The piano sonatas of Johannes Brahms are all early, thickly scored, finger-busting works, and while they receive respect from the performers who study them, rare is the pianist who brings them along on recital.

The young Chinese pianist Ran Jia was an exception to that rule last Wednesday at Stage West in the Duncan Theatre, ending her meat-and-potatoes recital of Beethoven, Schubert and Ravel with the first of the three Brahms sonatas: his Op. 1, in C major.

Jia, who is 21 and the daughter of a prominent Shanghai academic and composer, currently lives in Philadelphia, where she studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music. She is a fine musician already, one with a large technique and something to say interpretively.

The youthful Brahms thought big, and the First Sonata is full of expansive gestures, huge chords and driving rhythms. It makes a strong impression, and Jia supplied all the power, intensity and volume it needs.

But she also supplied taste, when this noisy sonata allowed. In the first movement, she made much of the Schubert-style contrasting melody and gave the canonic passages that follow the opening an admirable clarity, all the while hitting the far reaches of Brahms’ keyboard writing with great accuracy.

Her second movement Minnelied was clear and forceful rather than hushed at the opening, and its major-key elaboration was tender and lovely. Jia handled the awkwardly written Scherzo with aplomb as well, managing both times in its closing bars to hit the octave-to-falling-thirds leaps that can turn this passage into a mess if they’re missed.

She took the Finale very rapidly, rattling off its repeated double thirds with precision, a considerable feat. This movement in general showed her reading of Brahms at its best: fingers that were nimble yet strong enough to get the composer’s orchestral effects across, and an interpretation with enough warmth to bring out the charm of its contrasting themes. It was a persuasive performance of this ungratefully written sonata, so much so that she almost made it sound easy.

Before the Brahms came the Jeux d’eau of Ravel, in which Jia made a good case for her French music chops. The waves of water were expertly played, and in her left hand she brought out the melodic fragments with rhythmic tension, which gave the piece form and structure and kept it from turning into an indistinct wash of sound.

Jia opened her concert with the Sonata No. 27 (in E minor, Op. 90) of Beethoven, a two-movement, semi-experimental piece (though I’ve always suspected that the composer just left it that way after never getting around to writing a finale). It certainly cries out for a concluding movement, especially in the hands of a pianist like Jia, who is able to convey a good sense of dramatic arc.

Her first movement was full of drama, with a tense opening and then a main theme in which she stretched out the tempo for maximum emotional effect. She was also adept at this movement’s many changes of mood and pace, getting across its emotional highs and lows without overdoing it.

Jia took the pretty Rondo second movement at a swift clip, avoiding sentimentality while at the same time producing good singing tone for its melody. She took more liberties with the tempo here, too, slowing way down for the second theme before returning to the Rondo. I don’t think this approach worked all that well, as it pulled the music out of shape a bit, adding a stop-and-start feel.

She followed the Beethoven with the Drei Klavierstücke (D. 946) of Schubert, starting the set off with a violent, speedy take on the E-flat minor first piece. Again, her fine sense of structure served her well in No. 2 (in E-flat), with its beautiful main theme, played here with poise, and a nice sense of mystery in the way she played the murmuring figure that presages the lengthy disquisition to come.

In the C major third piece, she gave the syncopations plenty of muscle in a rendition that stressed athleticism over wit. These late Schubert impromptus are less well-known than the Op. 90 and 142 sets, and Jia had the right feeling for their spontaneity overall, and the sonata-style narrative line of No. 2 in particular.

The Sarasota Opera likes to say that no other company in the world will have completed a Verdi cycle – a complete survey of all the composer’s stage works -- when it comes to an end in 2013 on the 200^th anniversary of Verdi’s birth.

The company’s just-ended production of Giovanna d’Arco (Joan of Arc) was the 29^th opera in the cycle, and its boast of exclusivity is a strong one: Victor DeRenzi, the company’s artistic director, even produces all of Verdi’s revised versions, in Italian and French.

This Verdi cycle has been the anchor for this very successful, 51-year-old opera company. Each season offers four works in the winter, during the months of February and March. Two years ago, it ventured into fall, adding a fifth opera.

Fall attendance at the 2009 La Traviata was a series of full houses, and a 30 percent growth in new audiences. But like other nonprofits, Sarasota Opera has felt the pinch of the economic downturn. Its annual budget has been reduced to $7.7 million, down $500,000 from last year.

Also last year, 64 “Star” donors (those who gave $5,000) died. Replacing them in these hard times will be a Herculean task.

***

Despite all that, this production of Giovanna d’Arco was wonderful. The costumes were exquisite, the singing excellent and the scenery magnificent. Lighting and orchestral playing rounded out all the arts involved and they were superb.

Faced with an opera that has had only five American productions in the last 35 years, DeRenzi made this one so appealing that it would not surprise me if there is a wave of opera companies scheduling this Verdi gem. It needs only three leads, an active chorus and lasts 2 hours and 50 minutes.

But here’s the rub: Where today does one find Verdi tenors and sopranos who can sustain the intensity of the master’s difficult writing? Joan herself has a bitch of an opening aria that makes Mozart’s tour de force for the Queen of the Night look like a cinch. Verdi, skilled as he was, avoids having all three soloists on stage all the time, interspersing their entrances with battlefield scenes of soldiers, English and French. Or lovers in sylvan settings: Joan falls in love with the Dauphin, whom she later crowns King Charles VII. The tenor and baritone work hard when they are on stage, and Verdi gives them great melodies to work with.

Giovanna, which premiered in 1845, is based on Schiller’s Jungfrau von Orleans, which Temistocle Solera reworked into a tight libretto of six scenes in four acts. This version has Joan dying on the battlefield, not burned at the stake. There is no Inquisition in this opera, who in Shaw’s play (Saint Joan) try her for heresy and craftily hand her over to the English, thus avoiding eternal damnation.

Pageantry lends itself to opera and there’s a lot of it in Giovanna d’Arco, including processions of nobles, cardinals, bishops and knights, plus peasants waving flags and five pretty flower girls, a nice directorial touch. There is plenty of good work for chorus and supernumeraries, too. (I spotted some opera donors in the procession to Charles VII’s coronation – and why not?)

Joan was sung by American soprano Cristina Castaldi. Her lovely voice isn’t quite heavy enough (yet) for this difficult role, but toward the end, in softer passages, she was in full control and sounded superb. Her acting was in character as she wrestled with holy visions and demonic voices. It was an excellent portrayal, courageously sung.

Puerto Rican tenor Rafael Davila as the Dauphin, later King Charles, is the perfect Verdi tenor. He has a plum rich sound with a wide-open delivery that gives him so much ease in reaching Verdi’s high notes. He was sweeter in the softer passages, as he and Joan fall in love, and the chemistry between the singers was nicely evident. Davila was believable, and acted the part of royalty convincingly.

Giacomo, Joan’s father, a shepherd, was magnificently sung by Marco Nistico. His rolling rich baritone was a delight for the ear, and he sang with clear Italian diction. This is a difficult role because the Schiller play has him delivering his daughter to the English, thinking she has dishonored the family in a love affair with the king. Later, he frees her from her English captors and laments her death in battle.

Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, an English general, was sung by bass-baritone Benjamin Gelfand. I could have listened to more of his fine voice; it is not a major role, however. Heath Huberg was Delil, an official of the king. As a Studio Artist he sang well and carried himself with dignity, in and out of uniform.

Martha Collins’ stage direction was brilliant. Her crowds moved easily on Sarasota’s restricted stage. In choruses she had members move forward in threes to emphasize Verdi’s music on the downbeat, which was most effective. Movement was continual in what could so easily have been a static presentation (the fault, I might add, of Ricardo Chailly’s Bologna Opera production of some years ago).

Jeffrey Dean designed some lovely sets; the Rheims Cathedral was to scale and sensational in its reality. He subtly places a stake, with kindling, stage left, to let us know that’s how Joan really died. Howard Kaplan’s costumes were beautiful -- for the record, Joan’s armor, given to her by the king, was white.

Lighting by Ken Yunker was splendid. Georgianna Eberhard’s wigs and make up were just right. Roger Bingaman had his choristers trained to perfection, and they carried a large part of the opera with good work.

Of course, what stands out in this clever production is Verdi’s music: The long dramatic overture, so familiar to brass band enthusiasts. The orchestral writing, in which every section has an opportunity to shine in the fullness of its detail and scoring.

The orchestra, under DeRenzi, played beautifully and with heart.

One quibble: Early on, the supertitle translation refers to “the English soldiers.” At the end of the opera they become “the British.” At the time the Maid of Orleans was giving the English Plantagenets the business (1429), Scotland was independent, Wales and Ireland were subject nations and the East India Company was 300 years away from setting up what became the British Empire. So, “English” it is, and should remain.

***

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, and Hansel and Gretel (in English) were also given the weekend I stayed in Sarasota. I didn’t make it to Hansel, but here are brief reviews of the other operas:

In a small, 1,100-seat, former vaudeville house, Sarasota Opera’s production of Mozart’s last opera, The Magic Flute, had all the authenticity of how Emanuel Schikaneder might have staged it. He commissioned Mozart to write this singspiel (play with music) in 1791, and the composer died 10 weeks after its premiere at age 35.

Stage director Alison Grant made it a lively and gripping experience. I dare to say it was near perfection, the best of many Flutes I’ve seen.

The opera is filled with Masonic philosophy and ritual because Mozart and Schikaneder belonged to the same Masonic lodge. They present only the basic tenets, however, which must have fascinated Austrian audiences back then, since they thought they were being let in on Masonry’s secret inner workings. (They were not). But what a come-on.

Heading an enormous cast was the Korean bass Young-Bok Kim as Sarastro, whose golden, refined voice and commanding presence riveted the attention. Prince Tamino, sung by tenor Joshua Kohl, had a few vocal problems early on, acted well and managed to get through to the end.

Pamina, his love interest, sung by Maria D’Amato, has a beautiful, sweet-sounding soprano. Soprano Lindsay Ohse as the Queen of the Night offered a dazzling, crystal-clear voice. Baritone Sean Anderson as Papageno was an absolute delight, a fine singing actor whose dulcet tones were very distinctive.

The Three Ladies were excellent: Alda Lynn Hamza, Sarah Asmar and Alissa Anderson. The Three Sprites sounded like boy choristers, which was fine because Mozart scored their songs for boys’ voices, but here they were beautifully sung by girls: Amanda Capps, Mary Akemon and Maria Elena Arrate. They moved well and were easy on the eye.

John Tsotsoros caught the tongue-in-cheek character of his role of his role as the bad guy, Monastatos, singing his part with gusto and a grin.

Soprano Katherine Werbiansky, in the dual role of Old Woman and Papagena was a perfect match for Papageno and sang very well. This is the fifth production of Flute by this company. It is such a delight in every way I think it deserves a wider audience. HD-TV, anyone?

***

Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, two verismo operas from the 1890s by Mascagni and Leoncavallo, respectively, were directed by Stephanie Sundine. She kept the productions in traditional focus and created clever crowd movements on stage.

In Cavalleria, Kara Shay Thomson’s strong dramatic soprano as Santuzza was ideally suited to this role. Argentinean tenor Gustavo Lopez Manzitti was vibrant as Turridu but his small red beret, perched precariously on his head, made him look ridiculous and distracted from his fine singing.

Lola was beautifully sung by soprano Stephanie Luaricella. Alfio was the excellent baritone Michael Corvino.

Mark Bingaman’s chorus was superb all through the opera. Most effective was the use of a double chorus in the Easter Hymn: some back stage in the church and some front stage in the town square or piazza. It’s a musical nod to those early polyphonists, Monteverdi and Gabrieli, who invented this early stereo effect at St. Mark’s in Venice.

In Pagliacci, Manzitti sang Canio and Corvino was Tonio. The prologue, which Corvino sang in front of the curtain, was a little masterpiece. Nedda, sung by the young soprano Aundi Marie Moore, sent thrills around the audience with her stunning vocalizations: what a lovely voice!

Studio Artist Heath Huberg gave his role of Peppe a good reading and looked great in his Harlequin outfit. Evan Brummel’s Silvio was believable. Stage Director Sundine managed to have 40-plus people appear from nowhere and disappear just as quickly on the cramped Sarasota stage. No mean feat.

The set was not in the right proportion to the people on stage, however. They, and even the statues of the saints, seemed huge in comparison to the buildings. Musically , it was a very fine performance.

***

In 51 seasons of professional opera, Sarasota Opera has risen to the top. It is a well-managed company with everything running precisely, with an army of helpful, neatly uniformed volunteers.

Already it has announced next season’s operas: Rossini’s La Cenerentola in October-November, and for the winter, Puccini’s La Bohème, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Verdi’s I Lombardi (the cycle opera), and Robert Ward’s The Crucible.

If you like your opera in big doses, there are two weekends in which you may catch all four on a Friday night, Saturday matinee and evening, and Sunday matinee. If you can drive 50 miles or so to hear your local opera company, it’s worth it to go the extra mile to hear Sarasota Opera.

The quality is first-rate and you’ll hear top-notch international singers mixed in with promising youngsters on the cusp of greatness. It’s worth the trip.

Rex Hearn, founder of the Berkshire Opera Company, has been writing about opera in South Florida since 1995.

Sarasota Opera can be reached at 941-366-8450, or by visiting www.sarasotaopera.org.

If Wu Han had another 50 years, she says, she might follow the traditional path of the professional piano trio: End your career with performances of the two piano trios of Franz Schubert.

“As a piano trio, we’re doing it backwards,” the Taiwanese-born pianist said last week. “We’re not doing it in the normal way of a piano trio: you play Haydn and Mozart trios, then maybe learn one of the Mendelssohn trios. In another five years, you learn the first Schubert trio and let it ferment for five years.

“We’re too old for that,” she said with a laugh, and then points to the Beaux Arts Trio, which indeed retired with Schubert performances. “I don’t have another 50 years in my life. I just do it backwards. I pick the most demanding programs, the most special pieces, the ones I feel the most deeply. And I found the two most incredible string players as partners, and we’re just going to do it.”

With that in mind, she and her husband, Emerson Quartet cellist David Finckel, joined by fellow Emersonian Philip Setzer on violin, will play these great works – the trios in B-flat, D. 898, and E-flat, D.929 – this Sunday afternoon at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach.

Finckel and Wu, who have been married almost 25 years, are among the most eminent chamber musicians in the country. Finckel is doing about 130 dates this year with the Emerson, often regarded as the best American quartet now performing, and a further 30 concerts with his wife. Wu does another 60 concerts by herself, and she and her husband also are kept busy as artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center in New York.

The three musicians played the Schubert trios together two years ago at Music@Menlo, the chamber music festival near San Francisco that Finckel and Wu founded in 2003 and still direct. Those performances came a few months after they recorded the trios in April 2008 for another Finckel and Wu project, the ArtistLed record label.

These works, written in 1827, a year before Schubert’s life ran out at the age of 31, remain challenges each time she plays them, she said.

“They are difficult in different ways, each in its own way,” Wu said. “The E-flat is big, structurally demanding. The B-flat is very delicate, and it’s easy to destroy that. You have to play with such ease, even when you are [trying to find] fingering for handling the passages.”

Both trios have “incredible” slow movements as well, she said. “Both have that sort of double-meaning quality in Schubert; if you’re playing a sweet and beautiful melody, it’s not simply just sweet and beautiful. It’s actually much deeper. It always has some tears behind it.”

Perhaps most critical of all is the sense of balance, both in the music itself and among the musicians playing it.

“The structure is so important. You have to take just the right amount of time with the rubato so the piece will breathe,” she said. “If you take too long, it drags. If you take it too fast, it’s impatient.”

Wu said she has played these pieces for about 30 years, including with violinist Pamela Frank and cellist Yeesun Kim in a piano trio at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, where “we were chewing up repertory like you wouldn’t believe … We did a complete Beethoven cycle, all the Brahms, all the Schubert, and everything under the sun.”

Besides being intimately familiar with her husband’s way of playing, she also is deeply familiar with that of Setzer, who she says was the first person in the United States to ask her to accompany a recital, “before I could barely even speak English.”

“And David and Phil have [had] this quartet relationship for more than 30 years, so [the trio has] a very, very special sort of relationship; it’s a triangle,” she said. That comes in handy for the Schubert trios, which are among “the most intimate and demanding pieces of music, in terms of structure, in terms of technical complement. You have to be so sensitive to the other person’s needs, the other person’s line; you have to be so quick in order to catch it.”

Some of Wu Han’s voracious interest in chamber music comes out when she talks about her performance last week of the Piano Quintet (in G minor, Op. 30) of the overlooked Russian composer Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), an important pupil of Tchaikovsky who in his turn taught Rachmaninov and Scriabin. Wu played the work, which she calls “a masterpiece,” at the Sanibel Music Festival on Sanibel Island with the Escher Quartet, “a young quartet I’m crazy about,” she said.

“I heard the piece, I loved it. It connected with me,” she said, and apparently it also did with audiences on Florida’s west coast. “It was an amazing experience last night. People went nuts.”

In addition to the Schubert trios, ArtistLed has released a disc of four contemporary cello sonatas by American composers Pierre Jalbert, Lera Auerbach, Bruce Adolphe and George Tsontakis. Finckel and Wu introduced Four Arts audiences to the Auerbach sonata in their appearance two seasons ago, with Wu memorably telling a funny story about the composer’s manic persona.

Although ArtistLed, the first Internet-based classical music record company when it was founded in 1997, looks like a visionary idea for a time in which musicians normally market themselves with DIY-Internet outlets such as MySpace, Wu said the impetus for the label didn’t come about because the two saw untapped potential for the Web.

“We didn’t see it as necessary, we only saw it was something we wanted to do,” she said. “We didn’t see it as a necessity because we actually had recording offers. We just didn’t like the offers. … A lot of offers, your job is to fill the catalog. It’s not doing what your heart leads you to, what’s really important for you, and it’s also not giving you that forum freely enough to express yourself.”

Traditional recording contracts are too restrictive, she said, with demands ranging from mandatory use of specific engineers and even microphones. “Eventually, art becomes secondary,” Wu said. “With ArtistLed we were just looking for a forum where we could do our best work. We had no restriction for what we could record, who we could use as recording engineer, how long it was going to take us to edit, [or] whether we were going to release a recording or not.”

And the Internet “happened to be right there. It was incredibly convenient,” she said. “And we were looking at it and saying ‘How come nobody is doing this? This is great.’”

When they’re not on the road, Wu, 50, and Finckel, 57, live in New York with their 16-year-old daughter, Lilian, whom Wu says is “a very good pianist,” but who is not being pushed into studying music. “She will find her own way,” Wu said.

Audiences who attend Sunday’s concert at the Four Arts are in for a special musical experience, Wu said.

“There will be moments in these two Schubert trios that are so insanely beautiful they take your breath away. There are no words to describe it,” she said. “And it’s not coming from us. It’s coming from Schubert.”

David Finckel, Philip Setzer and Wu Han will appear at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach. Tickets: $10. Call 655-2776 or visit www.fourarts.org.

The recording industry has always been more image- than music-driven, a fact that's been made worse by TV since the 1950s and MTV since the 1980s.

The latest example is American Idol, on which youthful toothpaste models-turned-singers recruit text-messaged votes from teenaged fans to springboard toward celebrity. Vocalist Sophie Milman wants nothing to do with the it's-more-important-to-look-good-than-sound-good crowd, and she has the voice and intellect to prove it.

Milman also certainly has the look of an American Idol contestant, and started her recording career at the pop-approved age of 20. But the Russian-born Toronto resident sings jazz, and speaks Hebrew, Russian, English and French fluently. Newly married to entertainment attorney Casey Chisick, she's studying toward a commerce degree at the University of Toronto.

"I did an interview recently," Milman says, "and I was asked, 'How do you feel about being considered a sex symbol?' And my jaw dropped. What does that even mean? I try to be taken seriously as a singer and work hard on my craft, and I've found that when critics want to say something snide, they don't criticize the music, but they do mention the fact that I'm blonde. So it's complicated. It can help you, but you don't want it to become the focus. Plus I'm singing jazz, so there has to be something behind it."

Vocal and classical piano studies have helped to create musical sensibilities within Milman's husky alto voice, which will be on display at the Rinker Playhouse in West Palm Beach during her Kravis Center debut Wednesday. And the 27-year-old shows maturity by being happy to have a slow, upward arc to her three-CD recording career -- rather than the status of an instant idol.

"I've read where Norah Jones' second album sold 10 million copies, yet was looked at as a failure," she says. "That's tough, but Norah at least seems like she doesn't pay much attention to things like that in the press."

Milman was born in the Siberian town of Ufa, and moved with her family to the Israeli port city of Haifa at age 7 and to Canada at age 16. She eventually did break through with the aid of a show, but appropriately enough for the future road warrior, it was a concert performance.

"Lately, I tour nine months out of every year," Milman says.

Producer and keyboardist Bill King discovered her during "Real Divas" night, a Toronto jazz series, and was impressed enough to invite a representative from Toronto-based Linus Entertainment to hear her. The rising area star was signed to a three-CD contract.

"Bill was really instrumental in getting my career going," Milman says. "He did some playing for me, and produced more than half of the tracks on the first record."

That self-titled 2004 debut featured standards like George and Ira Gershwin's The Man I Love and Cole Porter's My Heart Belongs to Daddy, a trend toward interpretations that's continued since.

"I'm not sure if I'll start composing," Milman says, "because in jazz, there's a culture of interpreting that's quite strong. And I feel that if I'm not drawn to do it organically, then I don't really need to force myself in order to to prove something, or for mechanical royalties. I love standards. Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and the Gershwins are like Bach, Mozart or Shakespeare. They're classics."

Milman's 2007 sophomore effort Make Someone Happy contained the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics It Might As Well Be Spring and People Will Say We're in Love, but also Stevie Wonder's Rocket Love. It won a Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy, for Jazz Vocal Album of the Year.

Her latest, Take Love Easy, blends Porter's Love for Sale, Ellington's Take Love Easy and Antonio Carlos Jobim's Triste with Bruce Springsteen's I'm On Fire, Joni Mitchell's Be Cool and Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.

"I love pop tunes, and cabaret," Milman says. "I've loved Liza Minnelli, and people like Joni, and Leonard Cohen, are the Porters and Gershwins of our generation."

With her CD contract with Linus Entertainment fulfilled, Milman may be recording on an American label next. But she's guarded about any specifics.

"I'm about to sign with a label out of the United States," she says, "but I will not say anything more. Until the ink is dry, I find it's best not to."

She does, however, have plenty to say about the musicians she records and tours with.

"I credit my band with my talent, actually," Milman says. "Sure, it's coming through my throat and emotional prism. But in terms of teaching me how to translate feelings into song, I couldn't have done it without people like my husband, my producer Steven MacKinnon, and Paul Shrofel, who's been my pianist and musical director for over five years. My drummer, Mark McLean, also did some arranging, as did the rest of the band [guitarist Rob Piltch and bassist Kieran Overs]. '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover,' for instance, was kind of a group arrangement that came together pretty spontaneously."

Shrofel contributed the disc's lone original, the exuberant swing number That Is Love. Milman also shows her range of influences -- from soul star Wonder and gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson to jazz icons Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson and Nat King Cole -- on classics performed by artists from Ellington (Beautiful Love) to Bonnie Raitt (I Can't Make You Love Me).

The Kravis Center stop is part of a Southern jaunt between Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. In April, Milman plays at multiple Blue Note locations in Japan, and she made her debut in Russia last year in an unorthodox setting.

"I tour a lot in the U.S.; more than in Canada or overseas," she says, "and I especially love to play in Boston and New York City. In Russia, there isn't much money anywhere other than Moscow. But there's a well-to-do gentleman there who flew myself, my full band, tour manager and husband over there for us to play a 20-minute birthday concert! We landed there a week early so I could connect with my grandparents, aunts and uncles and other family I hadn't seen in years."

Between her solid band, grounded nature and the business sense of her husband, Milman seems to have practically every base covered -- until she's reminded that she's playing at the Kravis Center on St. Patrick's Day.

"Uh-oh," she says with a laugh. "That's one style of music I haven't explored much yet! I've done American standards, Russian, Israeli and Brazilian music, but not Irish. But the band always plays an instrumental or two, and they're geniuses. We'll come up with something."

Bill Meredith is a freelance writer based in South Florida who has written extensively about jazz and popular music.

Sophie Milman appears Wednesday at the Rinker Playhouse, Kravis Center, West Palm Beach. The concert begins at 7 p.m., and tickets are $38. Call 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

South Florida has not lacked for jazz festivals over the years, but the road to musical fulfillment for local fans of this great art form has been rocky.

Consider the once-promising Riviera Beach Jazz and Blues Festival, which from 2002 to 2008 drew people from around the Southeast before getting away from its simple musical formula and falling victim to financial mismanagement and political infighting.

When bad weather one year forced a shivering Patti LaBelle from the stage, it could have been seen as an omen of the ills that would shortly sink the festival.

Jazz aficionado Robbie Littles, who helped orchestrate the Riviera festival, remembers when things were different, particularly because of the presence of trumpeter Melton Mustafa, his groups, and the bands he brought in.

Littles recalled being “pleasantly surprised when I saw as many kids from the high school level, particularly black, into jazz and performing down at the Melton Mustafa set.” Littles said that Mustafa, ever the educator, “also would come up and do clinics for the kids at Suncoast High School. We would invite kids from Palm Beach Lakes, Palm Beach Gardens and other high schools, and it was always extremely positive.”

All of which is proof that Mustafa's roots in South Florida run deep, back to the Afro Arts festivals in West Palm Beach that Littles helped spearhead between 1973 and the late 1980s. And that may explain why Mustafa's own festival has been going strong for 14 years now.

“There’s so little live jazz down in South Florida that I’ve just been hungry for it,” Yolanda English said after the Melton Mustafa Jazz Festival closed its two-day run Feb. 13. “I had a night’s full tonight. Just to be able to hear live jazz, period — and especially the orchestra, my goodness, the big band — that’s really priceless down here,” added the Broward County resident, who was back for her second year.

“I’ve been coming since the beginning,” said her friend Brenda Rivers of Miami. What did she like best this night? “For me it was the youth band. I always like to see the talent of the future, and it really was a pleasant rendering we got tonight,” she said, also complimenting the “comfortable atmosphere.”

The long-running event on the campus of Florida Memorial University proved again to be no less than a South Florida jewel, featuring internationally renowned artists assembled by Mustafa, Florida Memorial’s director of jazz studies, in the school’s cozy Lou Rawls Performing Arts Theater.

Miami native son Mustafa not only is a gifted trumpeter, arranger, composer, bandleader and producer. He’s been a headliner at various international jazz festivals, has performed with Count Basie’s, Duke Ellington’s and Woody Herman’s orchestras, and leads his own small groups and big bands.

As in past years, the event on the Miami Gardens campus featured another stellar lineup: trumpeter/composer Charles Tolliver, drummer Victor Lewis, pianist Edward Simon, bassist Ed Howard, saxman Jesse Jones Jr.

“Among the greatest jazz musicians in the world, barring none,” observed Mustafa.

He should know, having played alongside innumerable numbers of the best, from Billy Taylor to Frank Sinatra, Idris Muhammad to Nestor Torres. His festival routinely hosts them. Some are noted music educators themselves to which the university has awarded honorary doctoral degrees, such as James Moody and the late Grover Washington Jr.

In fact, the education aspect is just another that distinguishes the two-day festival. On Friday each year are master workshops during which aspiring students, participating band directors and registered guests learn from some of jazz’s greatest artists. This year’s sessions were streamed live online at theglobaljazznetwork.com.

Saturday’s climax kicked off with the Dillard Performing Arts High School Jazz Band. One might have expected Director Christopher Dorsey’s kids to come off like deer in the bright lights. But they clearly were in their element as they went to work performing such big band standards as the Duke Ellington Orchestra ballad After All.

“We need go down to Dade County and let them see how we swing up here in Broward County,” Dorsey said he had told his students. They proceeded to a rendition of Stolen Moments, featuring various members of the ensemble exhibiting their improvisational skills.

Several of the same kids sat in as the Broward College Jazz Ensemble next took the stage, performing such tunes as the classic On the Sunny Side of the Street.

As always, the Florida Memorial University Presidential Jazz Band, which is supervised by Mustafa, was impressive. The group included two steel pans, three vocalists, a trumpet and rhythm section, and started off with the late trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay. Their soaring, lengthy rendition allowed room for all the musicians to show out, while the steel drums, carrying the melody, added a unique, stirring texture.

Yet the evening was just warming up to an unexpected treat: the Jesse Jones Jr. Quintet, featuring South Florida vocalist Yvonne Brown. Jones’ flute and his alternately sweet and funky alto sax were impeccable. When Mustafa’s brilliant trumpet joined in, the musical magic only heightened.

Following another brief intermission to get things set up came what everyone had waited for: Mustafa’s all-star jazz quartet with Simon, Howard and master drummer Lewis. The set, which featured several original Victor Lewis compositions, concluded with his Hey, It’s Me You’re Talking To, which he said pianist Kenny Barron had inspired.

Even after the jazz legends had forged rhythm and harmony into light, there was more. To cap the night, the quartet morphed into a big band directed by Tolliver. That ensemble delivered with performances such as 'Round Midnight, featuring Tolliver’s trumpet solo. Among other fine renditions was I Want to Talk About You, the Billy Eckstine tune from his big-band days that was immortalized by John Coltrane.

Amid all the joyful noise was one sign of why this is Miami’s longest-running jazz festival: sitting on the back row of the bandstand was the unpretentious Mustafa, who through the years has not been averse to taking a back seat to his invited guests. Next to him was Yamin Bilal Mustafa, his son and another accomplished trumpeter. The evening’s engaging emcee, in fact, was another son, Melton Rashaan Mustafa, music teacher at Broward’s Parkway Middle School and himself a noted saxman.

During a reception following the concert, several Dillard High School apprentices spoke of what it meant to have watched jazz theory in exquisite practice.

“It was pretty amazing,” said saxophonist Brandon Lubin. “I got to see some good players you don’t get to see every day. I got to see Jesse Jones. I appreciated him the most. He had a beautiful sound.”

Fellow saxman Anthony Burrell, on why he was there: “Came here to play, came here to listen to some good music.” And how did it go? “It was fun playing onstage, we got to play some tunes. And we heard some bands. The bands were tight. The last big band was just off the chain. Victor Lewis, killing it. One of the best drummers I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“I was blown away,” said Markus Howell. “I would say as a saxophone player, I liked Jesse Jones, just like Brandon. His sound. What jumped out at me was I could tell he was influenced by Cannonball Adderley, one of my main influences. The big band, Victor Lewis, Melton Mustafa, everyone. I’m just blown away.” Howell aspires “to become a college professor, teach the music, tour.”

Bassist Russell Hall said the Saturday workshops “were a real learning experience. It was great to actually have a one-on-one session with someone who is actually out there and doing it for their living.”

But the masters too appreciated those sessions. “Yesterday I saw some guys of the future,” drummer Lewis said regarding the Saturday workshops. “It’s the same that the older cats saw in me when I was that age, and meanwhile I’m saying, ‘I’m not worthy, but I love this, maybe I’ll get a shot at it.’ And the older cats saw that in me, and they would take a minute to give me a little wisdom, and I’d get some mileage out of it.

"So I saw guys yesterday that don’t even know right now that they’re part of the future of this music. I had to work hard to hold back the tears.”

Littles said Mustafa, Florida Memorial and the current and future legends of jazz have been in a solid groove since the beginning.

“Just as he always put together solid aggregations to bring up to the Riviera Beach Jazz Festival — whether his small group, quartet, or his 18-piece orchestra — at the Florida Memorial set he’s always had, at least the at ones I’ve attended, an array of solid, stellar entertainers. That’s a consistent thread with him: Surround himself with the sharpest people who are available.”

That included that kids, on a night when the underlying theme was increasing support for jazz and other arts programs.

“I was very pleased and awestruck by so much talent on one stage,” said Dr. Sandra Thompson, Florida Memorial’s president, who added that she was tired of hearing the festival called South Florida’s best-kept secret. “The kids were fantastic. Can you imagine as they grow and mature even more? The talent is just phenomenal.”

Said Lynn Fenster, a university trustee: “I thought it was probably about as good as you’re going to see anyplace in this country. I sat here crying to think that we can have such fabulous kids and nobody would know it. And tonight a lot of people knew it. There wasn’t anybody on that stage tonight, even the young orchestras, who couldn’t go anyplace and play. It was scary. I think our music school can really put us on the map.”

Sumner Hutcheson, vice president for institutional advancement, noted that the university “is very proud of the fact that we have such professional artists as Melton Mustafa, and Dr. Dawn Batson (chair of the visual and performing arts department), who are excellent performers in their own right but also are encouraging the students.”

Hutcheson expressed excitement about the university winning an $80,000 Knight Foundation challenge grant to support scholarships. But he also encouraged alumni, friends and friends of jazz “to help support these fine programs and mostly the students.”

Throughout the evening, Mustafa echoed that appeal.

His focus continues to be on promoting his fellow legends while they’re still here, and on delivering classical African-American music to new generations to be kept alive and pure.

And his gem of a South Florida festival, in the midst of its second decade and dear to music lovers as diverse as humanity, continues to be a credit to that music, to its music makers and to their fans.

For more on the festival, visit www.meltonmustafa.com or www.msmartsinc.org. For more on The Global Jazz Network, visit www.theglobaljazznetwork.com.

C.B. Hanif is a writer, editor and consultant at www.cbhanif.com.