The festivities begin in the heart of downtown at Hot Plate Brewing Company with an open jam session.
“Everybody's invited to come, bring their own horn, we’ll provide the keyboard, the drums and the bass, and a house band actually, so you can sit in one at a time or take over the place. So, that's sort of a way to open Jazz Appreciation Month – JAM – with a jam session," said Ed Bride is president of Berkshires Jazz. “Tomorrow night, on Friday, we have the jazz crawl where six places around town will be featuring local musicians, no cover, no minimum and a variety of musicians going from Jae's down at the Hilton Gardens Inn up to Dorothy's on North Street and four places in between. So, it'll be jazz from about six till 10pm at various places.”
On Saturday, the action shifts – or rather, swings – to the Proprietor's Lodge on the banks of Pontoosac Lake for a night of swing dancing.
“There'll be instructions at six for those who might have forgotten or may have never caught the bug," said Bride. "And then a live band, the Don Mikkelsen Quartet, playing swing music from seven until 10pm.”
On both Sundays of the festival – the 21st and 28th – Dottie’s Coffee Lounge will host a jazz brunch starting at 10.
“Then we'll get back to it on Tuesday, April 23rd, our jazz prodigy concert- For the first time on Tuesday this year, so check that out [at] the Berkshire Athenaeum, and we'll be introducing two young artists who have never played together on the same stage," Bride told WAMC. "They come to us by way of the Litchfield Jazz Camp, which has been sending us recruits, if you will, for our jazz prodigy concert for several years now. And they were so optimistic and so enthusiastic about the piano player Jasper Zimmerman and alto saxophonist Zach Catalano. They couldn't figure out which one to recommend, so we said, let's bring them both! So, we'll put them on stage together with Pete Toigo on bass and Conor Meehan on drums- Our local rhythms section, if you will.”
The festival climaxes with its headlining weekend on the 26th and 27th.
“Friday, we have a young talent. He's 18 years old Brandon Goldberg. He played the Newport Jazz Festival when he was 12, and he made his Berkshires debut here in 2022 to a turn-away crowd at Ventfort Hall, and people have been clamoring to get him back. So, we're bringing him back as one of our two headliners for Friday night, April [26th] at the common room at Zion Lutheran Church. It's our first gig in that room. It's a wonderful room acoustically and visually.”
On Saturday, the Marcus Roberts trio will perform at the Colonial Theatre.
“He's been around for about 40 years," said Bride. "I first saw him with Wynton Marsalis at the Blues Alley in Washington, about 40 years ago. This is a blind, young musician – young, by some standards in the jazz world – a blind musician who has toured internationally, he's played with orchestras, as a composer, as an accompanist, and so, he's heading his trio here and he's performing part of his work called 'Rags to Rhythm.' This is like a 12 movement suite that is an anthology of jazz styles, and he composed this from a Chamber Music America commission about 10 years ago, and I've never heard it live, and I think our audiences will just love it. It's, as I say, an anthology of jazz styles, and owing to the fact that that weekend is the beginning of the celebration of Duke Ellington's 125th birthday, Marcus will be playing some Ellintonia in the first part of his set.”
A group of burgeoning local talent named the Berkshires Jazz All Star Youth Band will open for Roberts.
“This is a curated group, they have to audition for it, that's in residence at Reed and Herberg Middle Schools with some alumni who are at Pittsfield high school now," Bride told WAMC. "So, they'll be opening. It's at 18-piece big band opening for the Marcus Roberts Trio”
The jazz jam at Hot Plate Brewing Company that kicks off the 11-day festival starts tonight at 7.
You can find the full Pittsfield CityJazz Festival schedule here.
