San Jose Jazz Festival – August 5-8
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Slated for Aug. 5-8, the nation’s biggest free jazz festival is once again bringing in hundreds of top musicians for a long weekend of music. Among this summer’s headliners are tenor saxophone legend James Moody, trombonist Steve Turre, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, young singing star Lizz Wright and three of the Latin jazz world’s best percussionist-band leaders: Ray Barretto, Bobby Sanabria and Pete Escovedo.
“We’re really trying for a very balanced festival of straight-ahead jazz with the liveliness that the Latin side brings,” says Steve Saperstein, general director of the San Jose Jazz Society, which runs the event. “It’s a real good blend of the Latin influence in jazz and the jazz influence in Latin, without stooping to commercialism and forsaking the art. It’s a combination of the accessible and the artistic.”
The music begins Aug. 5 with a pricey opening-night gala and concert at Santana Row, with the San Jose Jazz Orchestra, featuring singers Kim Nalley and Jamie Davis, and a trio led by young pianist Taylor Eigsti, raised on the Peninsula and now gathering a national following. (The Thursday gala is the weekend’s only paid event).
Then the festival unfolds Friday, Saturday and Sunday on seven downtown stages, mostly outdoors, with the smells of barbecue and grilled catfish wafting in the air and spicing the performances.
As always, there will be jazz, blues and salsa and Latin sounds. A youth stage will feature talented young players from Bay Area schools and jazz programs.
San Jose Jazz Festival Schedule
