The Worlds Longest Running Jazz Festival Returns
Born in the era of the big band swingers, bebop behemoths and the most soulful of singers, the annual Monterey Jazz Festival has been celebrating the genre's greatest performers since 1958. Legendary features include Billie Holliday, Dace Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman and Duke Ellington. Now enjoying its 62nd anniversary, the longest-running touring festival in the world is coming to town!
This year the line-up is studded with more talent winners than you can shake a stick at, with the house touring band made up of the vocally elastic singer Cecile McLorin Salvant, Canadian songwriter, singer and trumpeter Brian Skonberg, tenor saxophonist and first female instrumentalist and first South American to win the Thelonious Monk Competition Melissa Aldana. Five-time Grammy nominee, pianist and Monterey Jazz Festival on tour music director Christian Sands, Grammy-nominated drummer and vocalist Jamison Ross and bassist Yasushi Nakamura.