Bill Fulton Band at Playboy Jazz Festival Review by Don Heckman Los Angeles Times 2005

5/31/05 5:40pmDon Heckman, Los Angeles TimesThe bowls are brimming with jazz this year. The Hollywood Bowl and the Playboy Jazz Festival (arriving June 11 and 12) have been an inseparable combination for nearly three decades. Now jazz has arrived at the Rose Bowl as well, as the annual Playboy Jazz free Memorial weekend programs moved into the venerable sports venue.The three-day event was, according to its sponsors, the first live jazz played at the Rose Bowl. Sunday’s program, produced in conjunction with Pasadena Summer Fest, provided an appropriate collection of sounds to celebrate the arrival of the improvisational musical art at a location that has seen plenty of more physical improvisation in 80-plus years of football. Although the Playboy Pasadena lineups, formerly held in the city’s Central Park, usually emphasized jazz diversity rather than straight-ahead, mainstream jazz, Sunday’s schedule (like most of the weekend) favored imaginative playing over gimmicky grooves.After an opening set by the Chatsworth High School Jazz Band, the CJS Quintet – featuring tenor saxophonist chuck Johnson and trumpeter/Flugelhorn-ist James Smith – romped through a program of hard-driving bebop leavened with soulful blues.Kristin Korb, who followed, managed the thorny task of singing gracefully while playing upright bass, and doing the latter in a fashion recalling the warm sound and well-chosen notes characteristic of her mentor, Ray Brown.Odara, a premier Los Angeles Afro-Cuban band, added mid-afternoon dance rhythms to the programming mix, tempting crowd members to try their best salsa steps at the fringes of the grass field. Best of all, Odara’s viscerally rhythmic music was richly enhanced by the beautifully crafted arrangements of Guillermo Cespedes.Bill Fulton’s mini-big band was bright, brassy, and energetic and veteran saxophonist Ronnie Laws concluded the day with his patented brand of highflying improvisation and irresistible, body-moving rhythms.Playboy Jazz and the Pasadena Summer Fest reportedly drew more than 100,000 visitors over the long weekend. But there was room for many more in the giant stadium. and one wonders whether the door has now been opened for a new kind of expansive, big-venue, community-friendly jazz event reflecting the colorful, multi-everything character of Souther California.