“It’s all blues,” legendary trumpeter Miles Davis once said of jazz, the musical idiom invented by Black Americans that drew on New Orleans funeral music, French opera, military marches, ragtime, and 12-bar blues, creating a unique genre marked by multiple rhythms, call-and-response patterns, diverse tone colors, with improvisation a key stylistic element.
Over time from its beginnings in the early 20th century, jazz evolved quickly from the sounds created by Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Seven bands to the Big Bands fronted by Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Louis Jordan, notable for danceable swing rhythms, in the 1940s and 1950s to the bebop of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker in the same decades, to the “art music” of John Coltrane and Davis performed for seated audiences in concert halls in the 1960s and 1970s, to Latin jazz, rock jazz and smooth jazz, amid many other permutations in the 1980s and 1990s and into the 21st century.
While jazz can obviously be so many things, it is certainly America’s great contribution to world culture, which, for the 22nd year, will be celebrated during the Vacaville Jazz Festival Friday to Sunday in downtown Vacaville, topped by a Sept. 24 grand finale in the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre.
Themed “Unify with Music,” the free festival, hosted by the Vaca Jazz Society, will feature 30 bands and more than 300 musicians. Co-hosts and emcees will be Frank Salamone and Ron George.
“It is time to continue to heal and unify together this year with the love and excitement of live music within our community,” festival organizer and trumpeter Keith Stout said in a press statement.
The festival’s 2023 edition includes some changes, he noted, among them performances in the Vacaville Town Square beginning at 6 p.m. Friday.
On Saturday, the good times and sounds continue all day at Town Square and at Journey Downtown (a short walk from the square, at 308 Main St.), Makse Restaurant, at 555 Main St., and Nut Tree Plaza, all in conjunction with the annual Vacaville Arts Week.
Sunday will be Military Tribute Day at Journey Downtown. The music, sponsored by Live Music Center, begins at 5:30 p.m. and feature the festival headliner “The Commanders” of the Travis USAF Band of the Golden West and led by Senior Airman Nattie McKay, with jazz vocalist Tiffany Austin featured during the program.
Included in the tribute program will be a special performance by the Vaca Jazz Society Camp All-Stars Music Students, directed by Mike Williams, Air Force Senior Master Sgt. (Ret).
The Sept. 24 grand finale, which supports local school bands and local music academies, will be from 1 to 6 p.m. and feature the Vaca High Jazz Band, the Will C. Wood Sylvan Singers, fado singer Ramana Vieira, Brette Alana Stout, The Dixon Dancers, Live Music Center bands, Alina’s Adams Music School, Young Conservatory of Music, Marion Oliver Students & School of Rock Vacaville.
For those who attend, the festival will touch on a variety of sounds, from blues and gospel to swing and Big Band to Latin and funk to rock and pop, Stout said in the prepared statement.
Although jazz is sometimes called America’s version of classical music, with European roots, Black American composers borrowed from European material to create self-invented forms of blues and jazz, original and distinctive music. It was forged during the Jim Crow and segregationist South, when its makers, as expressed in the music, remained so clearly free within themselves, a spirit that, no doubt, will underscore the 22nd annual Vacaville Jazz Festival.
For more information, visit www.vacajazzsociety.org for artist and festival locations and a complete schedule.
