West Coast Jazz Party

Like any good party, the first night of the three-day West Coast Jazz Party at the Irvine Marriott was a mix of new and familiar faces, fascinating dialogue and the occasional personality clash. Friday's headliners gave strong accounts of themselves, while traditional jam sessions boasted more thoughtful, and therefore more successful, combinations of musicians than in previous years.

In the wake of another summer of hand-wringing among fans and critics about the future of jazz, Labor Day weekend in Southern California marked a face-off of sorts between festivals celebrating two sides of the genre. One, the West Coast Jazz Party, celebrated its 15th year in Irvine while the other, the second annual Angel City Jazz Festival, expanded to two days at a high-profile new location, the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood. Spread out over four days and culminating with a Sunday brunch cruise, the West Coast Jazz Party offers a full menu of traditional jazz that falls under the swing and standards-rich category often called "straightahead."

When Gerald Wilson strides on stage with his orchestra Sunday at the sixth annual West Coast Jazz Party in the Irvine Marriott, it would be appropriate for the audience to serenade him with a chorus of "Happy Birthday." On Monday, the venerable but still very vigorous jazz legend will turn 82.

TODAY Cool sounds on land and at sea Starting tonight, the 11th annual West Coast Jazz Party will say goodbye to summer with four nights and three days of almost nonstop, decidedly straight-ahead jazz. Besides multiple performing stages at the Irvine Marriott, a musical cruise on Newport Harbor is planned for Sunday morning.

Those who came looking for the "party" in the West Coast Jazz Party over Labor Day weekend shouldn't have been disappointed. There was plenty of good-time music fit for toe-tapping and finger-snapping, without serious intellectual or emotional content. The three-evening event, held Friday through Sunday at the Irvine Marriott hotel, also had the informal feel of an open house.

In the wake of another summer of hand-wringing among fans and critics about the future of jazz, Labor Day weekend in Southern California marked a face-off of sorts between festivals celebrating two sides of the genre. One, the West Coast Jazz Party, celebrated its 15th year in Irvine while the other, the second annual Angel City Jazz Festival, expanded to two days at a high-profile new location, the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood. Spread out over four days and culminating with a Sunday brunch cruise, the West Coast Jazz Party offers a full menu of traditional jazz that falls under the swing and standards-rich category often called "straightahead."

Jazz Four days, eight stages, one hotel: This festival is designed to run sweet and hot with Dixieland, singers, big bands and more. * Sweet and Hot Music Festival, LAX Marriott Hotel, 5855 W. Century Blvd. (310) 514-4800. 3 p.m. Also 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday. * Theater A space opera? Yes, that's what Venice Visionary Performing Arts has in store, complete with bunraku and creature puppets, music, dance, film and digital effects.

To Leonard Feather, the late Times jazz critic, bebop was jazz. His successor, Don Heckman, shares this same adoration ("Still Chasin' the Bird," Aug. 27). Jazz, however, is much more than bebop, particularly the swing music Americans enjoyed before the bebop era. Heckman proclaims "Bird Lives!" Fortunately, so do the classic jazz tunes with their carefully crafted lyrics. This weekend, pre-bop jazz can be heard in abundance at the Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival and at the West Coast Jazz Party in Orange County.

Jazz flutists tend to be of two types, often broken down by gender. There's the sweet, delicate type who work in gauzy lines of angelic quality. Then there's the rowdy, rough-toned players who try to make their instrument sound more masculine, more like a tenor saxophone. Few seem able to do both (Hubert Laws is one) or to escape the cliches so readily attached to the flute. Holly Hofmann can.

Drummer Butch Miles interrupts a phone interview from his home in Austin, Texas, to take another call. He's upset when his wife informs him that saxophonist Flip Phillips has died. "Man, I don't know what to say," Miles said. Over his career, the 57-year-old Miles has been associated with everyone from bandleader Count Basie to saxophonist Zoot Sims. He got to know Phillips, the swing-era tenor saxophonist who died Aug. 17 at age 86 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the busy jazz circuit.

Drummer Butch Miles interrupts a phone interview from his home in Austin, Texas, to take another call. He's upset when his wife informs him that saxophonist Flip Phillips has died. "Man, I don't know what to say," Miles said. Over his career, the 57-year-old Miles has been associated with everyone from bandleader Count Basie to saxophonist Zoot Sims. He got to know Phillips, the swing-era tenor saxophonist who died Aug. 17 at age 86 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the busy jazz circuit.

Drummer Butch Miles interrupts a phone interview from his home in Austin, Texas, to take another call. He's upset when his wife informs him that saxophonist Flip Phillips has died. "Man, I don't know what to say," Miles said. Over his career, the 57-year-old Miles has been associated with everyone from bandleader Count Basie to saxophonist Zoot Sims. He got to know Phillips, the swing-era tenor saxophonist who died Aug. 17 at age 86 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the busy jazz circuit.

Daytime temperatures may be blistering, but at night in Cahuenga Pass this weekend, it's Christmas--at least during those portions of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra's annual "Tchaikovsky Spectacular" devoted to (what else?) "The Nutcracker." And not just any "Nutcracker," but the new-to-the-Southland Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre version of Act 2: the act with the Spanish, Chinese and Arabian dances, "The Waltz of the Flowers" and the glittering grand pas de deux.

When Gerald Wilson strides onstage with his orchestra Sunday at the sixth annual West Coast Jazz Party at the Irvine Marriott, it would be appropriate for the audience to serenade him with a chorus of "Happy Birthday to You." On Monday, the venerable but still very vigorous jazz legend will turn 82.

When Gerald Wilson strides on stage with his orchestra Sunday at the sixth annual West Coast Jazz Party in the Irvine Marriott, it would be appropriate for the audience to serenade him with a chorus of "Happy Birthday." On Monday, the venerable but still very vigorous jazz legend will turn 82.

Drummer Butch Miles interrupts a phone interview from his home in Austin, Texas, to take another call. He's upset when his wife informs him that saxophonist Flip Phillips has died. "Man, I don't know what to say," Miles said. Over his career, the 57-year-old Miles has been associated with everyone from bandleader Count Basie to saxophonist Zoot Sims. He got to know Phillips, the swing-era tenor saxophonist who died Aug. 17 at age 86 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the busy jazz circuit.

Critic Whitney Balliett dubbed jazz "the sound of surprise," and the setting in which surprises are perhaps most plentiful is a jam session. The possibilities for serendipity are endless when 30 such off-the-cuff affairs unfold over a three-day weekend, as will be the case at the third annual West Coast Jazz Party this weekend. The party begins Friday and runs through Sunday at the Irvine Marriott and aboard a Hornblower dining yacht out of Newport Beach.

Vibraphonist Terry Gibbs proved the main attraction during the closing night of the three-day West Coast Jazz Party at the Irvine Marriott hotel. The 74-year-old Gibbs opened the evening in a sextet jam session with clarinetist Ken Peplowski that paid tribute to Benny Goodman, then returned to close the evening in grand style with his 16-piece Dream Band.

It didn't take the fifth annual West Coast Jazz Party long to get into a groove. Seeing to this was organist Jack McDuff, who was at the helm of a Hammond B-3 while taking a quartet of somewhat mutinous musical sailors through slow grooves, funk grooves, shuffle grooves and blues grooves. It was a great way to end the first night of the three-day event, held at the Irvine Marriott hotel.