Celebrating a Hometown Hero

Paquito D'Rivera will perform several times. (Library Of Congress)

This second Duke Ellington Jazz Festival is bigger and better than last year's inaugural event, says festival founder Charles Fishman. The five-day festival kicked off with a few events earlier this week but kicks into high gear Friday, capped by Saturday's free Sylvan Theater concert on the Mall featuring Roy Hargove, Dr. John, Poncho Sanchez, Mavis Staples, John Scofield (performing the music of Ray Charles) and Nasar Abadey & SuperNova . The music will run from noon to 7; last year's concert drew an estimated 20,000 people.

By Sunday's finish, there will have been 44 programs (13 free to the public) in 18 venues, including Sunday's matinee family concert at the Lincoln Theatre, where the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra will perform the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn jazz arrangement of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite."

For those with deep pockets, a Sunday dinner and concert fundraiser at the Willard Hotel will feature a re-creation of New York's legendary Cotton Club with music by the New Washingtonians, conducted by Davey Yarborough, director of jazz studies and chairman of the instrumental music department at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, with guests including Hargrove, Paquito D'Rivera and vocalists Esther Williams and Avery Brooks . Ellington's first large ensemble in 1924 was called the Washingtonians (though based in New York).

Fishman, working to create a world-class event in the composer's home town in the manner of the Newport, Montreux, North Sea and Playboy jazz festivals, says, "We've expanded it considerably," with new partners, including the Library of Congress, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the National Gallery of Art (whose Sculpture Garden will host a free jazz brunch Sunday). This year's festival is also showcasing artists from Cameroon, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, Colombia and Argentina. For a list of Duke Ellington Jazz Festival events, visit http://www.dejazzfest.org .

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Friday, the Lincoln Theatre hosts the NEA Jazz Masters concert, at which Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will introduce the 2007 Jazz Masters. The concert will feature saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera & the United Nation Orchestra -- D'Rivera was one of last year's Jazz Masters -- and drummer Roy Haynes and his Fountain of Youth Quartet . Haynes, 81, was a Jazz Master in 1995, but that's just the government making official what jazz aficionados have known for five decades.

For proof, just listen to his recent live album, "Whereas." It features John Coltrane's "Mr. P.C.," Thelonious Monk's "Bemsha Swing," Chick Corea's "Like This," Pat Metheny's "James" and Charlie Parker's "Segment." Good range, of course, but even more impressive: Haynes played with them all. He was Parker's drummer of choice from 1949 to 1953, played with Monk in the late '50s and with Coltrane in the early '60s, and has collaborated with Corea since the '60s and Metheny since the '80s (the guitarist calls Haynes "the father of modern drumming").

So Jazz Master sounds like a pretty good description for one of the most recorded drummers in jazz, a man whose unrelenting swing and expressive personal style earned him the nickname "Snap Crackle." Haynes jokes that "the guys in the band are young enough to be my grandchildren." As a working musician since 1942, he's not kidding, though drummers a third Haynes's age would have a hard time matching a powerhouse style that has remained consistent from the swing and bebop eras to the avant-garde and fusion movements. Haynes's CV contains a who's who of jazz, which is undoubtedly why in 1994, Denmark bestowed on him the Jazzpar Prize, the highest international award in jazz.

"This thing is very important to me -- it's my religion," says Haynes, who made his first album as a leader in 1954 and has averaged an album a year in the new millennium. "I'm very sincere about the music -- that's what I believe in. And we don't know what's going to happen in the next few minutes, so that makes it even more important. Listen, I never thought I would live this long," he adds with a hearty laugh.

Two weeks ago, Haynes played in Ann Arbor, Mich., with the Alice Coltrane Quartet on what would have been John Coltrane's 80th birthday (he died in 1967). The quartet featured John and Alice's son Ravi on saxophones with Haynes and bassist Charlie Haden in a tribute to one of the most towering and influential figures in jazz. Haynes earned a standing ovation for a breathtaking solo on the avant-garde excursion "Leo."

"I could do things with Coltrane that I couldn't do with anybody else," Haynes says, adding: "I'd thought the ultimate was playing with Charlie Parker. Funny, people ask what it was like playing with him, and I say I was in my twenties then and I probably would be more frightened now than when I was younger!"

Like Ellington, Haynes holds to one familiar principle: "It's a privilege to be on the bandstand just to be able to play with and create with people that really inspire you, to get into back and forth on the bandstand and give it to the audience and the audience gives it back to us. You can't really buy that."