Dianne Reeves is part of the Moneterey Jazz Festival lineup.
The Monterey Jazz Festival’s big-name acts, high-concept projects and commissioned artists can be found in the main arena, the expansive sawdust-blanketed stadium with reserved seats that sell out every year. This year’s edition, which takes over the bucolic Monterey County Fairgrounds on Friday-Sunday, Sept. 18-20, features reliably inspired arena artists such as Chick Corea, Trombone Shorty, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Snarky Puppy and Dianne Reeves.
A grounds pass doesn’t provide entry to the arena, but it’s one of the best deals going in jazz, offering access to four stages running simultaneously. Rushing from the dark and intimate Coffee House Gallery to the oak-shaded Garden Stage can feel like getting a jolt of the New York City scene (with a curated selection of the Bay Area’s best players thrown in for good measure). Here are 10 bands not to miss at Monterey this summer.
Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet
Friday, 7:30 p.m. Dizzy’s Den
A highly influential guitarist whose music combines shimmering lyricism, oblique harmonies and extended forms, Kurt Rosenwinkel leads a quartet that thrives on the contrast between his ethereal flights with brilliant pianist Aaron Parks and the earthy churn of powerhouse bassist Eric Revis and rising drummer Allan Mednard.
Monty Alexander Trio
Friday-Sunday. Coffee House Gallery
Longtime festivalgoers know that the festival’s best listening room is the Coffee House Gallery, which usually features a piano trio or small group playing two or three sets each night. For the first time in recent memory, the Gallery is hosting a single ensemble the entire weekend, the trio of Jamaican-born pianist Monty Alexander. One of jazz’s most eloquent and ebullient improvisers, Alexander embodies joyful swing, and he’s joined here by bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton, who first gained widespread attention as members of his classic mid-1970s trio. The trio also play Yoshi’s on Sept. 23.
Musette Explosion
Friday, 8 p.m. Garden Stage
Three supremely versatile and accomplished New York jazz musicians join forces in Musette Explosion, an ensemble devoted to pre-World War II French standards and originals by Explosion accordionist Will Holshouser. With tuba master Marcus Rojas and Matt Munisteri on guitar and banjo, Musette Explosion is unlike any other trio on the scene. The band makes its San Francisco debut at the Red Poppy on Sept. 19.
Cyrille Aimée
Friday, 8:30 p.m. Night Club
The daughter of a French father and Dominican mother, Cyrille Aimée is part of a wave of thrilling young singers steeped in but not defined by the music’s history. She’s honed a capacious repertoire of originals and French, American and Brazilian standards, but judging by the twoguitar instrumentation of her quartet she’ll probably be focusing on the Gypsy jazz tunes she heard while growing up near Samois-sur-Seine, home of the France’s annual Django Reinhardt Festival.
Crossing Borders
Saturday, 3:45 p.m. Dizzy’s Den
Striking a blow for harmonious U.S.-Canadian relations, Crossing Borders features two married couples — San Jose saxophonist-vocalist Kristen Strom and guitarist Scott Sorkin, and Vancouver vocalist-pianist Jennifer Scott and bassist Rene Worst — with the unfailingly tasteful South Bay drummer Jason Lewis serving as a propulsive fifth wheel. The band has developed its own sound and repertoire while serving as an ideal vehicle for Scott, a vocalist of rare poise and intelligence. Crossing Borders also performs at Piedmont Piano Co. on Sept. 18.
Dann Zinn’s Shangri La
Saturday, 4:30 p.m. Night Club
Alameda tenor saxophonist Dann Zinn has mentored some of the most celebrated saxophonists to emerge from the Bay Area in the past two decades, and he’s also a creative force on the bandstand. He performs with Australian guitarist Chris Robinson and drum great Peter Erskine, whose resume includes classic albums with Weather Report and a series of his own brilliant albums on ECM. It’s the same redoubtable cast that joined Zinn on his gorgeous 2014 album “Shangri La,” a session defined by distilled lyricism and spacious grooves.
Allan Harris
Saturday, 7 p.m. Night Club
With his burnished baritone, deft guitar work and extensive repertoire of originals and standards, New York jazz crooner Allan Harris thrives in the nebulous zone where old-school R&B, jazz and blues overlap. His latest album, “Black Bar Jukebox,” captures Harris at his most ingratiating, delivering a delectable program of songs with laidback Nat King Cole phrasing. Harris returns to the Bay Area for a fournight run at SFJazz’s Joe Henderson Lab on Oct. 1-4 with piano great Eric Reed.
David Gilmore & Energies of Change
Saturday, 8:45 p.m. Night Club
If I had to pick one band not to miss at Monterey this summer, it would be David Gilmore & Energies of Change. A major creative force on the New York scene who has never performed in Northern California with his own group, Gilmore is a combustible guitarist who came up in the funkladen crucible of Brooklyn’s M-Base Collective. He’s collaborated with visionary musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Don Byron and Steve Coleman, but he’s the elder statesman here with a blazing young band fea-