Day 4 of the festival was swingin' hard, yin-yang style. First on the docket was the David Liebman Quartet. Before the first note rang out, the audience knew that Liebman was a serious player as he joked about beginning to play while the sun was still up.  He honked and squealed on the sax so hard that the Montage was transformed (figuratively speaking, of course) into a smoke-filled, after-hours nightclub for his hour-long set. Vic Juris, Liebman's guitarist and longtime band-mate, tipped the scales of hip even further when he slid bluesy clusters of notes up and down the guitar neck, building the musical tensions in the room to their breaking point, then nailing the sweet spot that gave everyone's ears a chance to kick back and bask in a euphoric glow.

But the rest of the shows on my roster were a complete bust, the kind of disappointments that make you stand motionless as you re-run hypothetical "what could have been"s for an eternity every minute. Over at Max of Eastman Place, Sachal Vasandani sang one standard after the next that pushed just about every audience member into a musical coma. Every note he sang was overdrawn, unarticulated, and bland at best -- kind of the musical equivalent of staring at a lava lamp for hours in bright sunlight.  Needless to say, it was a shock to the system after Liebman's power hour.

After the rain outside subsided, Beaucoup Blue took its place back at the stage on Gibbs Street. It was smooth. It was pleasant. It was music that filled the air nicely while people made their way to the next show. But it wasn't memorable, groovin', or really my cup of tea. The music the band played certainly wasn't jazz; it was more a mixture of folk guitar strumming and choral vocal harmonies.

Not able to end on that note, I went to my old stand-by: Lou Donaldson. I'll leave that review to Ron Netsky and end by saying that Day 4 has shown me that the masters of their crafts (Liebman and Donaldson) have earned those titles for a reason. Perhaps some of their mojo will rub off on the musicians who still seemed to be discovering their voices at the festival today.

Next up: The Yellowjackets at Harro East Ballroom