Emmet Cohen & Friends “Future Stride” with Yasushi Nakamura, Joe Saylor, Julian Lee, and Benny Benack III
Bringing home the 26th annual Litchfield Jazz Festival is the outstanding pianist Emmet Cohen in a program featuring works from his award-winning album Future Stride. Cohen, at 30, is one of the few musicians undaunted by the blunt force the pandemic has had on so many of his peers. Instead of folding
Art Blakey Centennial Tribute
Art Blakey built more than a band in 1955. He built an institution that became Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and thrived for 35 years. The first iteration, co-led by Blakey and pianist Horace Silver, included trumpeter Kenny Dorham, bassist Doug Watkins and tenor saxophonist, Hank Mobley. While its
Charlie Parker Centennial Tribute
“To say that Charlie “Yardbird” Parker was one of the greatest jazz musicians who ever lived is a bit like saying the Mona Lisa is a well-known painting” (J. D. Cosidine, DownBeat). Parker was just 34 when he died in 1955 of a heart attack in the suite of his
Litchfield Legends in the Making
Many of the younger set making waves in the jazz sea these days began their musical journey at Litchfield Jazz Camp and remain on faculty there. Opening the festival is rising-star vocalist Nicole Zuraitis. A 2019 Grammy nominee, she tours internationally, heads our Jazz Camp vocal programs each summer, and
Wycliffe Gordon & Friends
Wycliffe Gordon is a renowned trombonist, composer, conductor, arranger and educator. He was most recently named Best Trombone by the Downbeat Critics Poll 2018, Jazz Journalists Association Trombonist of the year nine times since 2000 and the ASCAP Plus award winner for 2014-17. He has performed with the Wynton Marsalis
Mike Stern Band
TWO CHANCES TO SEE MIKE STERN THIS YEAR! Mike Stern has played for over three decades with everybody who is anybody in jazz. A 6-time Grammy nominated guitarist, he was named one of the 75 best guitarists of all time by Down Beat Magazine and received Guitar Player magazines’ Certified
Goodbye to Childhood – A Tribute to Herbie Hancock’s Masterpiece “Speak Like a Child” – Carmen Staaf, piano
Pianist Carmen Staaf, winner of the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Pianist Competition, was chosen for the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute in 2014. Back on the road, now with a Master’s degree in hand, she’s wasted no time. In 2017 she recorded the critically acclaimed Science Fair with drummer
Randy Brecker & The Chad LB Quartet
The New York Daily News called Chad Lefkowitz-Brown (or Chad LB these days) a “sax phenom.” At 30, he has already toured globally as a soloist and with jazz stars and pop icons like Arturo O’Farrill, Chris Botti, and Taylor Swift. The Chad LB Quartet will perform at this year’s
Duchess
Duchess, founded in 2013 by New York singers Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou, has already been anointed by jazz critics. The group just placed second in the JazzTimes Critic’s Poll in the company of legends Take 6, New York Voices, and The Manhattan Transfer. Inspired by the music
Litchfield Jazz Orchestra featuring Alexis Cole, Andrew Hadro, Kris Allen, Albert Rivera, Avery Sharpe…
The Litchfield Jazz Orchestra makes its 6th appearance this summer. It sprang from the creative imagination of guitarist Doug Munro, long-time Litchfield Jazz Camp instructor and emeritus professor and founder of the jazz program at SUNY Purchase College. Doug proposed we fashion a band of jazz faculty members, and perhaps