New Orleans Jazz Fest may have done even itself one better with the announcement of its artist lineup for its historic 40th anniversary festival coming April 24-May 3 at the Fair Grounds Race Course. Always a glittering cross-genre mix, the collection of artists named for 2009 celebrates the notion of New Orleans as a musical stew pot. It's gospel, blues, traditional and contemporary jazz, rock, pop, R&B, Cajun, zydeco and more, all mixed into a gumbo—let's call it New Orleans soul—that's a genre in its own right.
Possibly no single name on the following list will blow you away, but the combination of all that talent is unparalleled by any other festival I know of—and each performer has some kind of connection to the host city and its cultural heritage. Here we go: Read more »
The good news is that there will be a four-day festival in New York this month devoted to the music of Thelonious Monk. The less than entirely good news is that it’s being presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Lincoln Center’s jazz operation, under the unquestionably ambitious artistic direction of Wynton Marsalis, has been controversial from the beginning. As much praise as it has garnered for raising the music’s profile and treating it with the respect it deserves, it has attracted an equal amount of criticism for hewing to an overly conservative agenda. Still, while Jazz at Lincoln Center’s focus on the old at the expense of the new has been a legitimate source of carping, I have never heard anyone suggest that its devotion to major figures like Monk and Duke Ellington is a mistake. The issue is how that devotion is expressed. Read more »
As if they don’t have enough on their plate already, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will be artists in residence at next year’s Monterey Jazz Festival.
The orchestra will be a featured attraction at the festival in September, but the gig is primarily educational in nature: Members will work with student musicians in clinics and one-on-one sessions at both the Next Generation Festival in April and the Monterey Summer Jazz Camp. Marsalis is of course the marquee name, but according to the festival three other members of the orchestra — saxophonists Sherman Irby and Joe Temperley and trumpeter Sean Jones — will be doing the bulk of the educational work.
The artist-in-residence program is one of the key components of the Monterey Jazz Festival’s educational operation, which has grown exponentially since its modest beginning in 1970. The Festival now invests almost a million dollars a year annually in jazz education through a variety of programs.
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 »
