If you are planning on attending the Newport Jazz Festival, keep in mind that it is no longer held over the Fourth of July weekend but in the second weekend in August. For a rundown on this year’s event, go here. For a three-CD compilation scanning the festival’s fifty-one-year history, try this boxed set. You’ll find a wide range of performances from Louis Armstrong’s “Tin Roof Blues” to John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” Among the treasures are the famous Duke Ellington “Dimineundo in Blue” with Paul Gonsalves’ marathon tenor sax solo, Sarah Vaughan’s “Black Coffee,” the Dizzy Gillespie big band with “I Remember Clifford” and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s piquant version of Ellington’s “Jump For Joy.”
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Sad to read on the site that the Concord JVC is devoted to “smooth jazz”!!! Excerpt below:
Held at the exquisite Chronicle Pavilion in the scenic foothills of Mount Diablo located 28 miles northeast of San Francisco, the JVC Jazz Festival Concord is the Bay Area’s largest annual smooth jazz event.