Montreux 2000 Offers Holistic All-Star Blend

All-star festival shows often leave a lot to be desired. One act dutifully follows another, each cranking out a few familiar hits and one or two new items.

So give the touring Montreux Jazz Festival 2000 credit for trying something new. The intent, at least, was apparent from the event’s opening number at the Universal Amphitheatre Friday night, when all the headliners--Al Jarreau, Roberta Flack, Joe Sample, David Sanborn and George Duke, as well as a five-piece band and three backing singers--all came out for a collective introduction in song.

The warm, musically holistic approach didn’t stop there. In each of the concert’s two segments, individual performances mixed, matched and overlapped: Sanborn played a number with Sample; Jarreau came out for a duet with Flack; Duke and Sanborn combined to revive a Cannonball Adderley soul jazz classic. And so on.

The shifting scene became even more appealing when it served to frame individual cameos: Flack’s honey-toned voice in a lovely rendition of her mega-hit, “Killing Me Softly”; Jarreau serving up material from his new album, “Tomorrow Today” (his first studio album in six years), with a vocal pliability that seemed to have no limits; Sanborn ripping off blues phrases, soaring through the upper high harmonics of his horn with an intensity that instantly revealed why he is perhaps the most imitated living jazz saxophonist.

Duke’s solo segments were a bit more unusual. In the first act he presented a series of brief musical excerpts from his not-yet-released CD “Cool” as a kind of musical trailer of coming attractions. In the second act, he took an entertaining--if a bit overly long--tour through his eclectic musical history, underscoring his articulate musical skill with everything from straight-ahead jazz and sensual ballads to body-moving funk grooves.

The high-quality aspects of the production extended into the accompanying musicians via a first-rate instrumental quintet and a trio of mellow-sounding singers.