Daniela Mercury

Southland fans of jazz and world music are being offered a cornucopia of major name events as the fall season begins, with Wynton Marsalis, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett among the figures whose music--live or in retrospective tributes--will be heard prominently during the next few months.

It's a pretty safe bet, year after year, that Brazilian music will rank among the highlights of the Hollywood Bowl's annual World Festival concert series. This year, the matter was settled quickly with the series' opening program Sunday: "Brazil Night" featured the diverse talents of veteran Jorge Ben Jor, Bahian firecracker Margareth Menezes and emerging star Daude. For U.S.

Cafe Quijano Listening to the old-fashioned bolero "Falsas Promesas" on the debut album of this Spanish group--the manly vocal delivery, sweeping orchestral arrangement and measured percussion--will make you think you're listening to a vintage recording from the '50s. And yet "La Extraordinaria Paradoja del Sonido Quijano" (The Extraordinary Paradox of the Quijano Sound) was recorded in Madrid in early 1999.

The ambitious effort by Verizon and Festival Productions to create a major early autumn music festival for Los Angeles came to a splendid close Tuesday night at the California Plaza. One couldn't have asked for a better setting or a better evening. The Plaza's Water Court, with its artful fountains sending up picturesque cascades of water behind the performance stage, was further enhanced by the rising of a full moon in a gloriously clear Southern California sky.

Every month is world music month in Los Angeles, of course. That's one of the perks of living in such a rich, multi-everything community. But even by L.A. standards, September offers an extraordinary collection of events, from Indian and African music to the appearance--within a brief, 10-day period--of three of Brazil's most important pop music divas.

If the opening event in the summer series of six world music concerts at the Hollywood Bowl is any indication, the programs will have a lot more to do with the sheer celebratory experience of world music than the showcasing of an individual performer. "Brazil Nights at the Bowl," which takes place Saturday and Sunday, is a full-scale Brazilian gala, complete with instrumentalists, singers and dancers.

There were two segments in the 25th Playboy Jazz Festival over the weekend that typified the far-reaching range of jazz styles present in the annual Hollywood Bowl celebration. The first was an encounter between saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Billy Kilson during the Saturday afternoon performance by Holland's quintet. Extraordinary on all counts, it combined a passionate, bursting-the-seams solo from Potter with electrifying accompaniment by Holland and Kilson.

Summer in Los Angeles always seems to trigger an explosion of world music events--convincing evidence of the Southland's rich multiculturalism. Summer 2000 is no exception. Here's a quick overview of some of the highlights: * The Hollywood Bowl's World Festival 2000 presents seven events starting June 25, most on Sunday nights. The opening program, "Fiery Flamenco," charts the links among Spanish, Arabic and Indian music, featuring the remarkable guitarist Thierry "Titi" Robin.

Producer George Wein was in France when the terrorist attacks hit the United States on Sept. 11. It took him a week to get back to his New York City Festival Productions office where, like everyone else, he was obliged to deal with both the emotional and the practical aftermath of living and working in Manhattan.

What a year it was! The Southland was a cornucopia of world music in 2000. It actually began, appropriately, in far wider fashion, via the millennium coverage on PBS, with its amazingly colorful sequence of music from every part of the globe. It was an impressive tribute to the great diversity that exists in the 80% or so of the world's music that is not American or English pop or European dance rhythms. Fascinating as it was, however, the telecast had its downside.