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Jazz festival in Detroit to salute the “Flamekeepers”
By Lee Mergner, JazzTimes, March 1, 2010
The folks who organize the Detroit International Jazz Festival love themes. According to Terri Pontremoli, executive director of the festival, it started back in 2007, when she decided to have the festival pay tribute to the local jazz legends. “I like to take that thematic canvas,” explained Pontremoli. “The media approaches us differently. The musicians love it. And audiences love it.” In subsequent years, the festival’s themes were: Detroit vs. Chicago (besides whatever intra-city rivalry there may be, the two fests take place the same weekend): The Detroit-Philadelphia connection and, most recently, “Keeping Up With the Joneses—and Other Jazz Family Dynasties.”
  
30th Annual Detroit International Jazz Festival: In pictures
By C. Andrew Hovan, All About Jazz, September 23, 2009
With perfect temperatures and wall-to-wall sunshine, Detroit recently celebrated a tradition that has brought jazz to the city every Labor Day weekend for the past 30 years. Billed as the largest free jazz festival in North America, this year's festivities ran September 4-7 and featured hundreds of performances on four main stages .

30th Detroit International Jazz Festival celebrates family
By Andrea Canter, Jazz Police, September 13, 2009
If my first Detroit Jazz Festival (2008) was a revelation, my second last weekend was at least as much an ear-opening and even more inspiring experience. (Also, click here to review related photo gallery)

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  Jazz fest forges community links
By Susan Whitall, Detroit News, September 8, 2009
As the 30th anniversary of the Detroit Jazz Festival wound down Monday night, a light rain was the first contrary note in a weekend of perfect weather. These four days of music were a reminder of how jazz serves as a common ether, a bond that creates community among the most diverse elements of society .
 
Jazz festival showcases best of Detroit
By Susan Whitall, Detroit News, September 6, 2009
So far, the 30th anniversary celebration of the Detroit International Jazz Festival, taking place from Campus Martius down to the riverfront, has been the perfect mix of balmy late-summer weather, spicy festival food and jazz in all its 20th and 21st century permutations.
    
Moments to savor at the Detroit Jazz Festival
By The Grand Rapids Press, September 6, 2009
What do you get when you mix a jazz goddess with an orchestra of young men? A fiery mix that prompted one audience member to observe, "She's messin' with those boys.” Vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater put the students in the Michigan State University Jazz Orchestra - some of them newby freshmen - through their paces. On a smooth version of "Bye Bye Blackbird," she cooed at the guitarist, who proceeded to nail his solo. He admitted to her after the song that he was "scared," and she conceded, "That's baptism by fire."
  
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Detroit Jazz Festival: The 90-minute Shorter piece
By The Grand Rapids Press, September 6, 2009
When I saw Wayne Shorter a while back in Montreal I had a chance to ask the band a question following the gig. "Who's holding it all together?" They all laughed, and threw up their hands. "You have to let go," Wayne answered. On a gorgeous Detroit evening, the same quartet (Brian Blade on drums, Danilo Perez on piano, John Patitucci on bass) held forth for a Herculean 90 minutes of improvisation and storytelling.
  
Alfredo Rodriguez stuns Detroit Jazz Festival crowd
By The Grand Rapids Press, September 6, 2009
When Alfredo Rodriguez ended his solo piano set Sunday afternoon at the Detroit Jazz Fest, many in the audience were pretty sure they had just witnessed genius in bloom. The young pony-tailed pianist, recently defected from Cuba, is the son of a father by the same name - also an entertainer, but known as "The Elvis of Cuba." It's hard to imagine that the U.S. Elvis ever would have produced someone quite like Alfredo.
 
Tribute to Owosso native Lyman Woodard part of Detroit jazz festival
By Lorri Lea, Mlive.com, September 3, 2009
Friends and colleagues of the late Lyman Woodard will pay tribute to the jazz organist during this year's Detroit International Jazz Festival, which takes place Labor Day weekend at the city's Hart Plaza.
 
Detroit Jazz Fest celebrates 30 years
By Gary Graff, The Oakland Press, August 30,2009
Robert McCabe recalls standing on Detroit’s Hart Plaza at the start of Labor Day weekend in 1980, surveying the crowd arriving for the city’s first jazz festival and thinking, “Wow, it worked!” He’ll feel the same way this year, when the four-day event, now known as the Detroit International Jazz Festival and considered the largest free jazz festival in North America, celebrates its 30th year with the tattoo of the 36-member Alma College Percussion Ensemble.
   
Bass line: From the great Ray Brown to the Grammy-winner John Clayton and beyond
By Charles L. Latimer, Metro Times, August 18, 2009
John Clayton is too modest a musician to boast about his considerable accomplishments. The bassist has seven Grammy nods in various categories. In 2007, he won for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist for his work with Queen Latifah. And he's likewise handled arranging for the likes of Whitney Houston, Nancy Wilson and Diana Krall. That's just a taste of Clayton's credentials as a sideman.
   
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The jazz photography of C. Andrew Hovan
By C. Andrew Hovan, JazzReview
The 29th annual Detroit International Jazz Festival brought with it a plethora of spectacular music that kept jazz fans hopping for the entire fours days of the recent Labor Day weekend. Even without the themed presentations highlighting iconic musicians from both Philadelphia and Detroit, there was a feeling in the air that something special was going down as some of the nation’s finest came together for a festival that just keeps getting better and better.
 
Detroit International Jazz Festival 2008
By Matt Marshall, All About Jazz, September 16, 2008
Billed as A Love Supreme: the Philly-Detroit Summit, the 29th Annual Detroit International Jazz Festival gathered more than just musicians from those two great jazz cities. The spirit of interchange bubbled over onto all of the festival's stages, showcasing every swatch that makes up the jazz quilt, and inspiring the viewer to see anew just how international this music truly is.
  
Jazz for all, love for jazz: The 29th annual Detroit Jazz Fest
By Andrea Canter, Jazz Police, September 8, 2008
Jazz of course was not born in Detroit, but the city nevertheless embraces this music as if it is indeed its native tongue, and when Labor Day weekend comes around, Detroit is no longer Motown. It’s Bop City.
 
Jazz Fest full of talent, creative programming
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 2, 2008
The best evidence that the Detroit International Jazz Festival has dramatically upped the quality of its programming is that aficionados had scheduling conflicts all weekend long. The chance that you had to mortgage one can't-miss act for another was perhaps the highest in the festival's 29 years.
  
Jazz Fest closes with a bebop feast
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 2, 2008
Though it wasn’t billed as such, closing night at the Detroit International Jazz Festival morphed into a de facto celebration of bebop, the modern jazz movement of the ‘40s spearheaded by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and a few others.
 
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Jam-packed Sunday challenges a jazz critics stamina
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 1, 2008
If any more evidence was needed that the Detroit International Jazz Festival has elevated its product in the last two years, the gloriously stuffed schedule of overlapping talent on Sunday was it. The laws of metaphysics made it impossible to hear it all, and no sane person would even try to ingest as much as I did. Of course, jazz critics have never been known for their mental stability.
 
Philly-Detroit Summit Shines
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, August 31, 2008
Jazz festival jam sessions have a protocol. You typically get lots of bright swingers, a blues, a Latin tune, perhaps a ballad medley and a de rigueur flag waver at the close. The opening and closing ensemble choruses of each tune tend to be messy. Dynamics span the gamut from loud to very loud. Individual moments might quicken the pulse, but the whole invariably equals less than the sum of the parts.
 
Eyes and ears turn toward Philly early today at Jazz Fest
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, August 31, 2008
The Detroit International Jazz Festival has been celebrating two great cities of jazz this weekend, Detroit and Philadelphia, but the focus narrowed to Philly history early this afternoon at Hart Plaza.
 
Jazz Fest opens with tribute to Marvin Gaye
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, August 30, 2008
The Detroit International Jazz Festival has sharpened its artistic profile in the last two years by re-embracing its pure jazz roots and creating more thematic programming. But the festival still likes to give opening night a populist punch. This can be a tricky tightrope, but Friday’s exhilarating Tribute to Marvin Gaye, led by bassist Christian McBride and delivered at a jam-packed Cadillac Square, was
 
Local acts prove homegrown talent is still strong
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, August 30, 2008
While the national stars get the lion’s share of the attention at the Detroit International Jazz Festival, the event remains a critical showcase for the local heroes that invigorate the Detroit scene 365 days a year.
 
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Jazz Festival worth $90 million to region
By Sherri Begin, Crain’s Detroit Business, June 2, 2008
The Detroit International Jazz Festival had an estimated economic impact of $90 million on the region last year, according to numbers released today by the festival.
 
Detroit Jazz Festival
By EJazz News, May 20, 2008
Lem Barney, the former Detroit Lions cornerback and Hall of Fame standout who played in seven pro bowls, was on hand to support Christian McBride at this year's official Detroit International Jazz Festival announcement and kickoff breakfast held at the Guardian building in downtown Detroit.
 
A Love Supreme’ unites Detroit, Philly for 2008 Jazz Fest
By K. Michelle Moran, C&G News, April 30, 2008
The 29th annual festival — the largest free jazz festival in North America — will salute the jazz and soul music of Philadelphia and Detroit under the theme, “A Love Supreme.”
 
Donald Walden ‘kept jazz alive’
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, April 8, 2008
Walden, who died Sunday at his Detroit home at age 69 from complications due to cancer, was a child of bebop. He matured during the golden age of modern jazz in Detroit in the 1950s and carved his own style from saxophonists Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, whose steely tone imprinted itself on Walden's DNA.
 
Most influential women: Grethen Carhartt Valade
By Marcia Danner, Crain’s Detroit Business, October 9, 2007
Detroit doesn’t need another black eye,” was Gretchen Valade’s reaction in 2005 when she heard the Detroit International Jazz Festival was in danger of folding. Valade, 82, came to the rescue with an infusion of $250,000, making her Harper Woods-based jazz record label, Mack Avenue Records, the equivalent of a title sponsor. The following year she assumed stewardship, setting up a $10 million endowment and creating a separate production company to take over the Detroit Music Hall’s role in staging the event.
 
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WMU students hit high notes at Detroit Jazz Festival
By Mark Schwerin, WMU News, October 1, 2007
The Western Michigan University Jazz Studies Program won high accolades at the 28th Annual Detroit International Jazz Festival. First, the program was honored with a prestigious invitation for the WMU Jazz Octet to perform. Then, two of its members won Outstanding Jazz Soloist awards. Finally, an incoming WMU freshman took home an Outstanding Jazz Soloist award while performing with his high school band.
 
Return to jazz roots makes 2007 fest one of the best
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 4, 2007
There are many reasons why the 28th annual Detroit International Jazz Festival was the most inspired since the event expanded its footprint into the downtown core in 2005. In fact, with the possible exception of 1999, this year's festival, which closed Monday, was the most memorable in my 12 years in Detroit.
 
Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra caps jazz festival with a roar
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 4, 2007
Is the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra the best big band on the planet? It’s a silly question, of course . . . But I’ll say this after hearing the Los Angeles-based Clayton-Hamilton band close out the Detroit International Jazz Festival Monday night at the Hart Plaza Amphitheatre: There’s no band in the world right now that swings as hard as this one, and any group willing to take them on in a battle of the bands might want to have a chaplain standing by just in case.
 
Jazz legend comes home with the blues on his mind
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 3, 2007
Jazz aficionados have been buzzing for weeks about the rumor that Yusef Lateef was going to play the blues when the 86-year-old Detroit-born legend returned home to perform Monday night at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. In this case, “the blues” was meant literally as in the 12-bar elemental musical form, as well as a metaphor for the kind of fundamental modern jazz that the tenor saxophonist, flutist and oboist used to play back in the day.
 
Herwig takes Miles and Trane for a post-bop ride south of the border
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September, 3, 2007
In terms of truth in advertising, Sunday night’s set by Conrad Herwig’s Latin Side of Miles, Trane & Wayne was 33 percent false. The septet, led by an A-list New York trombonist, certainly played music by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but never got around to anything by Wayne Shorter. Ok, bygones. The important point is that the band’s blend of Afro-Cuban rhythm with post-bop harmony and improvisation ranks with the most fiery and compelling music heard over the weekend at the Detroit International Jazz Festival.
 
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Carter and Barron inspire the best in each other
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 2, 2007
Violinist Regina Carter made a duet CD with veteran pianist Kenny Barron about five years ago, and the charismatic flow of ideas makes it the most compelling studio document of her gifts. The chemistry between the pair remains sharp to judge by Sunday afternoon’s free-flowing tête-à-tête on the Waterfront Stage at the Detroit International Jazz Festival.
 
A suave pianist feels the spirit and turns up the heat
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 2, 2007
Bill Charlap is an elegant pianist, with a satiny touch, a natty trio and a classicist approach to repertory and style. But his set Saturday night at the Detroit International Jazz Festival with longtime colleagues Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums had an extra dash of vim and vinegar.
 
Garrett returns home; skyscrapers at risk
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 2, 2007
If the Waterfront Stage at Hart Plaza had been turned around 180 degrees so the musicians faced east rather than west, then the Detroit-born alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett might well have blown down the Renaissance Center Saturday night with the gale force of his playing. Garrett’s Quartet -- with pianist Benito Gonzales, bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Jamire Williams -- opened their set at the Detroit International Jazz Festival with the fury of a tropical storm.
 
Huge talent, eager donors keep jazz festivals in tune
By Jon W. Poses, Columbia Tribune, September 2, 2007
The Detroit Jazz Festival represents a new experience for yours truly…What first struck me was the event’s oh-so-hip slogan/theme: "Music On All Cylinders."
 
Festival finally warms up to free jazz
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 1, 2007
The festival . . . had already started like a rocket with Herbie Hancock and Regina Carter on Friday. Now, under spectacularly blue skies with crowds swelling to impressive proportion by late afternoon, there was a feeling in the air that something special was afoot this year – a reaffirmation of the Detroit festival’s historic willingness to embrace all of the tradition without timidity or excessive commercialism.
 
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Carter swings, Hancock rocks and the Jazz Festival opens with a nod to its past
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, September 1, 2007
Violinist Regina Carter and pianist Herbie Hancock opened the 28th annual Detroit International Jazz Festival Friday night with a sound that’s largely been missing from the first night of the event in recent years – jazz.
 
Focus will be on jazz at Detroit music fest
By David Yonke, Toledo Blade, August 30, 2007
In the recent past, the Detroit International Jazz Festival has offered a wide range of musical styles including pop, blues, world music, and R&B. This year, the free four-day Labor Day weekend festival is focused like a laser beam on traditional jazz.
 
Festival celebrates a tale of 2 jazz cities
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, August 26, 2007
For all of the talk of a rumble between Detroit and Chicago at this weekend's 28th annual Detroit International Jazz Festival, the battle royal promises to be more of a celebration than a boxing match. Some of the top talent produced by two of America's greatest jazz meccas will be on display, beginning with tonight's double bill of Detroit-born violin star Regina Carter and the iconic Chicago-born pianist Herbie Hancock. One of the largest free jazz festivals in North America, the four-day downtown festival has sharpened its programming this year, introducing several thematic twists, including the Rumble in the Great Lakes.
 
Jazz Fest seeks to be an arts organization, fiscally secure
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press, August 5, 2007
When philanthropist Gretchen Valade founded the Detroit International Jazz Festival Foundation last year with a $10-million bequest, fans of the event breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, it seemed, the future of the beleaguered Labor Day weekend festival was secure. Yes and no.
 
Jazz fest turns music rivalry into music revelry
By K. Michelle Moran, C&G Newspapers, May 24, 2007
Gas prices may be cutting into people’s travel plans, but metro Detroiters won’t have to go far to hear some great music. The Detroit International Jazz Festival has assembled a sparkling lineup of jazz all-stars and jazz stars of tomorrow for the 28th annual Labor Day weekend festival, which takes place at Hart Plaza and elsewhere in downtown Detroit Aug. 31-Sept. 3.
 
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