This year the third annual Jazzfest, organized by the Department of Tourism, began on Thursday 30 November at the Westin Casuarina Resort. The festival drew larger crowds than ever, and appears to have already established itself as a significant event for jazz fans.

International artists included Natalie Cole, Kem, Jeffrey Osborne, Arturo Tappin, Boney James and Mike Phillips.

The 2006 lineup also featured local bands Velvet Touch, Mainstream, Hi-Tide and Swanky.

Intransit, Cayman’s own jazz-funk band kicked the event off. It was a good choice, as their seamless fusion of Caribbean sounds with their own Jazz roots made their music the ideal overture for the whole of the rest of the event.

Intransit’s music is really a delicately balanced mixture of many different Caribbean styles, including reggae, calypso, and soca.

But jazz is at the heart of Intransit’s music, and it is jazz that links all the other styles together. And all the components form a complete musical expression. This is what makes Intransit’s music unique.

Mike Phillips came next. He is really a musician rooted in the tradition of the new wave of freer-expression jazz masters, such as Miles Davis and fellow sax-man Charlie Parker that emerged in the later 1940s, and one can hear strains of Davies and Parker in his music; but he takes the genre of music created by Parker on to a new, contemporary level.

His freeform jazz improvisation got hotter and hotter, finally reaching white-hot, as he jumped offstage to play his sax among members of the audience.

Singer ‘Kem’ followed, and quickly wooed the audience with his distinctive, tight-edged vocals. His smooth, slick Jazz-funk style is precise, yet flexible, as he snakes his voice around snazzy choruses and infectious hooks.

Jeffrey Osborne was the headliner and closing artist on Friday, and his sophisticated, smooth Jazz-funk vocal quickly had the audience in the palm of his hand.

Coming onstage with a suave cream suit, he appeared the quintessence of smooth, urbane sophistication.

His music matched his looks, as his refined stage presence combined with his professional mastery of that 80’s soulful Jazz-funk genre, making it an evening to remember.

Preceding Mr Osborne was internationally renowned saxophonist Boney James.

His unique interpretation of urban-style jazz themes, infused with elements of hip-hop, has earned him international acclaim.

On Saturday, the final evening of the festival, Cayman’s very own jazz-funk diva, Karen Edie, opened the proceedings by singing the National song, in her rich, gospel-blues voice; a portent of things to come.

Local Cayman-music band Swanky was the first act onstage, and began with a traditional ‘Kitchen’ music melody.

Between tunes, Swanky’s violinist, Samuel Rose explained a little of the history of the Cayman Islands reflected in the music.

Paying tribute to some of the great traditional musicians of earlier times, he said: “We are just trying to emulate what many greats in Cayman have done before us.”

Swanky is composed of a violinist, guitarist, conga-drum player, and two percussionists, who between them play a variety of kitchen objects, such as graters, bottles and spoons.

The extremely popular local band, High Tide came onstage next, playing their mix of jazz-oriented pop songs. Their music is happy, up-beat, feel-good music; but it is also sometimes serious and soulful too.

Their professionalism was evident throughout their set, and was especially noticeable in the lead vocalist’s powerful, yet controlled voice.

Arturo Tappin pleased the audience as soon as he appeared. His exuberant stage presence brings with it a sense of warmth and joy as he and his band seamlessly blend together melodies from traditional Caribbean sources with a contemporary jazz-fusion sound.

Later, Mr Tappin introduced a female vocalist onstage, who sang some favorite soul, R& B and Reggae songs, including a moving version of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song.

Mr Tappin’s performance was a kind of musical journey around the Caribbean, and to America; he is clearly passionate about communicating his musical knowledge, and his passion for his music is infectious.

As a virtuoso jazz musician he showed his brilliance time and time again sometimes following the melody quite closely; and sometimes improvising a melody that seemed to soar high above the basic melody, like a kite flying high up in the sky, and then, suddenly, being pulled down to earth again, as if on an invisible string, joining up with the melody again right at the end of the piece.

Natalie Cole’s singing style is not really jazz, but jazz-based popular music; in that respect, she follows in the tradition of her father, the late Nat ‘King’ Cole.

Much of her music is based around the traditions of Soul and Gospel music rather than what purists would call ‘real’ Jazz, and her material crosses many boundaries.

She can shift from an up-beat jazz-funk song to a bluesy ballad; or even into a raunchy and raucous piece of powerhouse-blues style rock, as with her rendition of the Allman Brothers’ Whipping Post, where she used the dark brooding of the blues to reach a dramatic crescendo: “Sometimes…I feel like I’ve been tied to the whipping post…sometimes…I feel like I’m dying.”

In another particularly atmospheric, soulful song, Passion Fruit, Ms Cole began singing over a lilting, jazzy chord progression strummed on an acoustic guitar: “I’ve got some very special ways to make you tell me all about it…” she sang.

Ms Cole not only sings the blues; she gives the impression she knows what she is singing about, as when she sang the song entitled Leaving: “I’m leaving and you can’t make me stay…I’m tired of being hurt…Love ain’t supposed to hurt…you’ve got to know your worth and I finally believe I’m worth a lot.”

Ms Cole also sang a song she said she had written with her band, called Five Minutes Away, a song about looking for love in all the wrong places, when that ‘special someone’ could be just “Five minutes away.”

Another song was about sticking by that ‘special someone,’ even when the initial attraction seems to fade. Pentecostal-gospel style, as if burdened by the gift of a ‘word of knowledge,’ she said: “I don’t know who I’m talking to tonight…but you never miss your water until your well runs dry.”