There are a lot of sources for information about the 2007 Rochester International Jazz Festival and the artists who will be playing there. I’m just one guy and while I hope you hang out here and check out the offerings, there are some other voices out there, including regular media and other bloggers who I hope you’ll also check out. I’ll try to gather them all here in this post to make sure you know where to look. They are covering the festival in different ways and will be covering different artists as well, so we’ll try not to repeat what they are doing.
Of course, the first place to turn is the RIJF site itself. As noted elsewhere, you’ll want to have the Festival Goer’s Guide at hand for planning purposes as it has a lot of information on the logistics. The site also has the programs that will be passed out at the festival available as PDFs. The Artist Line Up has a great calendar with links on each artist’s name to a page on the site that provides background information on the artist and the artist’s music. Some of them have mp3s to download and listen to (although sadly not stream directly) and find out if the artist’s music will not send you running for the door. This is also where you’ll go for official announcements about the festival.
City Newspaper is another location, both online and in print, that aims to have a lot of information about the RIJF this year. Their site has been revamped since last year so check it out. In addition to the guide published in last Wednesday’s edition (I expect City is reprinting it on June 6th), City is focusing its online content at www.jazzfestrochester.com (the URL of which resolves to this location on their main site). City Newspaper already has put up a short blurb for each artist appearing on each day of the RIJF, written by their music writers Frank DeBlase and Ron Netsky, plus some longer pieces spotlighting some of the artists appearing at the 2007 RIJF festival. They say they will be blogging as well; however, there is no URL mentioned so far and the one that I had from last year no longer resolves (apparently due to the site revamp). I hope that City’s new site (or how they’ve configured the blog) allows for their writers to engage in more of the social media side of blogging and that they learn to link to those that have provided them so much "link love" in the past (hint).
The Democrat & Chronicle, had a number of articles in today’s paper on the festival, with features throughout the Living Section (which are posted here, which appears to be where their special coverage will be located) and an article (only available for 7 days) in BusinessLife about RIJF producers John Nugent and Marc Iacona, as the paper calls them the "Jazz fest’s dynamic duo," and the economic results expected from the festival and highlighting the pair’s commitment to this community. I expect that they will continue the great video highlights and photographic essays that were such a great addition to last year’s coverage. I don’t know whether they will also be doing nightly podcasts.
There are also my friends Ken over at the blog Fretfulporpentine.com and Seth over at the blog CupCupOBooks.comOBooks.com. I met these two guys through their great writing about their experiences at the RIJF a few years back. They will be writing about the festival and like me already have begun. We’re planning some special things together during the festival, which will be available on all of our blogs. I also expect that Jason Crane will be doing some posts and great interviews from the festival either (or both) on his blog JasonCrane.org and his podcast site The Jazz Session (like the recently posted one with jazz critic and writer Doug Ramsey, who I mentioned was in town here and the one with Nugent and Iacona here). I expect my new friend Tracy Kroft-Symonds over at Rochester Music Scene (and Heard) will also be hanging out on Gibbs (er…Jazz) Street and will be writing about her experiences at the festival. I hope that we’ll have a chance to meet in person this time.
Added a bit later at 8:30 p.m.: I am sitting here listening to University of Rochester radio WRUR as DJ Mark Grube on his show What’s New is playing tracks from some of the artists who will be appearing and realized that I was missing another important source. You should be checking out the jazz shows on WRUR and especially on WGMC Jazz 90.1, which will be all over the festival with live programming from "Jazz Street" and, I expect, RIJF-oriented programming during the day.
Of course, I hope you drop by here to check out my coverage of the festival. There are going to be some new offerings as well as the usual fare:
- Seth, Ken and I hope to do some podcasts from the festival. We will try to do one next week to "test" our equipment. If it’s even close to worth listening to, we’ll share it. We’ll be exploring what we’ve been hearing and giving you the impressions of just some regular guys who love the music. Again, we expect that they will be (also mercifully) short.
- I will be doing some "moblogging" live from the festival, letting you know real-time my take on shows I’m seeing and whether they are a can’t miss for the later show, as well as providing observations about the festival, audiences, and whatever else I think you might want to know. They will be mercifully short.
- I hope to be interviewing some selected artists at the festival about their experience of playing the festival and Rochester. These will be posted either as audio files or written during or after the festival. More about this later.
- Starting tomorrow, I will be writing one post a day with my initial picks for who I’ll be seeing at the RIJF this year until I run out of days (which should be around Friday-Saturday). If I get all prolific on the writing, I may post them sooner. I won’t try to go where City and others have already gone, but rather will link to them and try to gather some additional information on the artists from other sources to give you a "one-stop" place to find out about them.
- I will be posting throughout the festival as I can about shows I’ve seen and other things I think you might find interesting (I still will be at the day job during the festival). I’ll try to let you know what else is happening as the working jazz musicians of Rochester who aren’t part of the festival do their gigs elsewhere, some of which will be after hours and should provide you places to check out if you can’t get into the State Street Bar & Grill for the "official" after hours gig.
I hope to hear more from readers this year. Tell me what you think and how you’re experiencing the festival. See you on Jazz Street at the festival in Rochester, NY!
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