You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Let's Talk "Jazz" Festivals

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Adam and Peter talk summer Jazz festivals and what you need to know to see the best jazz this year.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yes. I just want to get your attention there. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Music, advice, and travel advice. Oh, hey.

Coming at you. I don't know what the cold open was all about. I was trying to get your attention. You have my attention, buddy. I'm here. Well, I felt like you were about to drift off. I was. Right.

Oh, look at that squirrel. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can be very distracted, as we all can. But I'm curious to know why we, have any authority to give anyone travel advice. Well, because we're talking about jazz festivals. Oh, that is something we know about. Music festivals.

Well, we're talking about a couple of things. In general, jazz festivals to attend and avoid. Okay. I think we're only going to do one avoid. But full disclosures, many of these are, all of these are called jazz festivals. Okay. Many of them have very little jazz. You know, and we're going to talk about that.

Some more than others. Some more than others. But I feel like people love going to jazz festivals. and they're fine with not actually hearing any jazz. I'm not trying to be jazz police or dogmatic, but it's weird, because could you imagine going to a hamburger restaurant and not eating a hamburger?

Hamburger festival. Or not even having very many hamburger festival, and not really having to kind of hunt around for the hamburgers. Because you know how much I don't like labels, right? And I don't like it. And I feel like if I were to complain about this, then I would be using the labels just for my own advantage. Exactly.

So I don't want to, I don't want to poo any festivals that call themselves first of all, why even call you funny? Yeah, you call yourself a jazz Don't even call yourself jazz for them. Because people love a jazz festival, but if you ask them,

they won't really necessarily say to go hear jazz music. Or maybe it's what they think. People love a jazz festival. They just don't like jazz. No, they think about like you're outside, everything that's surrounding. There's wine, there's cheese, maybe.

There's a festival type. There's no dancing. No dancing. It's more of a festival type. No DJ. Are there any DJs on any of these? Oh my God. There's many, many DJs, yeah.

But, no, some of these are pretty fairly hardcore jazz festival. But what I'd like to do is sort of approach this from the standpoint for our dear listeners, as we say. As if you, and this is a very curated list, highly curated list that we came up with. This is by no means an exclusive list of the greatest jazz festivals. But these are ones that I like and that we've either both been to or one of us has been to. And mostly would recommend, wouldn't you say? Yeah. Can we just take one second before we dig, dive deep into the episode and just talk about out

the gate how much of a hit the gentleman's agreement has been? Just real quick. And the ladies agreement. So can you explain briefly before we get into it? Just 10 seconds, be here. Gentlemen's agreement. Gentlemen and ladies agreement. So we provide an amazing podcast.

You go to YouTube, search out this podcast, even if you're listening to it and subscribe and like this video. That's it. That's the agreement. That's the agreement. If you continue listening from now on, you know when those things are like, even if you don't sign them, if you continue on, you are agreeing to the terms. That's the terms. Okay.

That's it. That's all they got to do. All right. Thank you in advance. Okay. Back to the show. Back to the show. Here we go.

Poodles. Wait. That was me. Okay. So we're going to start things off. How about a little bit of visuals? Are we okay with that? Can we go here?

Okay. Oh, hello. The granddaddy of them all in a lot of ways. Not the oldest jazz festival, but possibly the most famous jazz festival. And they changed that name a couple years ago. jazz and heritage, right? Has it always been jazz inheritance?

No, pretty, for quite some time now. But yeah, it started out as New Orleans Jazz Festival. And it started out as only jazz. And then it became more other types of music, food, culture. I mean, this festival is amazing.

And, you know, I've been to a lot, I used to live right around the corner from the fairgrounds in New Orleans many years ago. Where, actually, on this picture, you can almost see, this is kind of my neighborhood over here. Of course, this is the city here.

This is Bayou, St. John. there but basically it's like an incredible lineup but about what maybe 20 years ago maybe even a little more they started getting some really they'd always have some big performers like you'd have like a paul mccartney right but he would be like kind of secret sitting in with you know the meters or something right right right it wasn't like but then they started just getting like huge sponsorship presented by shell ever heard of them they don't even have to have their name they just have a picture of them they make oil at them gulf oil familiar with that but they became but it's an amazing organization I know a lot of the folks

that have worked the Nurance Jazz and Heritage Foundation which puts on the festival is a nonprofit that does incredible stuff in the community so a lot of people don't realize they'll complain all the ticket prices going up it's become too commercial but that money goes back into the community in some amazing ways we won't get into all that today because but it's just to say that if this kind of lineup if this kind of a vibe this can be a little bit this looks a little COVID right right in that area there this is but just know that the whole festival is not this packed together this is this is one of the big

This is probably John Mayer or somebody up there. That food menu looked awful interest, like something. The food is amazing. The food is great, incredible vendors. But since this is coming up, actually, it's always the last weekend of April and the first weekend. Well, today's May 1st. Today's May 1st. So this, you missed the first one.

We're not even going to look at that, but I'll just take you through Thursday. And they go Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the second weekend. This Thursday is always a fun day because it's not like you're not getting some heavy hitters. Santana, or as you called him. Santana. Santana. I don't know why he said that. Leon Bridges.

I mean, look, you got some heavy hitters. But this is a little bit, this is the most chill day. If you don't want the biggest, biggest crowds, it's going to be big crowds. But you want the, this is always known as the locals day. So a little insider tip. Oh, interesting. So all of these people are, a lot of these people are local Norlands music. Well, every day, they do great of like, that's part of their mission and they stick to it is to have a lot of local music.

Local musicians, truly local musicians. But they also, it's just. said this is the one day the people that live in New Orleans in the area if they're going to go even if they complain all it's gotten too commercial they'll go on this day because the crowds aren't as big a lot of times they give out tickets for free to the community which is a really cool thing they do so anyway definitely go check that out obviously this is all great and the way they present these a lot of festivals do this but they kind of pioneered in this is sort of from the biggest names to the smallest names so it's a little bit judgy but it's just to say that like don't just stop as you're reading here bonorama. This is a great group that's super popular in New Orleans. It's all. I've seen them there. Yeah. They played in St. Louis there, you know.

Should we broadcast from Jazz Fest next year? That would be awesome. You'll hear it. Astro Project. This is a great group. David Torkenowski. Maybe we go to the Heritage Stage and just hang out and do some commentary. Dude, I would totally do that.

Interview some musicians. Let's do it. Let's do it. So then we'll just jump a little bit here to Friday. John Battiste. So they always get a lot of great locals that have Luda moved on. Christian McBride. This is a great.

group that he has a quartet new john jane john butea um john butea owes me $100 i don't know why i'm i'm serious he's owed me $100 for over 20 years i'm just putting that out there i want my hundred uh chris thomas kris not to be confused with our friend chris thomas chris thomas great uh blues musician coltrain legacy featuring tony de grotti that's going to be nice uh irma thomas um legend from new orleans ludicris of course legend from somewhere else Let's go to Saturday. Her. Ever heard of her?

Yeah. She's big. She's big time. But to kind of concentrate a little bit on the jazz stuff, if you're going, well, let me jump over here. Okay, so if you do go to New Orleans Jazz Festival, you've got to get your bearings because the place is big. Yeah.

This is the fairgrounds. This is where horsies. Look at that. They run around here, but it's all shut down. Horses? Horses. Is that a Louisiana term? It's a horse track.

Okay. Yeah, horses. But once you get in there, if you're a jazz person, this is going to be your zone. This is going to be... A little tent on the side. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's bigger than... It does look like it's on the outskirts there.

But the nice thing about it is you can go in there. It's a big tent, but it's a little bit of an oasis for jazz. So even though it's called the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, this is kind of the only jazz in a lot of ways. I mean, sometimes stuff will show up on the bigger stages, but this is it. The Gospel tent is the same thing. So what's cool about it in the blues tent. These three tents, you have some people that will go to them and sit down. First of all, that's really the only covered.

Well, Economy Hall. This is, okay, sorry, I should have mentioned this too. Economy Hall is great for traditional New Orleans jazz. Okay. Like, that's going to be all, not just musicians from New Orleans, mostly, but also like folks from Europe, from Japan, from around the world, really great devotees or devotees to really original New Orleans. I don't even want to say Dixieland, but just original stuff.

Everything else is out in the open. It can be super hot, sunny, it can be raining or whatever. So a lot of people like these tents because you can just plop yourself down. All you got to do is go. over here to get your food and come back. So this is where a lot of the action, I think, that our listeners would really enjoy the jazz tent, certainly the blues tan and the gospel tent as well. Amazing.

Yeah. And so, you know, you got Terrence Blanchard. He'll be at the jazz tent. Nice. This doesn't really show you. You have to go to what they call the grid view, so we're not going to do that. Trambo and Shorty. Jeremy Davenport, friend of the pod.

Delphium Morisalisalis. Kermit Ruffins, you know, the roots. You get some Sunday, you're going to get some heavy hitters. You're going Mumford and Sons. You're going Tom Jones. Does it get any jazzier than that? Some Jones. So anyway, that's New Orleans Jazz and Harris Festival.

We tease it because they don't have enough jazz. But they, I mean, if you were to just take the jazz tent and just go to the festival. It's a huge festival. It's a huge festival. You're going to get such amazing music there. You could just ignore everything else, Tom Jones and everything else. And really have a great time and love it. So it's an amazing thing.

It's one of the biggest festivals in the world. It's put on. Oh, Herbie Hancock. We didn't even, let's show you that. Herbie Hancock. He'll be at the jazz tent. which is great. There you go.

Melissa Etheridge, Galactic, you know. Okay, so Frankie Beverly and Mays, they always close out the festival. It's kind of been like a thing on one of the biggest tens, Ziggaboo, Motelavast. I mean, it's, you know,

it's the jam. Very cool. Should we move on? Yeah. Okay, so now we're going to look, we're going to go across the Atlantic over to a little place that I think people have heard of.

Umbrija. This is a great, great festival in the city of, primarily in the city of Perugia. They have this big outdoor arena stage, they call it, but it is outdoors. It's a really big area. I mean, there's probably 10,000 people or something like that. They get some really big. I don't think that they have the lineup yet put up because they're usually a little bit later. But it's the kind of festival.

Just go. Yeah, just go. Like you could, it's a really cool city. Yeah. It's a beautiful place. Italy. Yeah. Oh, look, it's trying to get me to download something. So they do have some stuff announced. Oh, Bob Dylan. I've heard of him. Bob Dylan ever. Yeah, I mean, it's like a big, you know, um, dado Moroni is an amazing Italian or is he Spanish. I forget. Oh, they got a lot of stuff announced. This is good. Herbie. Yeah. So, I mean, you can just sign up. These are ticketed events, but there's amazing stuff up in the town.

Um, Stefano Bouloglani. He's a great, great pianist. You would enjoy him a lot. This is just a good one to kind of go and take it all in. There's really. There's really. really cool. This venue, the Teatro Marlaki, is amazing. I think you played there when you were there. And there'll be more stuff. Fabricio Boso, he's really good. I work with him.

He's a great player. There's a lot of really great pianists in Italy. Oh, this is going to be nice. Fred Hirsch and Rico Rava. Yeah. But this Teatro Marlachians, it's like a small opera house up in the town. It's an amazing place.

It's gorgeous. Now, little insider tip. Can we give them a little insider tip? Do it. Do we have insider tip music. No, that's okay. We don't need it. No, that's not it.

That's a kitty cat. That's our trigger for, okay. Umbria Jazz is great in the summer, but it's gotten really big. You might want to check in on Umbria Jazz winter. A lot of folks don't know about this. It's a little bit. I lost my screen there.

I lost my screen. Is my screen back? No, that is not what it looks like. That would be something you might be interesting. No, not at all. We're just going to read about this. I'm not a fan of. Losing my screen.

So Umbria Jazz, are we back? No, we're not back. That's okay. I don't even have a screen. This is good. I'm going to have to go from my, oh, that's kind of a good, good view, actually, of the, we're going to have to describe it.

We're going to describe it. Old school podcast. Umbria Jazz, winter, the dates of this, it's always right after Christmas. This year, it's December 28th through the 1st of January. Oh, that's a beautiful time. It's in Orvieto, which is like 30 to 45 minutes away from It's an even smaller hilltop hilltop town.

Old Tuscan. Whatever you're thinking of is a beautiful Italian little town is what it is. Exactly. Exactly. That's what it is. See? Look at that. Oh, gorgeous. Use your imagination there. Use your imagination. I'm just going to start going like this and fun things are going to happen. Okay. Ooh, we don't like that. There we go.

Okay. So this is a great festival because you're going to have great music. It's going to be more hardcore jazz-based. Beautiful venues or Vietto is such a cool time. town. It's in the winter, so a lot of tourists aren't there. Well, there are tourists there, but they're Italian tourists generally. Maybe some Germans, maybe. And incredible, you know, like, really, if you want to, if you're thinking about, like, I'd love to go on the jazz cruising and I want to hang around and hear great music and be close to the musicians, but I hate cruises. Go to Orvieto winter, because it's sort of like that the town is small. You'll see

all of us around there. Hot tip, everybody. Hot tip. Incredible food and just a really cool town. Yeah. Orvieto Winter. You can't go wrong. That's right. Let's do one more. Let's do one more fest. Okay, I'm gonna recommend and let's do one that we say don't go. Okay, I'm gonna give you a couple and I'm gonna let you choose which one, because I love all these. We got Newport Jazz Festival. Let's do that one.

Ever heard of it? I didn't give you the other one. I don't care. Nice Jazz Festival? That's fine, but Newport, man. It's, uh, okay. Open studio artist, Chris McBride is the artistic director still. That's right.

Can I pull this up, Kayla, or should I stay away from it right at this point? It doesn't look like it's working. That's okay. We're going to read this. So I'm looking at the lineup. I'm going to just name some names. First of all, it's August 4th through 6. So this is good for planning.

Newport is at what I would say is one of the bougiest parts of America. Would that be accurate? Murphy. Yes, there's going to be. Murphy, hand me my acoustic. And then hand me my ass cap because I'll be going with the other blue bloods down to the island. It's in Newport, Rhode Island. It's in a beautiful location.

No, it's actually a super, like, inclusive kind of party atmosphere. I mean, it's a little bit chill, but it's like right by the water there. It's always windy and great. All the sailboats and other boats. All you can share your screen. Share your screen, big time. Big time. How about if we do that?

There we go. Yeah. So this is the lineup. This is, so it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's always over that weekend. Herbie Hankkeye, John Battis. So the festival's director is Christian McBride, friend of the pod. Yeah.

He's the artistic director. By the way, he just kills this. Look at this. So this is way more of things that you're going to see if you're jazz, if you really like jazz music, you know, obviously JVAT, Herbie, they're making the rounds, right? Camasi, Washington. Diana Carl, Samara Joy, who is a really having a moment.

Mood Swing Reunion. Jam John. Yeah, the Mood Swing Reunion, which I would definitely see. Charles Lloyd, New Quartet, one of my favorite bands working right now. Domi and J.D. Beck. Scary Goldings featuring John Skullfield. Come on.

Julian Lodge. I like that booking. So many good people here. I'm just kind of making. Somi is amazing. Amazing vocalists. Bill Charlotte Trio. You like swinging stuff straight down the middle?

How about a little straight ahead Bill Charlap? And the great thing is there's like three stages there, kind of a small, medium, and large, but they all have incredible sound. They have really good, just infrastructure. Like a lot of things, it's a beautiful place. But when you go to a festival, all the stuff like we were saying that people like drinking wine and cheese and commiserating with other music lovers, that's great. But this is a festival where it's going to sound great. You're going to have Christian McBride introduce and getting on the mic.

How much better it does it get than August in Rhode Island, you know? And you want some cutting edge music? music, some improvisatory? No, I do not. I do not. How about Lakeisha Benjamin and Phoenix? Oh, that I do on. Lakeisha is having a little moment right now, too.

And then friend of the show, Keon Harold. Keon Harold, St. Louis' own. No, it's a strong lineup. There's a diversity in kind of approaches, but a real thread that goes through there that I think Christian and the staff there have done a wonderful job in the... I mean, this is, I think, his third year in this position,

maybe second year that he actually did the booking. Pedrito Martinez. I mean, it's just, Oren Evans. Like, you can always look at these lineups and be like, well, isn't such and such there. But you can't look at this lineup and be like, why are they there? Like, it's such a, because I think booking, people don't realize how hard it is to do this. It's not just about, like, who's popular now.

Samara Joy won a grant. So a lot of people would be skeptical and be like, oh, of course I got Samara Joy because she just won the Grammy. First of all, all these people were booked before that. Yeah, DJ Pewee was just here in town. He opened up the home opener for the new St. Louis City. soccer club. That's Anderson Pac. And

Pack? Anderson Pack. But he goes by DJ Pewee. Right. And that's going to be so cool. And apparently he was killing. And it's such a like putting a lineup like this together is all about what is available on a particular day. And even the whole weekend for people that are there. So it's a combination of things. It's not just about getting a bunch of great acts. You have to have a balance there. And so that's what New Orleans has done great, but they've been doing it for years. Newport

of course is the oldest jazz. festival. You don't see something you like. You can always go sailing. Exactly. Is Muffy going to be on the catamaran this weekend? Sell some insurance while we're up there. Is that what rich people do?

I think so. How about some reinsurance? I'm a pianist. I don't know what rich is. All right. Well, anyway, we encourage you to get out there and go to a jazz festival. Now, we got one more, but stick around because we're going to be reiterating the gentleman. I don't know if this is fair because this really isn't a jazz festival.

Yeah. What's a jazz festival that we should avoid? There is many, but I don't want to disparage jazz festivals. Well, this was not even a jazz festival. That's what I'm saying. It's kind of we're kind of punching up and it's not really fair. But if you like jazz, we'll say this. If you like jazz, stay away from South by Southwest.

They don't seem to have any jazz program. Also, apparently it's just getting ridiculous down there too. Yeah, I mean, they got tracks. They got this and whatever. Austin's awesome, though. Yeah, Austin's incredible. Well, let us know in the comments, please, on the YouTube.

Gentlemen's agreement, just a reminder, if you made it this far, you definitely have to go subscribe. I know many of you have. We appreciate you guys so much. Leave us a rating review wherever you get this podcast. That's all we're asking for. We're not asking for money. We talked about it, though. No, we're not asking for money.

We're just asking for love, which is so much deeper. But also let us know in the comments your favorite festival. Tell us about some small festivals. I want to do another episode on these are all Blockbuster tests. That's something. It might be interesting. Totally. Yes, it would be very much.

Let us know about a small festival because we love those too. And let us know where you want. want us to go maybe this summer or even next year to do a little play-by-play. Peter, we need to hit the road to this podcast. We're hitting the road. We got to do a live show. We could even do some little piano concerts. We can do some live podcasting.

We can have a crowd. Yeah. Do some clinics. You know what I mean? Some interviews. Yeah. We're coming for you, Rick Beato. We are coming for you.

All right. Until next time. You'll hear it.