Jeff Spevak

Nine days, could you handle any more? C’mon tough guy, get off the street and get to that 10 o’clock show.

Who’s willing to play through the pain at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival? How about that guy who had the Jill Scott tattoo on his arm. Friday night at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, he got the singer to sign below her smiling face after her show. By Saturday morning he was at the tattoo shop, making her autograph permanent.

Fifty years. Tower of Power has been a band seven times longer than The Beatles. It hasn’t been easy, admits founder Emilio Castillo. But here it is, playing the free outdoor show on Saturday, the final night of the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival. A night that’s traditionally the biggest of the festival’s nine days.

The headliner had cancelled the tour. St. Germain, a French techno-dance maestro, was out after he broke a leg. Yet Friday night was much as we’ve come to expect on these Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival weekends. On Gibbs Street a tight knot of people watching The Community Soul Project, a Canadian band singing Motown songs. East Avenue and Chestnut Street closed, thousands of people milling about.

Gwyneth Herbert’s beautiful music, humor and humanity peeled away layers of cynicism Thursday at Max of Eastman Place. A packed house, and everyone surely left with the feeling that the world’s weighty problems might be eased with a beer and a kazoo. And by writing a letter, a fading exercise that Herbert suggested might be the answer to: “How can we listen to ourselves and each other?”

“Songs of Freedom” is entertaining, if that’s what you wanted. Provocative, if that’s what you’re searching for.

The intriguing project at Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival Wednesday night, created by the celebrated drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr., combined the music of three fearless women at Kilbourn Hall: Joni Mitchell, Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone, who Owens noted, “had freedom lodged in her voice.”

Joe Locke said he’s inspired by words. Tuesday night, in his first set at Kilbourn Hall, the words were “welcome home.”

“This is always a spiritual experience for me to play here, because of my roots here,” he said. Raised in Rochester, an Eastman School of Music grad, Locke is widely regarded as one of jazz’s finest vibraphone players. He returns every few years to see some familiar faces and, thusly inspired, to play a knockout show at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.

Trail of Souls, we feel your pain. It is a very, very, very, very thin line between the loneliness of Norwegian folk music and “Motherless Child.”

Thirty years ago, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones opened the bluegrass door, and in flew jazz, rock and country music. Classical, even. The quartet embraces a world view of sound, and Fleck has continued to expand his musical interests, in recent years releasing recordings of duets with jazz keyboard great Chick Corea, and recording a concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.

Moon Hooch isn’t for everyone. But neither is Charlie Parker.

The dynamic Brooklyn trio brought a remarkable saxophone apocalypse to the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival Sunday. Three days into the nine-day festival, and this was the killer show.

Although, not everyone would agree.