For its 2009 season, Jazz Aspen Snowmass will change its locations and change and lengthen the dates of its June Festival, while its Labor Day Festival will be shortened by a day to compensate for the new resources being directed to the June Festival.
The venue change sees the festival's major artists playing in the Benedict Music Tent in Aspen's West End, which was borrowed from the classical Aspen Music Festival when Snowmass's June Festival launched in 1991. The festival has taken place at the Rio Grande Park in Aspen every previous summer going back to 2002.
Also, while it has usually spanned an extended weekend, the festival will expand its run-time from four days to seven, with concerts taking place on June 18-20 and June 25-28. Read more »
Arena audience at Monterey Jazz Festival 2008 (Photo courtesy MJF)
Attracting 43,000 attendees over the course of three days, Monterey Jazz Festival 2008 matched the draw of its 2006 event but fell short of the record attendance for the 50th anniversary 2007 festival, the festival reported. According to spokesperson Timothy Orr, "2008 marked a calm and serene festival setting, in contrast to the intense and wild 50th anniversary in 2007."
He said that the performances were no less inspired, however, citing the on-stage comment from one of the stars of this year's event, artist-in-residence Christian McBride, that "[MJF] is a cradle of creativity and great people coming together for a celebration.” Official photography from the festival is now available at the MJF website. Read more »
Entering its second half-century, the prestigious Monterey Jazz Festival offered plenty of evidence of vitality in the genre while continuing to present a mostly retrospective approach to the music on its main stage. Perhaps such a schizophrenic posture is inevitable in an event with so much history behind it, but its future might be better served by a more risk-taking outlook.
To be fair, I should say that I attended only three of the five festival sessions (MJF splits Saturday and Sunday into separately ticketed afternoon and evening shows). But though the Sunday night session that I missed presented some of the festival's marquee acts in Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, even those jazz greats speak more to the music's past than to its future development. Several critics (here and here) who covered the Sunday finale concluded that Hancock basically phoned in his performance. For a gig as significant as Monterey, fans expect that performers would try for something unique instead of trotting out their tried-and-true set list. Read more »
Monterey Jazz Festival continues its 'New Grooves' program at the upcoming 2008 event with a Friday evening program of electrified funk. New Grooves has been a part of the festival since 2003, when it was introduced as a way to expand the audience base with fans of rhythm & blues. This year, the program includes the Christian McBride Band, a jazz funk ensemble headed by this year's festival artist in residence, and Rudder, a hard-driving jazz rock quartet from New York.
The New Grooves show is hosted in Dizzy's Den, one of the festival's indoor stages. It is open to anyone with a Friday grounds ticket, which also provides access to all other festival stages except the Arena, where the festival headliners appear. On the Night Club/Bill Berry Stage, highlights include the highly regarded newcomer Anat Cohen and the Joshua Redman Trio. Read more »
When a music festival chooses "A Love Supreme" as their tagline, that festival's lineup better be as big time as the nerve it takes to adopt the name of John Coltrane's quintessential soul searching masterpiece-no second chairs or stand in players allowed. In the case of the Detroit International Jazz Festival, the name is not only apt, but seems as natural a fit as when Trane put his lips to that first saxaphone reed.
“I’m using the word ‘love’ (to describe) this (festival) a lot,” festival Executive and Artistic Director Terri Pontremoli says in a recent article from C and G News. And with good reason. Read more »
