WESTERN BUREAU:

The three big days of the 2007 Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival at the Aqueduct, Rose Hall, will open with a blend of the R&B, some uptempo dance music, reggae and just maybe a sprinkling of opera.

A lot of that R&B will come from the thunderously husky voice and apparently endless soul of Michael Bolton. He has the Grammys, he has sold over 53 million albums and has timeless songs in How Am I Supposed To Live Without You, Time Love and Tenderness and How Can We Be Lovers.

But he also has the guts to explore and he has been into the operatic arena on stage with Luciano Pavarotti and on record with the 1998 My Secret Passion: The Arias.

Sweden has a couple marquee exports, among them Volvo and Abba. While the Volvo is inimitable, many have tried to sing like Abba - one group doing it so badly that Vicky of Arrival decided to re-record two Abba songs and deliver the band's music properly. One song led to another to recording an unreleased Abba song, Just A Notion and an entire album First Flight. In performance, Arrival (Abba The Tribute) is a huge affair, with anywhere from 10 to 25 people on stage.

a one-man show

Peter Lloyd, on the other hand, is a one-man show, singing, dancing and certainly smiling as he delivers reggae rockers.

Roy Young was born in Jamaica but caught the love bug early from the voice of Sam Cooke after the early inspiration of The Dells, The Drifter and The Temptations. He dropped out of school at 15 to tour England with the nine-piece 'The Workshop', and hit the top of the charts there with Let the Heartache Begin and Fire. Living in Israel for years, there were seven years between meeting the Australian pair of the Franknels there and going to record an album with them in Melbourne in 2003, a remarkable journey in more ways than one.

With 'Pieces of A Dream' and the Bro. Joe Baione Sextet rounding out the evening, the first really big night of Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival 2007 should begin as a true display of 'The Art of Music'.