10th Annual East Coast Jazz Festival

The East Coast Jazz Festival celebrated its Decennial over the February President's holiday weekend in the Double Tree Hotel in Rockville, Maryland. The festival offered over 50 hours of acoustic jazz by artists such as perennial favorites Houston Person, Etta Jones, Buster Williams, Jon Metzger and Dick Morgan. While the main ballroom is played by those artists, emerging talent is showcased in several smaller settings throughout the hotel. High school and university big bands perform in the atrium taking turns with vocalists one floor above them in the gazebo. Lenny White, Buster Williams, Terell Stafford and others conducted workshops throughout the four days of the festival. If that were not enough, Wes Biles lead a late night jam session from 1 am until 4am every evening.

The festival was preceded by the 2001 Elmore “Fish" Middleton Jazz Scholarship competition which was won by saxophonist Mark Small from Norwood, Connecticut.