Photo: Richard Waltzman
The 17th Evergreen Jazz Festival will take place in Evergreen, Colorado, on July 27-29. Nationally known for its combination of top bands, intimate venues and appealing mountain setting, the Festival will offer 80 hours of live traditional jazz ranging from Dixieland to ragtime to blues, boogie-woogie and swing.
This year, the line-up will feature the Holland-Coots Jazz Quintet, co-led by pianist Brian Holland and drummer Danny Coots, and the Rock Island Roustabouts, a new collaboration created by drummer Hal Smith and pianist Jeff Barnhart. Both bands will be appearing at the Evergreen Jazz Festival for the first time ever this year. Other artists featured on this year’s program include the Carl Sonny Leyland Trio, the Queen City Jazz Band with vocalist Wende Herston, and After Midnight with their spot-on sound of the Benny Goodman sextet, among others.
In addition, the Festival will feature a jam session of top musicians of different bands getting together for the first time on stage. "We've done this the last several years," says Evergreen Jazz Festival Production Manager Jeannie Mann via a press release, "and it was probably the most popular set of the whole weekend. So we're excited to do it again this year and are sure the audience will love it."
Other weekend highlights include three piano duos with Jeff Barnhart, Brian Holland and Carl Sonny Leyland, while several times each day of the Festival between sets, Dance Showcase segments will provide authentic demonstrations of popular Jazz Age dances such as the Jitterbug, Lindy Hop and Black Bottom, complete with period costume.
For more information, go to https://www.evergreenjazz.org/
