Reports from jazz fests — galore! We aggregate JJA members’ posts, adding more as the links roll in! To date: Covering international jazz fests by Jordannah Elizabeth, reports from the Granada Jazz Festival from Vilma Dobilaite, from Monterey by Andrew Gilbert and Howard Mandel, news of Detroit, Canary Islands, Monterey preview, Chicago Jazz Fest extras, International Dixie-BRICS Fest in Kazan (Tatarstan, Russia) and more . . .
Assigned to cover international jazz fests, by Jordannah Elizabeth
Essentially there are two ways to come to cover international jazz festivals, through adjacency and happenstance, or acute planning, timing and preparation. Both scenarios require at least two weeks of preparation which consists of . . .[from Letter from London: read more]
Mixing it Up at the Monterey Jazz Festival, by Andrew Gilbert
The Monterey Jazz Festival is a bhangra dance party, a Sunday morning praise service, a Detroit funk explosion, and a percussion-powered rumba session. It’s a floor-shaking blues stomp, a soul music celebration, a Western swing hoedown, and an R&B-powered rave. The world’s longest-running jazz festival continues to cast a wide net, and that’s because MJF is a kaleidoscopic plunge into the contemporary jazz scene, where no particular idiom, influence, or approach predominates. Jazz is a many-splendored art form these days, and the 67th annual festival offered a deep and wide look at some of the music’s state-of-the-art practitioners. (read more at San Francisco Classical Voice)
Monterey re-tunes to temper of the times by Howard Mandel
To sustain any cultural intuition — and beyond that to refresh it — is a tall order. To keep faith with a well-established brand and its fans while re-tuning to the temper of the time and preferences of new audiences is to dare a balance in which some teetering is likely. So Darin Atwater, the Baltimore-based conductor-educator in his first curation of the Monterey Jazz Festival (Sept. 27–29) as only the third artistic director in its 67-year history, deserves kudos for populating the multiple stages of comfortably scaled if well-worn Monterey Fairgrounds with a diverse, multi-generational program celebrating the breadth of jazz and jazz-adjacent genres, tweaking the fest’s mellow mainstream West Coast vibe with new acts, broadened scope, whetted edge. (read more at DownBeat.com)
Detroit Jazz Festival reviewed by Paul Rauch at AllAboutJazz
On Labor Day weekend I covered the Detroit Jazz Festival for All About Jazz for the fourth consecutive year, an annual journey I’ve come to prioritize. (read Paul’s coverage)
The festival stages a lineup that rivals major festivals internationally and offers that programming to the public for free. You don’t need expensive tickets or VIP passes, you can just go and enjoy world class jazz. The music is presented in the downtown core of one of the world’s great jazz cities, and attracts an audience that is diverse, engaged and knowledgeable.
Chris Collins, Shaun Wilson and the entire DJF staff hold a deep appreciation for our work as journalists. They accommodate visiting media in every way possible, from access, to transportation and lodging. Their appreciation, passion for the music, the festival and their hometown of Detroit is genuine and heartfelt. — Paul Rauch
The Canary Islands 33rd International Jazz Festival – By Larry Pryce for Jazz in Europe
I seem to be making a habit of covering jazz festivals on islands, from St Lucia, Nevis, St Kitts and Tobago in the Caribbean to Mallorca and Malta in the Mediterranean and just recently I came across another interesting festival on the archipelago of the volcanic Spanish Canary Islands. . . . the southernmost region of Spain 62 miles off the coast of Morocco, originally inhabited by the Berbers of North Africa.
The 2024 international Jazz Festival, “Canarias Jazz Y Mas” took place July 23 – 27 in town squares and theaters spread across the eight inhabited islands, with Tenerife and Gran Canaria providing the festival highlights and grand finale. (read more, about sets led by Chris Potter, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Yoruba singer-guitarist Adedeji, the Afro-Caribbean-inspired Perinke Big Band, Theo Croker, Serbian singer and guitarist Ana Popovic, guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and Canarian pianist and composer Polo Orti’s New Project of young musicians including Galician drummer Naima Acuna, Hungarian bassist Samuel Keri and Venezuelan trumpeter Chip Chacon). . .
First International Dixie-BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Jazz Festival by Natalia Rikker
From August 28 to 30, as part of the Uralskiy Dixieland ensemble, I took part in the First International Dixie-BRICS Jazz Festival. The festival took place in Kazan and hosted orchestras and ensembles from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Brazil, India, China, Iran, Ethiopia, Cuba, Turkey.
From August 24 to September 5, I took part in the XXIII International Jazz Festival “What a Wonderful World”. This festival is traditionally held in Chelyabinsk, it was founded by the famous Russian jazz trumpeter Igor Bourco (1944–2018). Since 2018, I have been both the concert presenter of this festival abd also its art director. This year’s festival program included concerts by Russian jazz musicians Andrei Kondakov, Oleg Akkuratov, Rodion Grishchenko, Mariam Merabova, the Uralskiy Dixieland ensemble, a professional conference dedicated to the development of jazz festivals in modern Russia, as well as my author’s tour of jazz Chelyabinsk and my lecture on jazz in Soviet cinema.
September’s 67th Monterey Jazz Festival Showcases Historic Roots and New Leadership By Kitty Margolis/Aug 14, 2024
The appointment of Darin Atwater as new artistic director continues the gradual shift of notable African American musicians stepping into jazz presenter leadership positions that began with Wynton Marsalis helming Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987 and has continued with Christian McBride at Newport Jazz Festival, Jason Moran at The Kennedy Center, Terence Blanchard at SFJazz and Ambrose Akinmusire at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. (read more)
Extra special Chicago-steeped jazz — free series recalls Fred Anderson By Howard Mandel/Aug 4, 2024
The Anderson/Birdhouse series is especially welcome this year, as the City of Chicago has further abbreviated the Labor Day weekend Chicago Jazz Festival after failing to announce its lineup until July 1. That late date has limited promotion to potential out-of-town fans, who have plenty of options (same weekend: Detroit International Jazz Fest, DC Jazz Festival, Jazz Aspen Snowmass, etc.). (read more)
