Every February in Rockville, Maryland, the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival warms the hearts and minds of jazz listeners with four days of music and big fun. Vocalist Ronnie Wells co-founded the East Coast Jazz Festival in Montgomery County, Maryland in 1992, and the annual love fest continued until 2006. In 2007, Ronnie died at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, MD after battling lung cancer. DC-based saxophonist Paul Carr and his wife Karmen, who run the educational program, the Jazz Academy, revived the festival in 2010, with the help of Willard and Suzan Jenkins, renaming it the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival.
This year’s edition featured a stirring set by Mr. Carr and featured guest, trumpeter Randy Brecker. Here, joined by guitarist Bobby Broom, pianist Allyn Johnson and drummer Harold Summey, they work out on Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythmining.”
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