Results for "Festivals Talking"
Farewell to a Behind-the-Scenes Festival Legend, Monterey Jazz Festival at 66
by Josef Woodard
This year's model of the Monterey jazz festival, now up to its 66th annual, felt overall like one of the strongest and most balanced of the past decade. Salient highlights included a stunning African-flavored commissioned work, Isakoso Ara, from Ambrose Akinmusire--one of the proudest products of this festival over many years--along with a saucy and artful ...
French Showcase at the 2023 European Jazz Conference
by Francesco Martinelli
Palais du Pharo/Théâtre La Criée European Jazz Conference Showcases Marseille, France September 14-17, 2023 The showcase program of the 9th European Jazz Conference (see separate article) was inaugurated in the comfortable Auditorium of the Palais du Pharo--the main venue of the conference--by the Orchid Big Band. Born inside the musical collective ...
Celebrating and Reflecting Back on Guelph Jazz Festival @ 30
by Josef Woodard
Guelph Jazz Festival Guelph Otario, Canada September 14-17, 2023 There are precious few jazz festivals in the Americas adhering to what could be called the Triple-A curatorial mandate: adventurous, avant-garde and art-centric. These special cases cling to a commercially fragile, demographically marginal--and also culturally vital--realm and mission. Such conditions make ...
Half Moon Bay Wine & Jazz Festival 2023
by Walter Atkins
The Second Annual Half Moon Bay Wine & Jazz Festival took place on historic Main Street Half Moon Bay, with perfect 76° weather and a cloudless sky complementing the day's music and wine tasting. Artists for the HMB Festival included El Guajiro (The Peasant), the Marcus Shelby Quintet, Sammi Joy, Paula West, the Brian Andres Trio ...
Re-Convening The Convention: jazzahead's Bold Comeback Plan
by Josef Woodard
A delicate, operational balance between sophistication, jazz cultural advocacy and marketwise boosterism has been in place since the inception of the ambitious adventure known as jazzahead!. One can sense that balance in the convention/showcase festival's very branding, with its title stylized as in coolly lowercase composite word festooned with an emphatic exclamation point, and in the ...
Jazzkaar Interviews: Kirke Karja
by Martin Longley
Estonian pianist Kirke Karja has regularly appeared at the Jazzkaar festival in Tallinn, customarily performing in surprising settings, always delivering a fresh band combination, or a new set of music, or altering ratios between improvisation and composition, acoustic or electric palettes. During the last two years she has a.) been discovered by the rest of the ...
Vossa Jazz Going Strong and Poetic at 50
by Josef Woodard
Vossa Jazz Voss, Norway March 31-April 2, 2023 Origin stories in the still-young-ish wild frontier of jazz festival culture can be fascinating case studies in feisty pioneer spirit. Take the Western Norwegian Vossa Jazz Festival, an important stop in the storied Norwegian festival circuit, which celebrated its ripe old 50th birthday this ...
Moers Festival Interviews: Kenny Garrett
by Martin Longley
The release of Kenny Garrett's Sounds From The Ancestors album (Mack Avenue, 2021) has reinvigorated his live performances, as the saxophonist tours heartily with an expanded band that's heavy on the Afro-Latin percussion. In recent times, multi-instrumentalist Garrett has been gigging with this dedicated Sounds From The Ancestors line-up, heavily devoted to the album, but not ...
Moers Festival Interviews: Brandon Seabrook
by Martin Longley
Brandon Seabrook cultivates a forked assault on the guitar and the banjo, amplifying both of them, and negotiating their strings at high speeds, filling his playing with hyper-detailed improvisations, or constructing complex compositional strategies, frequently referred to as 'riffs.' Seabrook has long been a crucial presence on the New York City scene, whether leading his own ...
Enjoy Jazz Interviews: Tania Giannouli
by Martin Longley
Along with fellow pianist Nik Bärtsch, the other Artist In Residence of this year's Enjoy Jazz festival is Tania Giannouli, from Athens. Like Bärtsch, she has also become a regular at the EJ concerts in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, although Giannouli has been appearing in more recent years. In 2020, your scribe caught her set at ...
