Quite possibly the most prestigious musical event today, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has hit the big 4-0 and in turn, has outdone itself in booking nothing less than the cream of the crop. The 2009 lineup is incredibly diverse, both stylistically and chronologically, and will take music from jazz, pop, rock, soul, gospel, folk, salsa, blues, R&B, funk, and lots of music rooted in Louisiana, such as Cajun and zydeco. The event is scheduled to take place the weekends of April 24-26 and April 30-May 3 and it's a wonder how they've managed to cram hundreds of artists into a mere seven days. There are so many artists that one wouldn't know where to start unless they have a specific genre in mind. So for now, let's extract some of the rock bands that will be playing.

Although an official schedule has yet to be released, the lineup has been broken up between the two weekends. During the first weekend, Dave Matthews Band will be featured as one of the headliners (sadly, sans the original sax player). Wilco, who strangely drew in a larger crowd than Rage Against the Machine at Lollapalooza, will undoubtedly be received with open arms.  Read more »

The loose alliance of midrange festivals that began taking shape more than a year ago put some meat on its bones with the announcement of a networked sponsorship sales program. The Music Festival Alliance includes seven independent festival brands from around the U.S. By aggregating their audience of more than 300,000 annual attendees, they hope to be better able to compete for national sponsors against big national festival companies like AEG, Live Nation, C3 and Festival Network.

The Alliance named music magazine publisher Zenbu Media as national sponsorship coordinator. Zenbu is the publisher of Relix Magazine, Jambands.com, and a variety of other print and online music media. it is also co-producer of its own festival, Green Apple Music Festival, which is not a part of the alliance.

Zenbu president Steve Bernstein explains the value proposition this way. "By consolidating sponsorship opportunities, it's a great way for brands to coordinate their marketing programs and physical presence while reaching hundreds of thousands of core music fans all summer long."  Read more »

Thousands of people packed Helena this past weekend and many are praising the 23rd installment of the Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival as a success.  While event organizers are still busy tallying the final numbers, estimates reflect that 83,000 people attended the festival.  Average crowds ran approximately 35,000 on Friday while nearly 45,000 closed one of the largest free blues festivals on the planet Saturday night.

The closest that the Monterey Jazz Festival's Saturday afternoon program came to jazz was when Maceo Parker performed a mini-set of Ray Charles tunes with a youth jazz orchestra behind him. Otherwise it was R&B, funk and blues rock and roll that covered the afternoon.

That may seem surprising, but as I understand it the festival's explicit policy is to present cross-genre artists for the first Saturday session, apparently an effort to attract a broader audience than only jazz purists. Still I find the choices of Ledisi, Maceo Parker and Derek Trucks to be a surprising bit of programming for one of the most prestigious jazz festivals in the world.  Read more »

There's nothing like a weekend of glorious music at 9000 feet in the Rocky Mountains to shake off the routine of everyday life and get you "feelin' again," as headliner John Hiatt reminded the happy crowd at Telluride Blues & Brews. Whether you attended or not, this video slide show by multimedia blogger Kelly Butler captures the essence of the experience. Artists pictured include John Hiatt, Gov't Mule, The Derek Trucks Band, Joan Osborne, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and lots more. But the real stars are the festival itself and the happy attendees drinking in the great music, natural beauty and tasty libations.  Read more »

Entering its second half-century, the prestigious Monterey Jazz Festival offered plenty of evidence of vitality in the genre while continuing to present a mostly retrospective approach to the music on its main stage. Perhaps such a schizophrenic posture is inevitable in an event with so much history behind it, but its future might be better served by a more risk-taking outlook.

To be fair, I should say that I attended only three of the five festival sessions (MJF splits Saturday and Sunday into separately ticketed afternoon and evening shows). But though the Sunday night session that I missed presented some of the festival's marquee acts in Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, even those jazz greats speak more to the music's past than to its future development. Several critics (here and here) who covered the Sunday finale concluded that Hancock basically phoned in his performance. For a gig as significant as Monterey, fans expect that performers would try for something unique instead of trotting out their tried-and-true set list.  Read more »