The crowd gathers for a performance at Hart Plaza during the 2006 Detroit International Jazz Festival.
A city that needs a big break from the slow and painful legal drama surrounding its mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit is about to get one when its four-day heavy-hitting jazz festival starts off at 5:15 p.m., with the Duke Ellington School of Performance Arts Jazz Ensemble taking one of its six stages.
The Detroit Jazz Festival, almost into its fourth decade (this year witnesses the 29th annual edition), is filled to the brim with performers forming complete spectrums of both visibility in the local, regional and national jazz scenes as well as the various denominations of jazz.
Each of the six stages maintains the festival-wide blending of styles while delicately and gradually showcasing bigger and bigger acts. The festival's Jazz Garden stage will feature jazz bands from local public middle and high schools. The Mack Avenue Records Pyrmaid Stage will focus mostly on up-and-coming local as well as jazz bands from local universities, albeit while including some major out-of-towners such as Bonerama. The Compuware Here and Now Stage will host acts that have gotten regional and some national recognition for the most part, while the Absopure Waterfront Stage will feature nationally-known acts that aren't quite superstars. Finally, the Carhartt Amphitheatre and Chase Main Stages will feature the chart-dominating artists of the festival, though the Amphitheatre has a bit of local flavor in its programming, having major players like Christian McBride playing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Although it's too late to miss the pre-festival club series gigs, with performers like McBride playing at local cafés and bars, there are plenty of other ways to get involved with Detroit Jazzfest 2008 outside of the festival's main block of programming. As part of a National Endowment for the Arts jazz program, a Pepsi Jazz Talk Tent will be erected for this year's festival, where leading musicians, jazz historians and ethnomusicologists will participate in five different panels covering subjects from John Coltrane to the Hammond B-3 electric organ. There will also be KidBop area and an area hosting jazz-centric art projects so no parent has to feel guilty about taking their kids to a jazz festival (this one, at least).
Perhaps the best part about the whole thing is that it's free. If your jazzfest appetite has been whetted, you can go to www.detroitjazzfest.com for more information on the event or just head on down to Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit and check out all that the festival has to offer.
