.jpg)
“It’s a rich festival and we’ve been involved with it for several years,” Valerie Ferguson, hotel manager says. “Piedmont Park is right in our backyard, so we absolutely had to be involved.”
Alonzo Craig, festival director and program manager of the Performing Arts Division of the Office of Cultural Affairs, says this year will be a homecoming. The Atlanta Jazz Festival was shuffled around to various locations for several years as a result of a five year drought and prohibition of Class A Festivals in public parks. Now, that the drought is over and the prohibition lifted, Craig says the festival can take place in its original home where so many people have grown to love the annual event.
“It’s an event that people mark on their calendars every year. We have family reunions, there, anniversaries are celebrated there, birthdays, people meet there and go on to live there lives together with marriage and children,” Craig says.
Several of the guests at the preview party said they can’t remember a time without the jazz festival in Atlanta. City Councilman Kwanza Hall said he’s been going to the festival all of his life. The event takes place Memorial Day weekend and the goal is to give Atlantans an escape in the Park while listening to great music.
“Every great city has to have a great jazz festival,” Camille Russell Love, director of the Office of Cultural Affairs says. “It gives people a reason to stay in Atlanta Memorial Day Weekend and contribute to the community. It gives them a chance to stop and smell the roses, sit in the park and walk barefoot through the grass.”
Keeping people in Atlanta Memorial Day Weekend is important to local officials, and according to Love it is essential to involve the younger generations with civil activities. The crowd at the preview party was a mixture of the old school and new school which included everyone from Mayor Kasim Reed to pop culture celebrities like Dwight Eubanks from The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Love said the guests were a representation of the jazz festival as a whole.
“We are including an array of jazz performers like Trombone Shorty and Esperanza Spalding,” Love says.” We always have youth jazz band participants. It is important to include them, because they are the future of jazz.”
Craig also understands the power of inclusion and says the performers reflect the demographic of Atlanta.
“The mixture of the line-up is going to be very inviting. It’s a cross section of different musical taste,” Craig Says. “It’s a good presentation of a convergence between hip –hop and jazz.”
This year the Atlanta Jazz Festival includes performances by Esperanza Spalding, Trombone Shorty, Jay Norem and Keith White Quartet, Swing Streets and Swing Beats, Spyro Gyra and many more. The featured artists bring a blend of contemporary jazz and big band jazz with a twist of new flavor that according to Michael Riggs, sponsor and American Family Insurance Sales Director, should make it one of the best festivals to date.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better kick off party. Last year we just did a conference at the Mayor’s office,” Riggs says. “This is my second year sponsoring the festival and we do it because it (the festival) coincides with family and tradition. It truly brings the community together with music and jazz.”