Had we prayed to the sun gods for good weather, it’s unlikely they could’ve produced a day as perfect as the final one of the Rochester International Jazz Festival on Saturday. With a high of 77, minimal humidity, and barely a cloud in the sky, it was the perfect backdrop…
Posts published in “Jazz”
A hypnotic beat, clings and clangs on the drums, and an urgent voice in a parlando of social calls all came from the voice of Brittany Davis, the blind, non-binary Seattle singer, at Montage Music Hall on Friday night. The first stop on my daily jazz festival trek was an…
“There’s no boundaries to music,” Camila Meza said in her early set in Kilbourn Hall last night. The Chilean singer-songwriter/guitarist said she was attracted to the New York jazz scene and, from there, all the beats, harmonies, and languages of Latin-American music and jazz tumbled together to create Meza, the…
I set a trap for myself, and fell in. I made an early prediction about the best show of the festival when we were only halfway through it. And another show on Day 6 rose to the occasion, which will be added to my personal ‘best of RIJF 2026.’ That…
Hiromi was restrained on Tuesday night. Those who saw her late concert, and who were seeing her for the first time, might think that’s a preposterous thing to write. One person, after the concert, called it “caffeinated jazz.” Compared to most performers, she was dynamic and energetic, scaling the keyboard…