Saturday, February 23, 2008

MinnPost: Winter Jazz Fest Preview

Preparing to write about the upcoming Twin Cities Winter Jazz Fest for MinnPost, I thought, "This should be fairly easy. I'll call [executive director and festival poobah] Steve Heckler and get the whole story."

Nice try. Heckler knows the big picture, but Jerry Swanberg is the big-bands guy, Vicky Mountain is organizing the vocalists, Kelly Rossum is wrangling the acts for the youth stages, and Kevin Barnes has the skinny on the food. So I did more calling and emailing and chasing around than I thought. The results: I was able to post more details on the festival than available anywhere else. A minor scoop but it made me happy.

Information about the Youth/Clinic stages arrived after my deadline, so here's what Kelly says:

I don’t have times yet, but… Dakota Combo. Walker West jazz combo. Spring Lake Park High School jazz ensemble. Judson School jazz combo. MacPhail Teaching Artist Greg Keel will also be giving clinics with a couple of the bands.

Photo: Sonny Fortune, the festival headliner.

Twin Cities Winter Jazz Festival Web site.

2 comments:

  1. Very nice blog...I only wish I was less ADD, so that I might be able to keep one up quite so steadily. Then again I'm going to have to for Jazz is Now! fairly soon.

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  2. Thank you, Jason! Good to hear from you and to meet you yesterday at the jazz fest. Looking forward to reading your blog.

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