Craig Taborn©Andrea Canter

The Third Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival (CCAF3) will take place October 1-12, 2008, featuring Chicago-based artists collaborating in performances and projects with artists living in other locations -- both here in the U.S. and abroad. Organized by the Borderbend Arts Collective, a not-for-profit organization, Chicago Calling is part of Chicago Artists Month, the thirteenth annual celebration of Chicago’s vibrant visual art community. In October, more than 200 exhibitions of emerging and established artists, openings, demonstrations, tours, open studios and neighborhood art walks take place at galleries, cultural centers and arts buildings throughout the city.  

The Chicago Calling collaborations will be both prepared and improvised; some performances will involve live feeds between Chicago and elsewhere. Among the scheduled projects are: a Chicago-based musician/composer collaborating with a composer from the Philippines, Chicago-based poets connecting over the radio with poets from Hawaii, and a Chicago-based musician collaborating with a British visual artist. Venues for CCAF3 will include Elastic Arts Foundation, The Velvet Lounge, Black Rock Pub & Kitchen, Heaven Gallery, Little Black Pearl Art & Design Center, WNUR (Northwestern University), Peter Jones Gallery, 32nd&Urban Gallery, AV-Aerie, and other locations. Artists involved with CCAF3 work in a wide range of media, including music, painting, video, poetry, dance, and other art forms. 

Kids conga line©Pamela Espeland

If you want kids to listen to jazz, take them out of school, give them lunch, and make it Latin jazz played by musicians near their age. The 51st Monterey Jazz Festival unofficially (or officially?) began with a free concert on Thursday for the children of the Monterey County Public Schools. The festival spends close to $1 million each year on jazz education, and the annual Concert for Kids, a 13-year-old tradition, is part of its educational outreach program. 

The 8th annual New Smyrna Beach Jazz Festival will be held September 25-28 at indoor venues on the beachside with the exception of two.

The kick-off party will be held Thursday September 25 at the  Om Bar & Chill Lounge, 392 Flagler Avenue from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $ 15, and $ 20 the day of the event. This is a non-smoking affair with cigarette and cigar smoking allowed on the back patio.

Music by the Thom Chambers Duo plus one free drink and free hors d'oeuvres and a few silent auction items for bid. Tickets available at the venue plus Gone Bonkers, Nejma's Boutique, Beachside Pack 'n Ship and The Pennysaver.     There are 4 shows on Friday on Third Avenue at various locations from 5 pm to 1 am.

On Saturday the scene shifts to Flagler Avenue for 10 shows, also at various indoor venues from Noon to 10:30 pm. Also on the Avenue that day will the Gallery Group of Flagler Avenue's Art Walk from 10 am to 5 p.m.

Cassandra Wilson by Clay Patrick McBride 2006

The longest-running jazz festival in the world, the Monterey Jazz Festival (officially the Monterey Jazz Festival Presented by Verizon; September is one month I don’t mind paying my cell phone bill) is now in its 51st year.  

This will be my fourth year in a row at the festival. I first went in 2005 to celebrate a friend’s birthday and fell in love with the setting (20 oak-studded acres), the ambience (laid-back), and the vibe. It’s always an A-list lineup and there’s no downside to spending a few days in Monterey, California, a coastal town south of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, near Carmel and Pacific Grove and north of Big Sur, a storied destination if you dare to drive the spectacularly scenic and often hair-raising Highway 1. 

As MJF begins its second half-century, I’m faced with the delicious dilemma of the festivalgoer: How to choose what to see when you have several choices, all tempting and several happening simultaneously? Should I see Cassandra Wilson (in her Festival debut) or Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts? MJF/51 artist-in-residence Christian McBride’s quintet or Terence Blanchard’s? A Cannonball Adderley tribute with Nancy Wilson, Terrence Blanchard, and Tom Scott, or Matt Wilson with Bill Frisell?  

The Kyle Eastwood Band or his dad Clint in conversation with Jamie Cullum? Kurt Elling or B-3 sensation Barbara Dennerlein? Elling or Herbie Hancock? A newly commissioned work by composer Maria Schneider or the ever-popular Tuck & Patti, last seen at MJF in 1984? 

Artist in Residence, Christian McBride ©Andrea Canter

“Throughout the annual Labor Day festival... there were six- to seven-hour shifts during which you could only throw up your hands and laugh at the orgy of overlapping talent on the menu. The point is not so much that bigger is better but that better is better.”  – Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press 

Detroit is not a destination city. Its depressed economy, high unemployment, and reputed urban crime rates have served to separate Motor City from more appealing centers of Midwest tourism and conventioneering. But consider the origins of jazz, a music that rose like the Phoenix from the ashes of adversity, swathed in a spirit of hope in the future and simply joy in living another day. 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 Mo’town. It’s Bop City.