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DC JazzFest 2024: An Artistic Perspective

By Willard Jenkins, DC Jazz Festival Artistic Director​

The 20th anniversary DC JazzFest, August 28-September 1, 2024, was in so many respects a very successful festival.  Across our approximately 110 performances, our estimated audience of 96,000+ experienced an impressive stylistic array of great jazz and jazz-informed artistry.  Our menu of artists included not only several NEA Jazz Masters, but numerous emerging and mid-career artists, including a wealth of DMV-based artists on our stages. 

Those stages and venues themselves – including our gala opening night at the beautiful Embassy of Australia – represented an important, not to be overlooked element of DC JazzFest 2024, and our overall evolution.  Culminating in our annual tentpole weekend at The Wharf on six stages (including our youth ensemble stage, Union Stage and The Anthem), our festival performances for the first time included the complete activation of our new home at Arena Stage.  Performances at Arena Stage were presented in two theaters in the complex, and humanities programming took place in the street-level Molly Smith Study.  Those stages provided DCJF ’24 with very attractive outdoor/indoor options.  Clearly, certain performances are more ideally suited for our outdoor stages.  Those included Bobby Sanabria’s Multiverse Big Band, Galactic, the Chuck Brown Band; a list of bands which must also include Cimafunk and Stanley Clarke N4Ever.

Our Arena Stage activation also proved very accommodating for performances of a more subtle, acoustic nature.  Most exemplary of those was the deeply touching performance provided by NEA Jazz Master bassist Ron Carter’s Trio, a band that had so recently suffered the enormous loss of their third member, the great and beloved guitarist Russell Malone.  Ron Carter and pianist Donald Vega soldiered on, delivering a beautiful performance as they grieved the loss of their musical partner and loved one. 

The impressive array of NEA Jazz Masters we presented at DCJF ’24 included Ron Carter, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Stanley Clarke, drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Billy Hart, and vocalist Dianne Reeves.  In addition to the Stanley Clarke/DownBeat Magazine Blindfold Test at Arena, we hosted a lively panel discussion including Barron, Carrington, Carter, Reeves and the undersigned to an SRO house in the Molly Smith Study at Arena.  And Hart was honored in performance by our 2024 artist-in-residence, DC native and Duke Ellington School alum bassist Corcoran Holt, who also led our DCJF jam sessions at Union Stage.   

Ms. Carrington was an auspicious participant in DCJF ’24, not only onstage at Arena where she presented an all-star performance featuring her core ensemble augmented by several guest artists she selected from the DCJF ’24 menu,including pianists Marta Sanchez (from the David Murray Quartet) and Kris Davis, Dianne Reeves, harpist Brandee Younger, and the distinctive guitarist Bill Frisell .  Her all-star performance served to further illustrate the majesty of – and encourage our audiences to experience – her New Standards exhibit, on display in the Arena Stage concourse area through at least October 13th. 

This exhibit, lovingly curated by Ms. Carrington, is a DCJF exclusive for our community, focusing for the most part on an impressive array of contemporary women-centric contributions to today’s jazz lexicon, and including specific focal points on such historic jazz women contributors as ancestors Mary Lou Williams, Melba Liston, Alice Coltrane, and Geri Allen.  The exhibit also includes a sculpture contributed by one of DCJF’s most stellar performers, vocalist Carmen Lundy, who positively thrilled a Saturday evening audience at Arena.

Jazz mastery was also celebrated at Arena with a performance honoring the centennial of the ancestor saxophonist Sonny Stitt.  The tribute included contributions from some of our most productive DC jazz educators, including saxophonist Davey Yarborough (emeritus jazz director at the Duke Ellington School), and keyboardist Charles Covington of Howard University.

In addition to those acknowledged masters, DCJF ’24 presented an impressive array of young, next-generation artists.  These ranged from Brandee Younger and vocalist Christie Dashiell to the electrifying saxophonist-bandleader Lakecia Benjamin at the Embassy of Australia (where she welcomed Australia’s leading jazz instrumentalist, James Morrison), to two young artists who have already made the leap to the big stage: vocalists Samara Joy and Jacob Collier, who enraptured our audience at The Anthem. 

DMV artistry was on auspicious display at DCJF ’24, including such veteran players as drummer Nasar Abadey and Supernova, trombonist-educator Reginald Cyntje and trumpeter Michael Thomas’ deeply soulful Quintet.  The JazzDC All-Stars, a new DCJF development, presented an entire big band of some of the DMV’s finest musicians, under the direction of the man hailed as the “Dean” of DC jazz, pianist-educator Allyn Johnson.  They thoroughly engaged a packed house at The Hamilton Live, augmented by special guest soloists alto saxophonist Antonio Hart and vocalist Christie Dashiell.  DMV artistry was also royally represented by trumpeter Muneer Nasser Quintet, saxophonist BJ Simmons Quintet, the Amy K. Bormet Trio, and the rangy Stephen Arnold & Sea Change.

In addition to DCJF’s presence in SW at The Wharf, The Anthem, Union Stage, and Arena Stage, DCJF ’24 reached across several sectors of the Washington, DC community. These included NW at the Kreeger Museum with a SRO performance from vocalist Sharón Clark, far Northwest at Takoma Station with saxophonist Paul Carr and the Junto Trio featuring our very own DCJF Chairman Peter Gillon; SE at Mr. Henry’s with an SRO tribute to jazz great Billy Strayhorn by writer Barry Moton; and SW at Westminster Church with our tribute to pianist Kevin Toney and the Donald Byrd in Blackbyrds tradition led by musical director Keith Kilgo. DCJF ’24 once again upheld our rich tradition of presenting a truly citywide festival!

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