Rockville, MD (Top40 Charts / Jazz Academy of Music Official Website) The Jazz Academy of
Music (JAM), a 501c3 organization located in
Silver Spring, Maryland(www.jazzacademy.org), is pleased to announce its third annual Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival (MAJF), to take place February 17th to 20th , 2012, at The Hilton Washington, DC/Rockville Executive Meeting Center, located at 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. JAM is "Standing Up for Real Jazz" again this year with a celebration of America's music that has something for everyone, young and old. In alignment with JAM's mission of advancing and preserving jazz music through education and outreach, the Festival has three components: concerts (music, dance, and theatre), education, and humanities.
Concerts: In our concerts this year, the MAJF will host extraordinary talent as main headliners. NEA Jazz Master Roy Haynes and his Fountain of Youth Band will perform, and we will honor Mr. Haynes with our distinguished Ronnie Wells Jazz Service Award. [The MAJF was created to honor the legacy and continue to work of the late Ronnie Wells, the dedicated musician, educator and founder of the long-running East Coast Jazz Festival.] Also gracing our stage will be Carmen Bradford, who is known for her work with the Count Basie Orchestra. She will be performing with the newly- formed Mid-Atlantic Jazz Orchestra that will feature the renowned trumpeter, Terell Stafford. And speaking of the trumpet, in the tradition of jazz, we will have a "Trumpet Summit" wherein Mr. Stafford and distinguished trumpeters Brian Lynch and Nicholas Payton will go toe-to-toe or, more appropriately, horn-to- horn on our main stage.
With the goal of introducing jazz to our community through multiple modes of artistic expression, we will also present traditional jazz through dance. The Jazz Ain't Dead Group, under the direction of Candice Michelle
Franklin and the musical direction of Lafayette Harris Jr., will express the music through jazz dance and will feature master tap dancer, Baakari Wilder, from the Broadway cast of "Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk."
We would not have jazz without gospel, so paying homage to the gospel genre has been and continues to be one of our great traditions at the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival. This year, for our Sunday Gospel Matinee, we have Grammy Nominee and
Stellar Award Winner, Pastor Kim Burrell gracing our stage. And, expressing the gospel genre through theatre will be Lavenia Nesmith, starring in the play, "The Mahalia Story," a tribute to Mahalia Jackson. Lavenia mesmerized our audience last year with her performance in the play, "Sistas Can Sang."
Closing out the Festival's main stage will be our very own MAJF Executive Director, Saxophonist Paul Carr, and his Quintet, featuring on trumpet, Terell Stafford, on piano, Joey Calderazzo ( who also performs with Branford Marsalis), on drums, the great Lewis Nash, and on bass, Michael Bowie.
Education: The education segment of the Festival includes a high school jazz band competition. Bands from Michigan, North Carolina, West Virginia, and the DC Metropolitan area will compete for trophies and cash prizes and will receive valuable feedback from clinicians with extensive backgrounds as performers and educators. We also have free master classes conducted by our MAJF performing artists, as well as other professional jazz musicians. The master classes will cover all jazz instruments as well as vocals. In partnership with Adventure Theatre, we are showcasing a family play that will appeal to young children ages 5 and up. This play will serve as an introduction to traditional jazz music for youth and adults alike. The play, "Bud, Not Buddy," is based on the
Christopher Paul Curtis novel, the winner in 2000 of both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. It is about a young orphan boy, Bud, who is searching for his father, Herman E. Calloway, a jazz bass player who leads a famous jazz band. This play is full of laugh-out-loud humor and wonderful characters, hitting the high notes of jazz.
Humanities: The humanities segment of the Festival will take place in the Billy Taylor Room. This area will include interviews with performing artists, including Roy Haynes, Carmen Bradford, and vibraphonist Warren Wolf. We will also present panel sessions on topics that are of importance to the preservation of this great music called Jazz, film screenings and other jazz performances.
Tickets to the MAJF range from $8 -$55 for a single ticket, and $235-$260 for an All
Access Pass. There are also many free concerts and other offerings. Our
Atrium stage has over 25 free performances. We also offer free line dancing. And, with the exception of the play, " Bud, Not Buddy," all of the education and humanities offerings are free and open to the public. For more information and the complete schedule of events, visit our website, www.midatlanticjazzfestival.org, or call us at 1-888-909-6330.
https://www.midatlanticjazzfestival.org
https://www.jazzacademy.org
