beyond merely adding some personal quirks to Monk’s quirks. One example of that was his composition “Sphere Trane.” For this one, Jenkins imagined what it would have been like if Monk and Trane had written a piece together, with each taking turns writing two bars and alternating throughout. The result was a fun Name That Tune exercise. Snippets of Monk’s “Rhythm-A-Ning” and Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” could be heard frolicking and consorting with each other.
Another reworked piece was Monk’s “I Mean You,” which Jenkins performed in 7/4 time. Jenkins also coupled an original composition with another Monk tune when he performed “Ruby My Dear” as a medley with his tune “Empathy Peace.” Another highlight was a warm rendering of “Round Midnight.”
Set List — Nutty; Crepuscule With Nellie; Trinkle, Tinkle; Monk’s Mood; I Mean You; Sphere Trane; Ruby My Dear/Empathy Peace; Round Midnight; A Blues by Gigi Gryce
Unlimited Miles, April 10, Newman Center, Denver
John Beasley’s second gig for the festival was with the sextet, “Unlimited Miles.” Beasley arranged the music, which drew from all eras of Miles Davis’s career. And it wasn’t a mere retrospective of his work, but rather, Beasley said he was shooting for updated versions of Davis classics, as if Davis had been alive all this time and he continued to catalyze the evolution of his own music.
Unlimited Miles succeeded in that effort. A case in point was the mini medley from Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959). The band started with the introduction to “So What” and stretched it out for several minutes, only teasing the main vamp. Then the band went into “All Blues,” which sounded fairly true to the original. Except this iteration was in 11/4 time. Why not?
The band did not present the music in any kind of chronological order, again eschewing a museum-like presentation. Eras were mashed up like Thanksgiving potatoes. Another medley started with “Moon Dreams” from Birth of the Cool (Capitol, 1957) and then morphed into “Sanctuary” from Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1969) and wrapped up with “Fat Time” from The Man With The Horn (Columbia, 1981), altogether, a span of 24 years and three distinct styles.
The band had been on the road for a few weeks. During that time, Sean Jones had been the trumpeter. But for the performance Friday night, Marquis Hill stepped into those critical shoes. He filled them admirably, both during the ensemble parts as well as adding compelling solos filled with many original ideas. Beasley commented during the show that Hill was jumping into the gig with only about a 45-minute rehearsal.
The Band
John Beasley: piano
Marquis Hill: trumpet, first gig with band, 45 minutes.
Mark Turner: saxophone
Kurt Rosenwinkel: guitar
Ben Williams: bass
Terreon Gully: drums
Elew, April 11, Classic Pianos, Denver
In the field of outstanding pianists performing at the Denver Jazz Fest, ELEW stood out. Throughout his set at Classic Pianos, Eric Lewis, as he is otherwise known, displayed power, dexterity, and raw emotion. For ELEW, a solo concert is an aerobic workout. Before each piece, he looked like a man in the starting blocks of the 100-meter dash, deep breaths, focus, a brief mental run-through of the upcoming race, er, uh, piano solo.
ELEW has developed a concept he calls rock-jazz, and he brought that to the DJF on Saturday. Specifically, ELEW focused on the music of Sting, with whom he has been hobnobbing of late. He recently opened for Sting on his North American tour. The traditional opening tune of his sets on that tour was a song entitled “Heartbeats” by a Swedish synth-pop group called The Knife. And therefore, on Thursday, ELEW began his set with that song before marching into the Stingdom.
From there, the audience got to play Name That Tune, which was fairly easy because the Sting songs ELEW selected were, for the most part, massive hits, played on the radio and in supermarkets everywhere. In between songs, ELEW told Sting stories, including how they met and stories from the tour. He related how, during the COVID lockdown, he had plenty of time to practice and gravitated toward music with strong bass parts because of his powerful left hand. Sting’s songs were some that filled that bill. Then, a few years later, he was playing at a celebrity event when he realized Sting was sitting in the front row. That was his chance to pull out his versions of some of those tunes. The invitation to open Sting’s tour shortly followed.
ELEW’s versions of these tunes were muscular, often manic, and frequently contained frenzied breaks and Don Pullen-like supersonic quasi-dissonant runs. The Sting mega-hit “Desert Rose” was particularly impressive. After nearly a half-dozen energetic covers of Sting songs, ELEW cranked it up a notch, even though he seemed to have played the prior tunes at a volume and passion level approaching 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. ELEW is an expressive player, displaying a dozen facial expressions in the course of a single song. But on “Desert Rose,” all of this reached another level with ELEW seeming to adopt the persona of a madman at the keyboard.
Concluding that song and reverting to his Dr. Jekyll, laid back and jovial personality, ELEW talked about his forthcoming album, which received support from Sting. For the final song, he played a recording from the album, featuring Sting on vocals, accompanied by ELEW, “Fortress Around Your Heart.”
Set List — Heartbeats; Message in a Bottle; King of Pain; Murder by Numbers; Every Little Thing She Does is Magic; Walking on the Moon; Desert Rose; Every Breath You Take; Fortress Around Your Heart (with Sting)
Ingrid Jensen Quartet, April 11, Dazzle. Denver
The Ingrid Jensen Quartet is a band with a deep telepathic interconnection. Or maybe it’s just virtuosity and lots of practice. Either way, this is a band whose right hand definitely knows what its left hand is doing. Jensen deftly conducted the band with hand gestures and nods, but other times, changes just happened. As if by magic.
Jensen was an amiable host, chatting with the audience between songs about how this was her first appearance at Dazzle and did some good-natured ribbing of her bandmates. It may have helped that Jensen is married to the band’s drummer, Jon Wikan, who couldn’t defend himself because he didn’t have a microphone.
Jensen has a delightful, mellow tone in her trumpet playing. Even in the upper register, where some trumpeters can be a bit shrill, Jensen produced a warm, controlled sound. The rest of the band fell in line. Amina Scott on bass was both tasteful and continually solid in holding down the bottom. Wilkan, on drums, constantly searched for and found new and different sounds and textures within his drum kit. Gary Versace on piano was a real delight, especially with his interplay with the leader. On the Carla Bley composition, “Ida Laprino,” Jensen blew a delicate and melodic trumpet line while Versace churned on a frantic piano part, making for a tension-filled contrast.
The Band
Ingrid Jensen: trumpet
Gary Versace: piano
Jon Wikan: drums
Amina Scott: Bass
José James, April 11, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Center, Denver
Vocalist José James has been writing words for John Coltrane’s music since he was 17. Saturday night, he got to perform an entire concert of nothing but. His set was entitled “Facing East: The Music of John Coltrane.” The “Facing East” moniker implied that James would focus on the spiritual side of Coltrane, which the master embraced in the final ten years of his life. And that turned out to be the case, mostly.
James brought a quintet of young players who proceeded to channel the music and spirit of John and Alice and McCoy Tyner. The set started with a vocal drone that James layered with a loop, creating dense and meditative harmonies. The band added a contemplative backing while James worked a variety of percussion instruments.
Between songs, James professed his fascination with Coltrane, which started at an early age, and he wished he could perform nothing but his music at all times, but recognized the career limitations of such a move. He acknowledged Dianne Reeves in the audience and forcefully insisted that she is the greatest living jazz singer in the world. No one objected. He also acknowledged feeling just a bit intimidated by singing while she was in the audience. But he carried on regardless.
Much of Coltrane’s music can be quite intense and James and his band delivered those goods. Kanoa Mendenhall on bass and Jharis Yokley on drums laid down the necessary foundation, with Mendenhall often plucking two bass strings simultaneously for a consistent minor chord undercurrent. Yokley was all over his kit, keeping an unrelenting tension on most tunes.
Luther Allison was a well-known late 20th-century bluesman. Luther Allison is also the name of James’ piano player Saturday night. Luther S. Allison, to be specific. While Luther S.’s playing certainly draws heavily from the blues, Saturday night, it adhered much more closely to McCoy Tyner’s style of intricate right-hand runs and pounding, complex left-hand chords. James gave Allison and alto sax player, Ebban Dorsey, ample room to roam on their instruments. Dorsey was, visually, the picture of a composed player, but musically, she played with power and passion, making for a fun audio/visual contrast.
James is known for his smoky-smooth voice, so when the time came to dial back the frenzied intensity a few notches and focus on Coltrane’s work with similarly voiced Johnny Hartman, James excelled. “Dedicated to You” and “Lush Life” were both on the album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (Impulse!, 1963). That album is so well-constructed and executed that hearing James’ versions hew close to the originals was completely satisfying. There was no need for a fancy reimagining of these classics.
James’ love and reverence for both Coltranes and John’s musical partner, McCoy Tyner, were obvious throughout the set. He proudly sang the words he grafted onto Coltrane’s music, not just the heads of the tunes, but some Coltrane solos as well. That’s where the real work occurs. A highlight in that respect came toward the end of the evening with “Equinox.” James said he’s been trying to perfect his vocalese version of this one for most of his life and feels that he’s not quite there. However, the version he performed Saturday night sounded like a complete work.
The Band
José James: vocals
Luther S. Allison: piano
Kanoa Mendenhall: bass
Jharis Yokley: drums
Ebban Dorsey: alto saxophone
Fred Hersch Trio, April 12, Mizel Arts and Cultural Center, Denver
In contrast to the intensity of Saturday’s shows, the Denver Jazz Fest ended, for me anyway, with the cerebral Fred Hersch and his trio. Hersch is the thinking person’s pianist, with a thoughtful, delicate touch.
For Sunday night’s show, he brought with him one of the other two members of his trio, who were with him to record his album from 2025, The Surrounding Green (ECM Records, 2025). Drew Gress was on bass Sunday night and on the album. For the concert, Jonathan Blake replaced Joey Baron on drums. The set list was a combination of Hersch originals, drawing heavily from The Surrounding Green, as well as some covers.
The emphasis was on the melody throughout the set. Gress’s bass playing often emphasized that as much as anything resembling swing. “Anticipation,” the first song of the evening and one of the tunes from The Surrounding Green, is a case in point. Gress doubled the melody played by Hersch, for a somewhat unusual, but satisfying sound from the piano trio. Blake mostly worked his brushes, adding subtle propulsion.
Hersch introduced the last song by noting, “The world is kind of a mess right now,” and then acknowledged that that was an understatement. He decided to play something hopeful and said this was the most hopeful song he knew. It turned out to be a beautiful version of Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story.
Set List
Anticipation, Hersch; The Surrounding Green, Hersch; Palhaco, Egberto Gismonti; Unit 7, Sam Jones; Sand Poet, inspired by Jobim; Embraceable You, George and Ira Gershwin; Forerunner, Ornette Coleman; Wichita Lineman, Jimmy Webb; Havana, Hersch; This Is Always, Harry Warren, Mack Gordon; In Walked Bud, Monk; Somewhere, Bernstein
The Band
Fred Hersch: piano
Drew Gress: bass
Johnathan Blake: drums
The second annual Denver Jazz Fest built on the first one, which was presented almost exactly one year prior. Plans are already being laid for next year’s jazz fest, also scheduled for early April. This year’s festival looked like a success from my vantage point. Many of the shows were sold out, and the others I attended were all very close to capacity.
Denver continues to support live jazz as a steady stream of touring jazz artists flows through town, complemented by dozens of top-flight local players. The Denver Jazz Fest has brought the scene up a notch and for nearly a week, live jazz around town went from great to excellent.
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