Notes and tones: Criss-cross North America to take in these summer jazz festivals
Editor’s note: This is Part One of a two-part column on upcoming jazz festivals taking place in the relatively near future. Part Two will take us to the jazz festivals of Europe and beyond, as well as the ever-growing amount of condensed jazz that takes place during Labor Day Weekend.
Greetings sports fans! Yes, I’m well aware that some of you — including people I know — are heading across the pond in a couple weeks to see the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals entertain potentially 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium in a pair of back-to-back duels showcasing our national pastime, America’s version of cricket.
As exciting as I’m sure that will be, for our purposes we will concentrate on America’s other national pastime, jazz. This time of year and through the fall, the other season — festival season — is heating up. As is the case with baseball, thousands of people will visit any number of American cities and other countries to hear jazz.
Festival season has now expanded to the point that one can argue they run year-round; still, many more take place during late spring, through the summer and into the fall as the weather warms, allowing for large outdoor gatherings. May, with its plethora of Memorial Day Weekend jazz festivals such as those in Atlanta, Charleston, South Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida, is now in the rearview mirror.
Turning our attention to June and beyond, if you are not making the trip to England to see the Cubs and Cards duke it out, you can head to upstate New York June 21-25. Presenters claim the 37th-annual, Syracuse-based National Grid Jazz Festival is the Northeast’s largest free festival. You can see, among others, Herbie Hancock, Eric Alexander and Something Else! with Vincent Herring, Randy Brecker, James Carter and Jeff ‘Tain Watts. For more information, visit syracusejazzfest.com.
Speaking of upstate New York, there’s the Rochester (N.Y.) International Jazz Festival. Under director John Nugent, himself an accomplished saxophonist, the festival has become a monster, in the best sense of the word. The nine-day affair, celebrating its 20th year, runs June 23-July 1. This year, it expects to attract more than 200,000 people who will have the opportunity to see more than 1,500 artists. You guessed it, there’s more than one stage in operation. You can fly to “The Flower City,” or take the summer approach, likely dodging intermittent construction as you navigate the 927 miles from Columbia.
If you do make it to upstate New York, make sure to plan your travels properly, so you can also take in Freihofer’s Saratoga Springs Festival, which runs June 24-25. Saratoga Springs and Rochester are 220 miles apart; while there’s some artist overlap between these New York events — i.e., Pat Metheny and Snarky Puppy — the former is ginormous, the latter quite intimate by comparison.
Moving closer to home, I always like to offer kudos to the Iowa City Jazz Festival, which has been a fixture for decades. Produced in partnership with the city, this year it runs June 30-July 2. It’s multi-staged and downtown, showcasing vendors. This edition sees Christian McBride, Bennie Benack III and Huntertones among those performing.
Staying in the Midwest, we have another longstanding undertaking: The Twin Cities Jazz Festival. Headquartered in St. Paul, with a main stage in Mears Park, the free June 23-24 event will celebrate its 25th anniversary. The festival is substantial, what with more than 20 venues around the city that largely draw attention to the area’s and region’s musicians, but also attract national headliners.
Heading north, we hit the Canadian Jazz Festivals. On several occasions, I've had the opportunity to travel across Canada and back — and then back again — to attend many of the several Canadian festivals that umbrella and block book under a single network, https://www.jazzfestivalscanada.ca/.
A lot of these festivals run concurrently, overlapping with each other at times. This allows people to literally spend a solid three weeks or, if they desire, several months from mid-June into the fall. While not all the festivals are jazz-centric, the majority are. According to the JFC network website, it’s a 20-member organization that oversees festivals “that take place from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia.”
When you scroll down the network’s home page they proudly display four individual numbers: “21, 138, 2289 and 8846,” that respectively represent the total number of festivals, number of days running, number of performances and number of participating musicians.
We would be seriously remiss if we “deplaned” from Canada without mentioning the Montreal Jazz Festival. If you go by length, number of stages, total number of artists who appear, or any other quantifiable statistic, this festival stands as the largest in the world.
This year, it runs June28-July 9. Similar to other larger festivals, Montreal, while retaining the word “jazz” in its title, has evolved to the point where non-jazz entities, including a number of blues artists, also have a highly visible seat at the table. This year, if you make your way to Montreal, in addition to seeing Diana Krall and Brad Mehldau, you will also be able to see Buddy Guy, Macy Gray and Robert Plant.
Still, thankfully, the majority of performers do present the music we call jazz.
Jon W. Poses is executive director of the “We Always Swing” Jazz Series. Reach him at jazznbsbl@socket.net.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Notes and tones: Criss-cross North America to take in these summer jazz festivals
