2024 DC Jazz Festival: 20 years of jazz
Twenty years. That’s how long the DC Jazz Festival has entertained audiences in and around the metro-DC area. From the festival’s inception to the present day, the DC Jazz Festival has and continues to show global and local jazz artists on the same stages in the name of promoting and celebrating the gloriousness that is jazz music from varying perspectives.
Started in the early 2000s by husband-and-wife team Charles Fishman and Stephanie Peters, the DC Jazz Festival became an instrument to bring a festival honoring jazz music to the local community while also taking advantage of the enmeshment of local and federal to honor this nation’s first true art form: jazz. Though the festival has scaled back in recent years due in part to the COVID-19 quarantine from a few years ago (the festival used to occur over two full weeks at many different venues in and around DC), the DC Jazz Festival is still a spirited festival and arguably one of the last true jazz festivals in the world. DC Jazz Festival Artistic Director and newly minted NEA Jazz Master Willard Jenkins and Festival President and CEO Ms. Sunny Sumter kicked off the 20th anniversary by spearheading a sold-out performance at the Embassy of Australia by uber-talented saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and Australian multi-instrumentalist James Morrison. The festival then continued through the week with performances by local jazz royalty that included vocalist Ms. Sharon Clark, saxophonist Paul Carr, this year’s artist-in-residence bassist Corcoran Holt, and jazz music’s most celebrated emerging stars Ms. Samara Joy and Jamie Collier (with a special appearance by America’s favorite DJ D-Nice) before culminating with a weekend at the Wharf.
As for the weekend’s activities: the Wharf was jumping! Artists like CimaFunk, Galactic, Reginald Cyntje, the Michael Thomas Quintet, Nasar Abadey, Billy Hart, Paolo Fresu, Kenny Barron, Bill Frissell, Corcoran Holt, and Ron Carter (who performed in a duo setting with pianist Donald Vega after enduring the devastating loss of long-time trio member Russell Malone who passed away just a couple of weeks ago after a tour stop in Tokyo, Japan) performed before a nearly sold-out crowd for two full days of music. Though this writer missed a few performances on day 1 and part of day 2 at the Wharf due to confusion about stage logistics, there was still plenty to see. Here’s the DC Jazz Festival at the Wharf in pictures.
