On Saturday night, I eschewed the line for Bill Frisell in favor of spending the early evening hanging out on Gibbs street to catch some live music. Much of the fun of the Gibbs St. stage lies in the chance encounters with friends and the chance to mingle and meet new people--there's also the food. While we stood in line for ice cream cones, we caught up ran into Mark, Barb, and son Brendan and hung out with them for a while, enjoying their company and listening to the free music on offer, particularly the intriguing singer-songwriter Layah Jane. It was great fun, Ben made friends with almost all of the street vendors (picking up swag along the way), but he was starting to tire after a long day of picnics and birthday parties so Kari and Ben called it a day, after which I met up again with the gang for the last of the Nordic Jazz Now shows at the Reformation Lutheran Church.

Seth and Greg hiked over with me and we joined Jane who had been saving us some seats. The air in the church was hot, but the music coming from the stage was even hotter as the Jens Winther European Quintet closed out in fine style the parade of Nordic jazz that we had enjoyed all week. Thank you, John Nugent and Marc Iacona for adding this excellent new venue and time slot to this year's festival.

On to the big tent were we caught what was probably the best of the acts for that venue all week, the New Orleans based Soul Rebels, who brought a little bit of Mardis Gras to the festival tent, the rhythms (sousaphone again, yeah!) compelling the crowd to get up and dance.

Jane was definitely feeling it, so we left her in the tent and headed over to the Montage for the Avishai Cohen Trio. Unfortunately, we couldn't return the favor of saving a seat for jane, because it was standing-room-only at the Montage with 45 minutes to go before showtime. We grabbed some wall to lean against and contemplated our chances of grabbing a table later in the show. Once the show began, it was immediately apparent that there was no hope of anyone leaving early, which was fine as we gladly suffered sore feet and knees to see this performance.

After a week of superlative-inflation, I'm not sure what I can say to convey just how amazing this show was. Jason Crane whipped up the crowd with his introduction and the band took it from there. Bass-player and leader Cohen, after an amazing opening number, clued the crowd in that this was the last show on a long tour and they were definitely “feeling it”. They most definitely were. The crowd gave them a standing ovation after just the second tune, “you guys are sick!” shouted one amazed listener. The band kept up the momentum, climaxing in a drum solo that left me in fear for the safety of the drummer and first few rows of the audience. They performed an encore that brought the crowd to their feet clapping, dancing, and singing along to the chorus.

We were more or less dumb-struck as we stumbled out of the club and sat on a railing across the street. Jane and then Jason Crane caught up with us as we struggled to articulate what we had just seen. Jason got the bright idea to pull his microphone out and begin recording our conversation. The results were compiled into the final episode of Jason's excellent series of special reports from the RIJF.

It was an excellent show to end an excellent night ending an excellent week of music.