In Aspen, Colo. they have a different view of what is and what isn’t jazz. Maybe it’s because they hardly leave the hills. Maybe they just don’t have a decent record store in town, one stocked with fresh copies of JazzTimes. Maybe they simply hear a hip name like Boz Scaggs and say “He must play jazz.”
Scaggs, as well as legendary jazz artist Joe Cocker, each have headlining slots at this year’s Janus Jazz Aspen Snowmass festival. But please don’t let the presence of Scaggs or Cocker dissuade you from attending. Honest-to-God jazzers Chico O’Farrill, Brad Mehldau, Patricia Barber and Tony Bennett will be there too.
It’ll be summertime in the Rockies, June 19-22 to be exact, and the ski slopes won’t be ripe with the white stuff for a few months. That’s OK because fun can be had by day on golf courses, tennis courts and with Hollywood stars on vacation who love signing autographs.
A number of free concerts, including performances by trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers and vocalist Tierney Sutton, will be presented on a small, outdoor stage in the afternoons, if golf, tennis and autograph-hounding aren’t your thing. Also, blues diva Shemekiah Copeland is scheduled to play an evening set on June 22-she ain’t jazz, but we’ll forego lumping her in with Scaggs and Cocker, mostly because we get her CDs sent to us for free.
Tickets are already on sale, locally at the Wheeler Opera House, (970) 920 5770, and globally by calling the JAS Box Office at 1-866-JAS-TIXX (527-8499). For Patron Tickets (formerly VIP) and general information, call the JAS Office at (970) 920-4996 or visit www.jazzaspen.org.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro