2009 Stanford Jazz Festival

STANFORD, CA: Artistic excellence, intimate venues and a welcoming atmosphere define the Stanford Jazz Festival experience, making it unique place where jazz listeners of every generation can gather and feel at home.
The 2009 season, which opens Friday June 26 on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, offers a tantalizing array of talent and features familiar Festival crowd-pleasers such as hard bop maestros the Heath Brothers, up-and-coming talents pianist Taylor Eigsti and guitarist Julian Lage, vocalists Dena DeRose and Madeline Eastman and trombonist Wycliffe Gordon (sweetly reminiscent of jazz ages past with a contemporary twist).

Other past favorites making return appearances this year include saxophonists Eric Alexander and Donald Harrison, violinist Regina Carter and drummer Matt Wilson. Bebop saxophonist and NEA Jazzmaster James Moody launches the Festival on June 26, while pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and drummer Dafnis Prieto--both from Cuba--perform on Saturday June 27 and Sunday June 28 respectively, giving Opening Weekend a cosmopolitan flavor and spice (trombonist/bandleader Wayne Wallace and Brazilian guitarist Paulo Bellinati headline subsequent Festival Latin shows).

The Festival's two retrospectives, “1959 Revisited" and “Stan@Stanford: Remembering Stan Getz," are of particular interest to those who wish to expand their knowledge of the origins of jazz while listening to a bevy of SJW's rising stars blaze a path to the future.


Stanford Jazz Festival offers an eclectic menu of jazz within its framework, including swing, bebop, cool, big band, modern, blues and Latin shows, as well as recitals by its Jazz Camp and Jazz Residency participants and a Jazz Mentors concert showcasing its teacher-training program. Two free “Early Bird" Saturday morning shows, designed for those 12 year of age and under, are a magnet for families and introduce younger listeners to the fundamentals of the genre. The annual “Everything You Wanted to Know About Jazz" concert--also a free event--takes a tour of different jazz styles and analyzes the arrangements of popular standards such as “Autumn Leaves" in a demonstration format accessible to non-musicians. To further augment its educational mission, many Stanford Jazz Festival events feature “Inside Jazz" free pre-concert talks by leading personalities from the jazz community.


Stanford Jazz Workshop's educational programs, Jazz Camp and Jazz Residency, bring together jazz lovers of all ages in an informal, performance-driven format and are widely recognized as a training ground for musicians of remarkable ability. The Workshop counts among its alumni nationally known jazz artists including Josh Redman, Larry Grenadier, Bill Stewart, Taylor Eigsti, Julian Lage, Dayna Stephens and Ambrose Akinmusire.

Tickets for the Festival go on sale May 11 at the Stanford Ticket Office (http://tickets.stanford.edu) or 650.725.ARTS (2787). For more information, visit StanfordJazz.org or call 650.736.0324. Tickets to SJF events range from $20-$40 general admission (depending on concert) with a half-price discount for students with valid ID and children under the age of 18. Presented by See's Candies, with generous in-kind support from KCSM radio, the Rosewood Sand Hill, Stanford Park and Sheraton Palo Alto hotels and the Palo Alto Weekly. Stanford Jazz Workshop is funded in part by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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