Roy Hargrove took your heart apart with his blue flugel blowing.

MOSCOW, Idaho,  Feb. 22 -- Opening night of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival featured a handmade tribute to Dizzy Gillespie, an old pal of Hamp's, on which you heard two trombones and a trumpet. You would have expected three or four trumpets, right? — Dizzy being the world's greatest trumpet player, according to aficionados of the sport.

But like so many other jazz masters, he died, and maybe that was the reason for the asymmetrical lineup. The guy who would have paced the tribute, Conte Candoli, a leading disciple of Gillespie's, died in December, and but for that, his brother Pete probably would have been onstage at the University of Idaho's Kibbee Dome on Wednesday night, too. 

Jane Monheit sang more than once more with feeling  

But jazz being jazz, the guys who got the gig acquitted themselves with spectacular finesse. Claudio Roditi was the trumpet man, and he was richly creative in the Gillespie style. But then so was the great trombonist Slide Hampton (no relation to Lionel), who plays the instrument as though it were a piano. And so was his fellow slider Jay Ashby, who played warm and lyrical like Roditi. 

The university is the home of the Lionel Hampton School of Music, one of the many institutions that signal the transformation of the jazz universe into an agricultural economy, rather than the hunter-gatherer society of old. So there were plenty of young firebrands from the classrooms to be heard during the four-day annual event. 

Veteran drummer Lewis Nash brought in a couple. Steve Nelson offered a magnificent version of "Sophisticated Lady," and his bandmate Jimmy Greene burned brightly on tenor saxophone. 

Bucky Pizzarelli wails while John Clayton helps.

On the other hand, the brightest moments of the evening probably came from guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and his son John Pizzarelli, also a guitarist who sings as well. The former was a model of inventive and ingratiating charm, and so was the latter, who sang softly as in a morning sunrise or some other such lovable phenomenon. 

In the end, the absence of big names was beneficial. There were no prima donnas, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the music showed it.

David "Fathead" Newman and his old friend, Clark Terry, who brought his celebrated blue plunger.

Tony Gieske has been reviewing jazz and occasionally playing it on his cornet since the 1950s, when he wrote the jazz column for the Washington Post. Now he works for the Hollywood Reporter, where his reviews and photographs, such as these, appear regularly.The photographs are available as prints or as scans by sending an e-mail to grnskl@earthlink.net. More jazz stuff can be seen by clicking on the links beneath.