Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger performs at the Clearwater Great Hudson Revival in June. Photo courtesy of Russ Cusick.

While there will be no shortage of young talent on view at the upcoming George Wein's Folk Festival 50, the new name for the venerable Newport Folk Festival, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary August 1-2 at Fort Adams State Park in Newport RI. But there is little doubt that the man of the hour will be the festival's 90-year-old co-founder, Pete Seeger, who has been having a summer to remember.

In May, Seeger celebrated his milestone birthday with thousands of fans and an all-star cast of musicians at Madison Square Garden in New York. Last month, he was honored again at another festival that he founded, the Clearwater Great Hudson River Revival (photos). At Newport, he will close the main stage on both nights of the festival, returning the event to its roots at least one more time.

Let’s first address the elephant in the room. Bob Dylan will not be appearing at George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 in Newport RI this summer. He’ll be touring minor-league baseball stadiums around that time and was not available.

But many other important figures from the festival’s 1960s heyday will be on hand, starting with festival co-founder Pete Seeger, who famously tried to pull the plug when Dylan went electric at the 1965 festival, and including Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, and more.

Nor is it just about the old-timers—not by a long shot. Continuing in the direction the predecessor festival took last season, the Folk festival lineup is brimming with exciting young talent. Some of the names sure to appeal to a younger generation of music fans are The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, Neko Case, Ben Kweller, The Avett Brothers and lots more.

The Monterey Jazz Festival is billing its festival-closing Sunday night program as "Three Generations of Pianists" (i.e. Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea and Jason Moran), but the generational angle really applies to the festival overall.

The festival announced the full program for the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival Presented by Verizon, set for September 18-20 at the Fairgrounds in Monterey CA. The lineup pays homage to musical legends while also promoting young talent that represents the future of the genre.

Brubeck has a long association with the Monterey festival. This year, his quartet will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his classic Time Out album. Two other classic releases from the same year—Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and Giant Steps by John Coltrane—will get tribute treatment from an all-star band of next-generation players.

Some old-time legends are still around to observe their own tributes. Ninety-year-old folk singer Pete Seeger will make his first-ever Monterey Jazz appearance.

Back to MerleFest and for me the biggest highlight, the appearances by Pete Seeger, who is getting lots of ink these days on the strength of Bruce Springsteen's new Seeger Sessions project. Seeger turned 87 a couple of days after MerleFest, but he seemed just as spry as he was back in the day. It may be a function of one's own age relative to a performer's: He was an elder statesman when I was a youngster, and now that I've been around the block more than a few times he doesn't seem a lot older.

I suspect that's true for other fans, since most of the adults at his MerleFest kid's stage performance (who outnumbered kids by a large margin) looked on with childlike expressions as he performed many of his classic songs. Seeger was accompanied for this set, one of his several MerleFest appearances, by his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, a member of The Mammals, which also played the festival.