Just a year shy of its silver anniversary, the 24th annual Hot Springs JazzFest is stretching its musical wings, with activities spread over a six-day period, starting Wednesday and continuing through Monday. Jazz buffs and educators started the festival in 1991, and for a time were content to spend a September Saturday in a shaded expanse downtown that stretched from one bank building to another with an overhead sky bridge providing the shade.
As two decades passed, the festival has grown to encompass several days before and after the free downtown street gathering. Venues now include a couple of hotels, a theater and a church.
Hot Springs JazzFest
Wednesday-Monday, various locations, Hot Springs
Admission: Some events are free; some are ticketed
(501) 627-2427
"We are most excited about having Allen Won, a saxophonist who was classically educated, but ended up in jazz," says Gretchen Taylor, executive director of the Hot Springs Jazz Society. "He's from Hawaii, and educated in New York City, where he started going to the jazz clubs and decided that was going to be his musical path to pursue.
"Allen will be featured in three of our events: on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, at the street festival."
This year's schedule includes:
Wednesday: Sax in the Park will feature five saxophone players led by Won. He will play alto and soprano sax and flute, and will be joined by Gary Meggs and Nathan Carman on alto sax, Brandon Dorris on tenor sax and Chris Sims on baritone sax.
The sax-y guys will be accompanied by Clyde Pound on keyboard, David Higginbotham on bass, Les Pack on guitar and C.E. Askew on drums. The master of ceremonies will be John Leisenring, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, who will soon host a radio show, Jazz on a Saturday Morning, on KUHS-FM, 97.9, the new solar-powered Hot Springs community radio station.
The show will be from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa's Crystal Ballroom, 239 Central Ave. Tickets are $30 for members of the Hot Springs Jazz Society, $35 for nonmembers.
Thursday: Shirley Chauvin's big band, S'Wonderful, will present S'Wonderful Dancin' from 7 to 10 p.m. in the Silver Fox Lounge at the Austin Convention Hotel, 305 Malvern Ave. In a show that will welcome dancers, the band will open with special arrangements for four horns, a rhythm section and Chauvin's vocals. Selections will include songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Billie Holiday.
Admission is $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers.
Friday: A "Classical & Jazz Explosion" will be held from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at the Five Star Theatre, 701 Central Ave., featuring the Quapaw Quartet, the Clyde Pound Jazz Combo and singer Diane Kesling. The Quapaw Quartet will start the evening with classical string music, followed by them joining with Pound, plus special guest Won and Pound's combo, and then with Kesling. A duet with Chauvin will also be featured.
Tickets are $30 for members and $35 for nonmembers.
Saturday: "Jazz in the Streets" will kick off at 11 a.m. and end at 5 p.m., underneath the Regions Bank sky bridge at Market Street and Broadway. Leisenring will be master of ceremonies at the free show, which will feature the U.S. Army Jazz Band at 11, Anything That Moves, with Won, at noon, the University of Arkansas at Monticello Jazz Band at 1 p.m., the Rodney Block Jazz Project at 2, NuFusion at 3 and Calle Soul at 4.
Trombonist Sim Flora will also sit in with Anything That Moves at noon.
Salsa dance instructors -- Mark and Aura King, owners of Dance King Productions Social Dance School in Fayetteville -- will be on hand to demonstrate how to salsa dance during the Calle Soul performance.
"The Kings will demonstrate how it's done from the stage," Taylor explains, "and then they'll come down onto the street and show anyone who wants their help. It's more of an interactive audience participation sort of demonstration that they will do."
There will be food vendors at the event and beer, sodas and water will be sold.
Sunday: A morning church event will be held, starting at 10:45 a.m. with a free Jazz Mass at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, 228 Spring St. Byron Yancey on bass, Jay Payette on drums, Matt Dickson on tenor sax and Shelley Martin on flute and alto sax will perform jazz arrangements of traditional hymns.
A Stardust Tea Dance will be held at 3 p.m. at the Arlington and will feature a 17-piece big band, organized in 1982. Admission is $10 at the door and free for students 18 and younger.
Monday: A sponsor and volunteer thank-you party will be held at 4-7 p.m. at the home of the Hot Springs Jazz Society's board president David Fastenow on Lake Hamilton. Saxophonist Michael Eubanks will play and sing as the society's board of directors serves dinner and drinks.
A "Jazz Pass" will entitle the buyer to attend Sax in the Park, S'Wonderful Dancin' and the Classical & Jazz Explosion. Cost is $60 for society members and $75 for nonmembers.
Style on 09/01/2015