The Jazz Sudbury Festival with more great music from Sept. 8 to Sept. 10. And on Saturday, the event transformed Durham Street itself into a roaming concert venue for the festival’s annual Jazz Walk.
Evening concerts mostly occurred at Place des Arts under a new partnership with the Jazz Sudbury Festival. But Saturday afternoon was for strolling as the Nickel City Dixie Stompers led music-lovers from venue to venue for the Jazz Walk.
Beginning at the Alibi Room, the Jazz Walk kicked off with the Stompers making a joyful noise in and around the downtown lounge before the Zack Martel Trio entertained the intimate crowd with their guitar-and-clarinet-based prohibition era jazz.
The Stompers then led the crowd down Durham to Oscar’s Grill, where the Tony Simpkin Trio improvved through some classics on piano, standup bass and drums.
Then the Dixie-land crew led the parade of music-lovers to Station 84 for their date with the golden pipes of Sarah Craig and her trio.
The Jazz Sudbury Festival boasted three days of concerts from the likes of the Teva Sela Quartet with John Roney, Tio Chorinho, Canada’s premier Brazilian choro group featuring Quebec-based vocalist Flavia Nascimento, Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop and Rich Brown and the New Abeng Quartet, ES:MO, Heavyweights Brass Band, Caity Gyorgy, Sundar Viswanathan’s Avataar, and Grammy, Latin Grammy and Juno-award winner Alex Cuba.
Festival director, Louis Simão, told Sudbury.com at the launch he hopes that the partnership with Place des art will be a multi-year partnership.
“We believe it will allow us to strengthen our relationship with our core audience, while at the same time attracting new fans of jazz music,” he said.
The new partnership also means more jazz music all year long. Jazz Sudbury and Place des arts have forged a partnership offering weekly concerts.
Held every Wednesday, at 6 p.m. in Le Bistro at Place des arts, the foray is new for Jazz Sudbury, and organizers will be releasing more information, as well as artists, soon.
