Members of the tribe play Monterey Jazz Festival

For any unrepentant jazz gluttons out there, the Monterey Jazz Festival is coming soon, serving up 500 artists over the course of the three-day event.

Composer and musician Peter Apfelbaum will be one of them, but this isn't his first appearance at Monterey. Apfelbaum actually made his debut there in 1975 as a teenager performing with the Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble. He has played the festival three times since then.

Now based in New York, Apfelbaum has gone on to a successful career as a performer, collaborator, composer and recording artist.

The Berkeley native is one of several Jewish artists -- pianist Aaron Goldberg is another -- performing at the 49th annual Monterey Jazz Festival, which takes place Sept. 15-17 at the Monterey Fairgrounds.

The line-up this year includes many top legends of jazz, such as Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Charles Lloyd and McCoy Tyner. For Apfelbaum, it's still an honor to be playing Monterey.

"It's one of the oldest [jazz] festivals in the country," he says. "You get an older crowd and young kids. It's really multigenerational, and it's nice to go there and think of all the great music from over the years."

Apfelbaum will perform with his band New York Hieroglyphics, featuring African singer Abdoulaye Diabate. Much of Apfelbaum's music is embroidered with African influences, though he has also borrowed liberally from other genres, from classical to jam band rock (he's opened for the Grateful Dead and Phish's Trey Anastasio).

Apfelbaum has his own theories as to why Jewish artists so often explore other musical idioms. "Jewish musicians and composers throughout history assimilated, traveled and used a wide variety of influences and languages," he says. "There are a lot of different influences that go into the vocabulary."

Uri Caine would agree. The New York based pianist will perform at Monterey with his jazz trio, Bedrock (also the title of his latest CD). Like Apfelbaum, Caine is a master weaver of styles, from electronica to classical.

And not just surface dabbling. In addition to his straight-ahead jazz work, Caine has recorded startling new orchestral arrangements of Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's Diabelli Variation, and Mahler's "Songs of the Earth," all among the most sacrosanct pieces in the classical canon. That didn't scare him off.

"In many types of music," he says, "you have purists. So if you play with a DJ or do classical then you 'go against the tradition.' But I saw the tradition as innovation and trying new things. As long as you understand it's experimental."

Caine grew up in an observant Jewish household in Philadelphia, and attended the local Solomon Schecter day school. The sound of the cantor singing in synagogue is one of his earliest musical memories.

"I saw that music had a central place [in Judaism]," he adds. "We would sing at the table on Friday nights. That informed some of the stuff I've been doing."

That includes his 1999 album "Zohar," which featured a cantorial soloist, and an upcoming CD of music by John Zorn, many of whose melodies are based on traditional Jewish music. He's also scheduled to perform at the upcoming Tel Aviv Jazz Festival. Being that he lived in Israel when he was younger, and that he speaks fluent Hebrew, the gig should be fun.

Apfelbaum's interest in Jewish music came later. As a kid growing up in Berkeley, his first musical passion was playing drums (he now plays tenor sax and keyboards). His early jazz heroes were adventurers like Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders. "Those people were playing very unorthodox music," he says. "That really appealed to me. They were black Americans going back to their roots, emphasizing African elements, and brought in a lot of African percussion."

Following his bliss, Apfelbaum frequently hung out at U.C. Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, drawn by the regular weekend conga drum jam session. "On good days there were guys who could really play," he recalls. "In a very informal way, I learned a lot from going up to Sproul Plaza."

He went on to team up with artists like Joshua Redman, Carla Bley and Don Cherry. As a composer, Apfelbaum has had his music performed by the Kronos Quartet and the Bay Area Jazz Composers Orchestra. He won the Downbeat Magazine poll in a Big Band category, and he even received a commission for a new piece from his alma mater, the Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble, which premiered at Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland earlier this year.

Though they are each accomplished composers, both Caine and Apfelbaum love the freedom of improvisation so integral to jazz. And both expect to swing freely when they take the stage at Monterey. At this point, neither can predict exactly how their sets will go. Which is as it should be in jazz.

"[Gustav] Mahler famously changed his mind," says Caine of one of his musical heroes. "He would practice with the orchestra one way and, the next day change it. That's in the nature of music-making. There's more than one way to do things."




The Monterey Jazz Festival takes place Friday through Sunday, Sept. 15-17, at the Monterey Fairgrounds. Tickets: $12-$95 per day (grounds tickets only). Information: (925) 275-9255.