The 40th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, four days free to all of unfettered, usually joyous music held in beautiful downtown Millennium Park, started last night with stars of of the local scene celebrating "Legends and Lions". Add "Ancient to the Future" to set the tone for a weekend of exciting, civically-supported music here -- and similar outpourings of jazz and blues -- America's vernacular musics -- are offered throughout the U.S. this Labor Day weekend. A quick search turns up music fests in the next days from Augusta, Georgia (Labor … [Read more...]
Jazz fests of August
Free jazz fests across the U.S. mark summer's glorious end. Manhattan's Charlie Parker festival (held Saturday Aug. 23 and Sunday 24 in Marcus Garvey park uptown and Tompkins Square Park downtown), the Chicago Jazz Festival (which formally starts Thursday Aug 28 with Sonny Rollins at downtown Grant Park's Petrillo bandshell) and the Detroit International Jazz Festival (celebrating Detroit-Philadelphia music connections, Aug 29 - Sept. 1 on multiple stages along the river at Hart Plaza and down the street at Campus Martius Park) and smaller … [Read more...]
Jazz, secure, shrugs off “joke” threat
"We're doing everything we can to eliminate jazz from American culture," a promoter for Live Nation Artists, the world's dominant pop music production and marketing firm "joked" to Florida councilmen considering a proposed upcoming music festival. Jazz responds with a can't-be-bothered shrug. Too hip to be rattled by ignorant, idle, defensive -- and of course, revealing - threats, the greatest living musicians are basking in hard-earned recognition and producing inspiringly energized, not necessarily mellow music. Undeterred by Live Nation-like … [Read more...]
Prophecy fulfilled: the future now at jazz fests
"Music that we're playing now is just the blues of all of America, all over again, it's just a different kind of blues. This is the blues, the real blues, it's the new blues, and people must listen to this music because they'll be hearing it all the time. Because if it's not me it'll be someone else that's playing it. The majority of the younger musicians I've heard in New York, they've begun to play this way because this is the only way left for musicians to play. All the other ways have been explored, in the time past." So sayeth tenor … [Read more...]