Jazz
Page: 2
Some history will be made, and rekindled, during this year’s 13th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival.
The five-week parade of concerts begins on June 1 and will encompass 94 performances by nearly four dozen acts at five venues — primarily the Blue Note club itself in New York City’s Greenwich Village, as well as Sony Hall, the Brooklyn Bowl, Town Hall, Central Park SummerStage and Celebrate Brooklyn at the Prospect Park Bandshell.
Alex Kurland, Blue Note’s director of programming, promises that festivalgoers will not be lacking for variety.
“Jazz is very much the guiding force at Blue Note, but we’re not stuck in a box or restricted about genre-specific programming,” Kurland explains. “It’s very open. The inspiration of jazz runs through so much music and so much creative culture in general, so we’re really just embracing all this really special artistry. Jazz represents freedom, and that’s really where we’re leaning towards.”
To that end the festival lineup features a dizzying amount of diversity during its run. But the major news is, in fact, about a jazz artist: trumpet legend Wynton Marsalis will be returning to the 200-seat Blue Note as a bandleader for the first time since 1991. Marsalis will perform 12 shows across six nights (June 11-16) with his regular Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and with the Future of Jazz Septet.
Trending on Billboard
“I’m so excited to be back at the Blue Note after all these years,” Marsalis tells Billboard in a statement. “One of the fondest memories of my career is being in the Blue Note with Dizzy (Gillespie), Sweets Edison and Clark Terry going to see Freddie Hubbard.”
The shows are part of a new collaboration between the Blue Note and Jazz at Lincoln Center, where Marsalis is the managing and artistic director of jazz. It will also bring performances by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Big Band, directed by Julius Tolentino, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra, directed by Tatum Greenblatt, on June 15-16, respectively.
“This is a very historic presentation of Wynton, one of our proudest presentations of the month,” Kurland says. “This is a landmark kind of reunion between Wynton and the Blue Note; he’s played the Blue Note since the opening of the venue, but not as a leader since he began his curation of Jazz at Lincoln Center. It will be unique for him to play in a tiny space. We feel very honored.
“We are all about collaboration and partnership,” Kurland adds. “A lot of that occurs on the stage, but on business and branding and presentation side, we love to partner with different organizations to have these special moments, and working with Jazz at Lincoln Center makes a lot of sense.”
The venues for the four other headliners — Andra Day on opening night, June 1, followed by Corinne Bailey Rae on June 16, British drummer Yussef Dayes on June 22 and the Ezra Collective closing the festival on July 7 – will be announced later this month.
Other intriguing team-ups during the festival include Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, who’s long incorporated jazz in his mixes, double-billed with New Orleans’ Soul Rebels for three nights (June 21-23) at the Blue Note. At the Sony Hall: Jazz Is Dead performs June 9; Yo La Tengo teams up the Sun Ra Arkestra on June 15; James Brown/Parliament-Funkadelic trombonist Fred Wesley makes a rare appearance on the same bill as the Brecker Brothers on June 21; and Antibalas pairs with Hailu Mergia on June 22.
Other Blue Note festival residencies include New Orleans’ Soullive for six nights; drummer Julius Rodriguez and Crescent City trumpeter Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah will be there for four nights each; and bassist and bandleader Derrick Hodge and Ozomatli for three each. Stanley Clarke will perform June 25-26 at Sony Hall, and Yes/King Crimson veteran Bill Bruford is journeying from England for a June 29 ProgJect show at the same venue.
A strong corps of other vocalists, meanwhile, also includes Lisa Fischer and Gino Vannelli. The festival lineup also includes eight Blue Note brunch concerts on Sundays and one Saturday show devoted to the Buena Vista Social Club’s music on June 8.
“When you’re looking to book amazing, great artists you’re drawing from the global landscape, so that’s very glaring in the lineup,” Kurland says. “There are definitely a lot of innovative artists who are very contemporary; that’s always important for the Blue Note, to have such a progressive edge. Then you have the great icons, the legends…and hopefully you’re giving people a sense of the great range of that’s available.”
More details about the festival can be found here. The full 2024 Blue Note Jazz Festival lineup includes:
June 1—Soulive—Blue NoteJune 1—Andra Day—Venue TBDJune 2—Soulive—Blue NoteJune 2—Harlem Gospel Choir—Blue Note BrunchJune 2—Paula Cole—Sony HallJune 3—Derrick Hodge—Blue NoteJune 4—Derrick Hodge—Blue NoteJune 5—Derrick Hodge—Blue NoteJune 5—Lisa Fischer—Sony HallJune 6—Soulive—Blue NoteJune 7—Soulive—Blue NoteJune 7—Michel Camilo—Sony HallJune 7—ALJO with Hamilton de Holanda and Yamandu Cost—Town HallJune 8—Soulive—Blue NoteJune 8—The Music of The Buena Vista Social Club—Blue Note BrunchJune 9—Soulive—Blue NoteJune 9—Jazz is Dead—Sony HallJune 9—Harlem Gospel Choir—Blue Note BrunchJune 10—Brandee Younger—Blue NoteJune 11—The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis—Blue NoteJune 12—The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis—Blue NoteJune 12—Yemi Alade—Sony HallJune 13—The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis—Blue NoteJune 14—Jazz at Lincoln Center presents Wynton Marsaliswith The Future of Jazz Septet—Blue NoteJune 14—Eliane Elias—Sony HallJune 15—Jazz at Lincoln Center presents Wynton Marsaliswith The Future of Jazz Septet—Blue NoteJune 15—Yo La Tengo with the Sun Ra Arkestra—Sony HallJune 15—Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra—Blue Note BrunchJune 16—Jazz at Lincoln Center presents Wynton Marsaliswith The Future of Jazz Septet—Blue NoteJune 16—Victor Wooten—Sony HallJune 16—Corinne Bailey Rae—Venue TBDJune 16—Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra—Blue Note BrunchJune 17—Julius Rodriguez—Blue NoteJune 17— Haley Reinhart—Sony HallJune 18—Julius Rodriguez—Blue NoteJune 19—Julius Rodriguez—Blue NoteJune 19— Mulatu Astatke—Sony HallJune 20—Julius Rodriguez—Blue NoteJune 20— Mulatu Astatke—Sony HallJune 21—Ghostface Killah with The Soul Rebels—Blue NoteJune 21—Fred Wesley with The Brecker Brothers—Sony HallJune 22—Ghostface Killah with The Soul Rebels—Blue NoteJune 22—Antibalas with Hailu Mergia—Sony HallJune 22—Yussef Dayes—Venue TBDJune 23—Ghostface Killah with The Soul Rebels—Blue NoteJune 23—Harlem Gospel Choir—Blue Note BrunchJune 24—Ozomatli—Blue NoteJune 25—Ozomatli—Blue NoteJune 25—Stanley Clarke—Sony HallJune 26—Ozomatli—Blue NoteJune 26—Stanley Clarke—Sony HallJune 27—Chief Adjuah—Blue NoteJune 27—Gino Vanelli—Sony HallJune 28—Chief Adjuah—Blue NoteJune 28—Bombino with Etran De L’Air—Sony HallJune 28—Os Mutantes—Brooklyn BowlJune 29—Chief Adjuah—Blue NoteJune 29—ProgJect with Bill Bruford—Sony HallJune 29—Brass Queens—Blue Note BrunchJune 30—Chief Adjuah—Blue NoteJune 30—Harlem Gospel Choir—Blue Note BrunchJuly 1—Joey Alexander—Blue NoteJuly 7—Ezra Collective—Venue TBD
HipHopWired Featured Video
Igmar Thomas exists in a musical ecosystem that engages every part of his human experience, allowing him to express the kaleidoscopic span of creative expression. In a recent chat with Hip-Hop Wired, Igmar Thomas shared a bit about his upbringing in California, encountering fellow leaders of the jazz scene, and his excitement about the inaugural Hip Hop &… festival at the Kennedy Center.
With a reserved vocal tone befitting of a band leader, Igmar Thomas’ breezy nature translated well in our brief chat with him. We opened up the talk by asking Thomas how growing up in San Diego, which isn’t known for its jazz scene, and how he came to encounter his love of music overall.
“Growing up in San Diego, it’s not New Orleans or New York, it’s more of a slice of franchise America,” Thomas began. “I wasn’t exposed to juke joints and things like that at a young age but my father’s love of music and his record collection was diverse. He loved all types of music.”
Thomas continued, “I heard everything growing up and discovering music via radio and television. My friends and family also got me into a lot of different genres. So my musical vocation at a young age isn’t like say, a cat from New Orleans.”
Thomas then explained that he began his formal training with music at age 11, joining the school band playing in a structured format, and learning the trumpet. He added that the public school system was key in getting him into playing music.
The West Coast jazz scene, much like the Los Angeles underground beat scene, is packed with talent. Thomas has worked alongside the likes of Ron Bruner, Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, Kamasi Washington, and others during their respective journeys in music. We asked about the early days of those connections.
“It all came together towards the end of high school and it was pretty organic [how we all met],” Thomas says of his early encounters with Washington. “I can’t recall everything but I think I saw Kamasi playing at the UCLA Jazz Fest, or he could’ve been with Christian McBride. Growing up where I did, it was amazing to see him play in the same lane I wanted to be in and killing it at that.”
Thomas adds, “Kamasi was playing better than I could. I actually got to meet Kamasi and his folks via Ray Hargrove, who was my big brother in music. So I was at Catalina’s a lot and met Kamasi and Ron [Bruner] there. I met Kamasi’s whole band eventually, which includes Brandon Coleman, Ron, and his brother Stephen, who everyone knows is Thundercat.”
In the chat, Thomas remarked on how Ron Bruner had more of an eclectic style of dress back then, which Thomas says may have been informed by his working with Sa-Ra Creative Partners at the time while Thundercat was conservative in comparison. These days, Thundercat is viewed as a style icon, something Thomas mentioned with a laugh. He respectfully referred to the bassist as his generation’s Bootsy Collins.
We then switched our conversation to the Revive Big Band and Thomas’ aims with the outfit from its early days to now. With a knowing nod to how his journey played out, Thomas shared that he’s hoping that his band can be an extension of creativity from him and those who make up the band.
“I felt like when we first came out, we were trying to prove something but now, I don’t feel that way anymore,” Thomas explains. “Our message is consistent and what I mean is we’re all one family. They used to box us in by styles, and genres. But our debut album will show our true family tree. That includes Hip-Hop, R&B, funk, rock, and jazz. When you see us play, you see we’re more aligned musically than the award shows would have you believe.”
Thomas added, “I came up in the jazz tradition which does have rules but also, in that same breath, some breaking of the rules. We’ve always mixed things up. Bird [Charlie Parker] did it. Miles [Davis] did it. It’s just history repeating itself and that’s what the band represents. We play within a space of invisible boundaries and sometimes cross them.”
We asked Thomas to share his thoughts on the upcoming Hip Hop &… festival at the Kennedy Center, where Revive Big Band has two evening shows lined up. Having played at the Kennedy Center previously, Thomas says he’s excited to share what his band is doing and is thankful for the hard work of Simone Eccleston, the director of Hip Hop Culture & Contemporary Music at the Kennedy Center.
“I love what they’re doing at the Kennedy Center, they’re doing a tremendous job,” Thomas said. “Seeing it from the outside looking in, I love every bit of it. The festival idea is amazing and I hope it’s a trend that spreads. I am a big fan of both Hip-Hop and jazz and I rock Hip-Hop ahead of my jazz gigs and vice versa. That same synergy I seek in life, we hope to give the fans in attendance via the Revive Big Band experience.”
Thomas continued, “I want to be sure to add that the Hip Hop &… festival is dedicated to the memory of Meghan Stabile, who started the Revive Music Group. Our work with Revive Music informed our interpretation of jazz and Hip-Hop. This is the result of Revive Music Group and all of the work Simone Eccleston has put in to make this happen. It’s all coming full circle because Meghan got us booked at the Kennedy Center in 2014 and now Simone is making all these wonderful things happen.”
Learn more about Igmar Thomas and the Revive Big Band here.
To obtain information on any of the ongoing Hip Hop &… festival happenings, featuring Robert Glasper, De La Soul, Rakim, and more, click here.
—
Photo: Igmar Thomas/Kennedy Center
Multiple Grammy-winning jazz guitarist-vocalist George Benson is rejoining the Warner Music Group (WMG). In addition to new music arriving later this year, the legendary artist and WMG are celebrating the reunion with a previously unreleased video featuring Benson in a live performance of the track “Lady Blue” in the late ‘70s. Explore Explore See latest […]
On Monday (March 24), Jazz at Lincoln Center revealed the host for its upcoming all-star tribute to late legend Tony Bennett, which doubles as the center’s annual gala fundraiser. Tony-nominated, Billboard 200-topping singer and actor Josh Groban is set to host the April 17 even at the Frederick P. Rose Hall in Manhattan’s Lincoln Center. […]
André 3000 knew he was taking a big swing when he released his rap-free, flute-forward album New Blue Sun earlier this year. So naturally he wanted to get some feedback from his longtime former partner in rhyme in OutKast, Big Boi.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
In a new cover story for High Snobiety, Three Stacks reveals that he played “some” of the instrumental jazz album for Big, whose reaction was just about perfect. “He was smiling… He was like, ‘Man…,’” André said of Big Boi’s response to the album with mouthful song titles such as the opening track, “I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.”
‘Dre said he also cued it up for a “lot of buddies,” as well as his son, who told him, “‘It’s the real thing. It’s not a mimic. You really did this.’” The listening sessions included an early preview for Tyler, the Creator as well.
Trending on Billboard
“I was in Tyler’s living room listening to it, and then Frank [Ocean] just shows up. And so we’re all sitting there listening to it,” he said. “I’m wondering what the young people’s opinions would be. And I’m so happy that what I’m hearing is really good feedback.”
The interview also pulled back the curtain on the early confluence of jazz and hip-hop that André found in the music of A Tribe Called Quest — including the news that he originally used the nom de rap “Jahz” in homage to Tribe’s Q-Tip.
“My first rap name was Jahz because of Q-Tip,” he explained. “We were huge A Tribe Called Quest fans. In high school, they were the pinnacle — them, Grand Puba, Souls of Mischief. I don’t think Q-Tip gets enough credit for introducing a generation of kids to a forgotten music.” Specifically, 3000 said he was super inspired by how Tribe wove jazz samples into their psychedelic hip-hop stew.
“As a kid, jazz music meant some old-people shit that’s in elevators,” André said. “Q-Tip found a way to make it actually cool. The jazz guys were actually the rap guys of that time. They were doing heroin, they were in clubs. Years from now, people are going to listen to trap music and think, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ It happens. It happens.”
New Blue Sun hit hard when it dropped in November, with “I Swear” — which clocked in at a robust 12 minutes and 20 seconds — entering the Hot 100 at No. 90 on the Dec. 2-dated chart. That made it the longest-running song ever to have hit the chart, surpassing Tool’s “Fear Inoculum,” at 10:21 in length. André’s track – an instrumental, which is also unusual for a modern Hot 100 hit – also bested the August 2019 No. 93 peak of Tool’s track.
Corinne Bailey Rae recently wrapped an eight-show residency at Manhattan’s beloved Blue Note Jazz Club, performing 2023’s Black Rainbows – which explores soul, garage rock, jazz, downtempo electronic and even a bit of house – in its entirely. That album was one of the year’s finest, but seeing it presented live — with Rae sharing the painful and inspiring stories of Black American history that galvanized her to make these songs – made it clear that the concepts and ideas behind the album are as rich and stunning as its musical tapestry.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Black Rainbows began taking shape when the English singer-songwriter visited The Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago’s South Side. The hybrid space, which Theaster Gates opened in 2015, is a gallery, media library and museum that encompasses everything from African American periodicals dating back to the 1940s to the personal vinyl collection of house godfather Frankie Knuckles to a collection of historical artifacts portraying Black people in blatantly racist ways. In short, it’s a complicated space dedicated to African American history, one that gives people the opportunity to confront the beautiful and the ugly in equal measure.
Rae’s visit morphed into an ongoing perusal of the collection, and soon, new songs began to take shape in her mind. A vintage photo of a teenage girl who won the “Miss New York Transit” title 70-some years ago inspired the riot grrrl energy of her song “New York Transit Queen” (Rae even tracked down and interviewed the woman, Audrey Smaltz); the story of writer/abolitionist Harriet Jacobs, who escaped slavery but spent seven years in a cramped hiding space, watching her children play through a peephole, informed the hopeful yet elegiac “Peach Velvet Sky”; advertisements from Valmor Products, a Chicago beauty brand geared toward African American women, led to the jazzy, ambient “He Will Follow You With His Eyes”; and a sweaty dance party to Knuckles’ records at the Stony Island Arts Bank resulted in the thumping “Put It Down.”
Trending on Billboard
In the midst of performing “Put It Down” at the Blue Note on Friday (Feb. 16), a woman in the seated audience stood up and began dancing – greeting the sight with a smile, Rae stepped down from the stage to join her as the band kept the house-inflected groove going. And from the sax player to the drummer, that band was a knockout. Perhaps having Rae explain the stories that inspired the songs before playing them pushed her players to bring each one to vivid, vibrant life in that intimate space.
When it came time for the encore, Rae gamely trotted out her 2006 soul-pop gem “Put Your Records On” and the sweetly soulful “Trouble Sleeping” from the same album. It probably goes without saying that she’ll be forever associated with the former, and there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s a timeless classic, one that’s recently found a Gen Z audience via a viral cover. But Black Rainbows stands as Rae’s finest artistic statement to date, an exquisite tapestry that electrifies both intellectually and emotionally – and seeing her present this layered work live is a gift.
André 3000 is an enigma. The reclusive former OutKast MC has kept a low profile for much of the past 20 years, popping up for an occasional guest verse or movie role when he’s not wandering the Earth playing one of his arsenal of flutes.
But on The Late Show on Thursday night (Feb. 8), the rapper-turned-jazzer hung around to take the “Colbert Questionert,” the random series of queries from host Stephen Colbert meant to delve into the unexplored recesses of the enigmatic flautist’s soul.
As always, Colbert opened with the easiest question: what is the best sandwich? In the perfect response, 3000 offered up “a friend bologna sandwich,” adding some crucial cooking tips, including cutting slits into the lunch meat so it doesn’t bubble up in the pan.
As for his first concert, of course André — currently on tour promoting his first new solo album in more than two decades, the rap-less, all-instrumental flute jazz collection New Blue Sun — had the coolest answer: a Fresh Fest hip-hip jam in his hometown of Atlanta featuring Public Enemy, LL Cool J and Whodini. “My mama took me,” Dre bragged, as Colbert tried to earn cool points by revealing that his mother had also taken him to his first show, the slightly less hip Captain & Tennille.
Colbert quickly corrected himself, though, a remembered that it was actually 1970s/1980s fluglehorn/trumpet giant Chuck Mangione. That selection that clearly appealed to the host’s woodwind-loving guest, who then scatted along with Colbert on a duet of Mangione’s signature 1978 jazz-pop classic “Feels So Good.”
3000 ran through a series of other provocative answers to questions such as “What is the scariest animal?”(humans), the requisite “Apples or Oranges?” (oranges) and “What do you think happens when we die,” which was more complicated. “We just kind of transfer to another body… the energy doesn’t go anywhere,” André said. “These are just kind of space suits, or Earth suits we walk around in… I think that energy goes into something else or to another we can’t even imagine.”
As for why he has never appeared in any of the Fast & Furious movies, veteran actor 3000 joked he would have “but I think Ludacris took the role!” Turns out he wasn’t joking. He said he did audition for a spot in the long-running, rubber-burning franchise, but was aced out by his fellow A-town MC Luda. He’d still come back for a later chapter, perhaps for the as-yet-unwritten one Colbert suggested: Too Fast, Too Flute.
The sire of Stankonia then proclaimed that his favorite smell is a baby’s breath, “when they’re new and it don’t stink yet,” while dubbing cigarette smoke his least favorite odor. Also, for the record, André is not a cat or dog person, but that’s just because he’s hardly ever home. Plus, if you heard how badly he screwed up the ant farm he got when he was a kid you’d understand why that is.
And finally, asked to name the one song he’d want to listen to on an endless loop, Three Stacks thought long and hard and said “something by [John] Coltrane.” He kind of punted on summing up the rest of his life in five words, though, grinning as he rambled, “somewhere doing something with my hands, building something, drawing something, sculpting something, chiseling something… in a workshop somewhere… making physical things that will last 1,000 years.”
Watch André answer the Questionert below.
[embedded content]
Did a celebrity tattoo artist violate copyright law when she inked a photographer’s portrait of jazz legend Miles Davis onto the arm of a friend? A jury is set to the decide that question in a trial set to kick off Tuesday.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Photographer Jeffrey B. Sedlik filed his lawsuit back in 2021 against Katherine Von Drachenberg – better known as Kat Von D, a celebrity tattoo artist who rose to prominence in the 2000s on her TLC reality show “fLA Ink.” He claimed she infringed his 1989 image of Davis by using it as the basis for a tattoo.
After years of litigation – and a U.S. Supreme Court case over Andy Warhol that changed the legal landscape midway through – attorneys for Sedlik and Von D will head to a Los Angeles federal courthouse Tuesday for a jury trial that will settle the dispute once and for all.
Sedlik, who calls his photo “world-famous,” has argued that Von D clearly broke the law when she chose to “precisely replicate every aspect of the iconic Miles Davis portrait in the form of a tattoo.” Von D, meanwhile, says she only used the image as a reference and that her tattoo is protected by copyright law’s so-called fair use doctrine, which allows people to re-use protected works in certain situations.
Initially, Judge Dale S. Fischer seemed inclined to side with Von D on a key question: Whether she had “transformed” the photo into something new. In a May 2022 ruling, the judge said Von D had “changed its appearance to create what she characterizes as adding movement and a more melancholy aesthetic.”
But the case got a legal shakeup a year later, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a major ruling on fair use. In that decision, the justices said that the late Andy Warhol had violated a photographer’s copyrights years earlier when he used her images of Prince to create one of his distinctive screen prints – a decision that was widely interpreted as making it harder to prove fair use.
After the Warhol ruling came out, Judge Fischer ruled against Von D on that same key question of “transformative.” Citing the new Supreme Court precedent, the judge ruled that simply putting the same image in a new context and claiming new aesthetics was not enough to count as a fair use.
But even after that ruling, the overall question of fair use must still be decided by the jury at the trial set to kick off Tuesday. Jurors will be tasked with deciding whether Von D made “commercial” use of Sedlik’s image – a tough question, since she inked her friend free-of-charge but also promoted the work on her social media accounts. They must also decide whether her use of the image hurt Sedlik’s ability to license the image himself, another key question in any fair use case.
The 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will feature headlining sets from The Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Chris Stapleton, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Killers and Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The eight-day fest that takes place across 14 stages over two weekends — April 25-28 and May 2-5 — at the Fair Grounds Race Course, draws nearly half a million music lovers to a sprawling event that includes some of the biggest names in rock, pop, hip-hop, country, funk and jazz, including the usual compliment of homegrown legends.
Among the other acts slated to perform this year are: Hozier, Jon Batiste, Queen Latifah, Vampire Weekend, Greta Van Fleet, Heart, Widespread Panic, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Bonnie Raitt, Earth, Wind & Fire, Celebrating Jimmy Buffett with the Coral Reefer Band, Fantasia, The Revivalists, The Beach Boys, Big Freedia, Kem, Juvenile with Mannie Fresh, Irma Thomas, Joe Bonamassa, Steel Pulse, Cyril Neville, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Jeffrey Osborne and Rhiannon Giddens, and hundreds more.
This year’s Jazz Fest will also celebrate the music and culture of Colombia at the Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion, with 17 bands and a variety of artists sharing the unique sights and sounds from the South American nation, including Colombian salsa, cumbia, champeta, vallenato, chirimia, and currulao. There will also be daily parades honoring Colombia’s vibrant carnival spirit, with attendees getting opportunities to meet Indigenous and Afro-Colombian artisans, purchase their crafts and taste traditional Colombian food and drinks, according to a statement announcing the lineup.
Weekend and VIP packages are available here now, with single day tickets slated to go on sale in February; all tickets are subject to additional service fees and handling charges and an account with AXS is required for purchase. This year’s Jazz Fest will also offer a 4-day GA+ weekend pass for the first time, with access to an exclusive GA+ lounge with private restrooms, a full-service bar and shade. There will be a limited supply of 4-day second weekend passes including admission to the May 2 Rolling Stones set, the group’s only announced 2024 North American festival gig.
Stapleton, Killers, .Paak, Batiste and Vampire Weekend are the top line acts for the first weekend (April 25-28), with the Stones, Foo Fighters, Young, Hozier and Queen Latifah topping the list for the second weekend (May 2-5). Click here for the full day-by-day lineup.
Check out the 2024 lineup poster below.
“Is Laufey jazz?”
This was a recent topic among the armchair musicologists of Reddit’s r/Jazz thread, who spend much of their time debating the genre. It’s also the title of a 33-minute deep dive by YouTuber and musician Adam Neely where he dissects the 24-year-old cellist, singer and songwriter’s harmonic and chordal choices on a granular, theoretical level in an attempt to answer the question too.
Trying to neatly categorize whether Laufey (pronounced LAY’-vay) makes music that is jazz or something else misses the point of what she is doing. Laufey is building a modern and surprisingly lucrative musical world out of old-school building blocks — ii-V-I jazz chords, classical music motifs, bebop ad-libs — plus more than a pinch of Taylor Swift-ian storytelling.
But it’s Laufey’s wider aesthetic world — “Laufey Land,” as she calls it — that a remarkable number of Gen Z fans are flocking to. While traditional jazz can feel esoteric, Laufey makes it accessible by inviting followers into Laufey Land on social media — a place where her best days involve sipping lattes, reading Joan Didion and wearing the latest styles from Sandy Liang, and where listening to Chet Baker and playing the cello are the absolute coolest, hippest things to do. “It’s all kind of illustrative of my life and my music,” she says, and she shares both online generously.
Laufey Land (which has also become the name of her official fan HQ Instagram account) has also captured the imagination of the music business: sources say she sparked a multimillion-dollar bidding war last year among record labels that have rarely seen so much commercial potential in a jazz-adjacent act, though she remains independent for now. Perhaps that’s because her music renders a wistful, romantic portrait of young adulthood that can feel fantastical yet still within reach. And even if you’re not quite familiar with her own lofty influences — Chopin, Liszt, Baker, Fitzgerald, Holiday — Laufey invites you to sit with her, listen along and get lost in a magical place where, sure, the music is jazz-y, but is also so much more than that.
Raised between Iceland and the Washington, D.C., area, Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir grew up surrounded by classical musicians. Her Chinese mother is a violinist, and her grandparents were violin and piano professors; it was her Icelandic father who introduced her to jazz. “There was just so much music in the house growing up,” she recalls today. “It was a sonic blend of those two.”
Laufey and her identical twin sister, Junia — who now acts as Laufey’s creative director and is a frequent guest star in her TikToks — started playing young. Eventually Junia landed on violin and Laufey on cello (though she also plays piano and guitar). Until college, she saw herself more as a performer and practitioner of music than as a writer of it. But at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, she found many of her new friends were penning their own songs.
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Though Laufey says she always listened to pop music as well — she especially loved the storybook tales of early Swift songs — she felt that “oftentimes the lyrics and the storytelling resonated, but the sound [of pop music] wasn’t completely there. I didn’t feel like it was something I could make, and I wanted to make something that sounded more like me.” A self-described “sheltered orchestra kid,” she also didn’t yet have much life experience to expound upon lyrically.
Like so many artists before her, Laufey says she was finally propelled into songwriting when she had her heart broken. Borrowing chords closely related to the Great American Songbook that she had spent so much time studying already, she created “Street by Street,” which eventually became her first single. She was 20 years old. “The way I wanted to write was to find this middle ground between the very old and the very new,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, you can do this. You can write something new in the style of George Gershwin or Irving Berlin — something older.’ ”
When COVID-19 hit and forced everyone into lockdown, school ended, and to stay in vocal shape, Laufey began posting her takes on jazz standards online, her smooth alto accompanied by either cello arrangements or acoustic guitar. “The day I got back from school and started isolating, I told myself, ‘OK, I’m just going to write and post as many videos online of me singing jazz standards as I can,’ ” she recalls. “I’ll just see where it takes me.” An early video of her singing “It Could Happen to You” “hit some sort of algorithm,” as she puts it, and quickly, her following grew, attracting interest from a number of record labels, though she opted to sign to AWAL instead.
Today — one EP, two studio albums and one live album with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra later — Laufey is quite possibly the most popular artist making jazz or jazz-adjacent music, according to metrics like Spotify monthly listeners (24 million) and Instagram and TikTok followers (2.2 million and 3.6 million, respectively). Her breakout single, the bossa nova-inspired “From the Start,” is a massive hit, with 313.1 million on-demand official global streams, according to Luminate. And she’s now a Grammy nominee: Her second album, Bewitched, released in September 2023, is up for best traditional pop vocal album, an eclectic category this year where she’s the one new talent alongside veterans Bruce Springsteen and Liz Callaway and the late Stephen Sondheim. “It feels very, very validating, especially in the category I’m in,” Laufey says.
Tony Luong
The debate about what genre signifiers define Laufey may still matter at the Grammys (and on the Billboard charts, which categorize her as “jazz”), but there is far less need to label music than there once was, benefiting artists like Laufey who bridge disparate sonic worlds. “I think people’s desire to categorize things into genres was so rooted in radio, where they were trying to fit into a certain format to succeed,” says Max Gredinger, Laufey’s manager and a partner at Foundations Artist Management. “I think that is kind of ingrained in us, but now that terrestrial radio has certainly diminished in impact, I think people are still wrapping their heads around this new world.”
Around the time Laufey started to build her audience, TikTok’s reign over music discovery had just taken hold. It’s a place where personality and catchiness count but genre is of no consequence — the perfect platform for an artist like Laufey where she could define her jazz-inflected pop as not just a sound but as an aesthetic, a feeling, a lifestyle both timeless and very much of the moment.
Gredinger calls Laufey and her sister “the 2024 version of what you think of as a marketing executive. I would bet on them to do that job best a trillion times over.” Beyond music and slice-of-life videos, Laufey invites her fans into her process in other ways. She has posted sheet music versions of her songs before releasing them, asking her musician fans (of which there are many) to try to learn the song without hearing any reference and post the results, which she’ll then repost in the lead-up to release day.
She also hosts a book club, with selections — from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History to Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted — that feel akin to her music and her personal style, somewhere between darkly academic and coquettishly feminine. On the release day for Bewitched, she hosted A Very Laufey Day, a sort-of scavenger hunt around Los Angeles, involving everything she likes to do in a day. It included special Laufey Lattes, a display of her book club selections at a local shop and a merchandise pop-up at the Melrose Trading Post; at the end, she treated participants to a secret performance in West Hollywood’s Pan Pacific Park.
“It was like a normal Saturday for me,” Laufey says with a laugh. “I would’ve done all those things either way. I drove around West Hollywood and saw girls in white shirts, jeans and ballet flats carrying lattes and I would roll down the window and say hey and surprise them.” Her fans range from ultra-online teens to nerdy music majors to nostalgic grandparents, but her core base is Gen Z, many of whom do not listen to jazz or classical otherwise.
When she was younger, Laufey says, she never anticipated the mainstream popularity she has now. “If anything, I thought I would go the conservatory route, practice cello and try to get into the best orchestra I could, like my mother did,” she says. “I was so focused on being realistic that I almost didn’t allow myself to dream so big.”
[embedded content]
She remembers one of her first shows after pandemic lockdowns eased up, at New York’s Rockwood Music Hall, where she heard there was a line of fans outside waiting to be let in. “I was really confused,” she says. “I grew up going to symphony concerts primarily, and nobody lines up like that, you just walk in. I was like, ‘Oh, no. Let them in! What is happening?’” It was the first time she realized that her fans weren’t just a number on her screen: They would show up for her in real life, learn all the words to her songs and were shockingly young.
Norah Jones, a hero of Laufey’s and one of the few modern artists to, like her, bridge the jazz-pop divide, says she sees “a lot of similarities” between herself and Laufey. “We both come from a background steeped in jazz and have formed our own paths from there,” Jones says. “[But] because social media and streaming have changed the music industry so much, her journey is also so different from mine.” (The two recently collaborated on a set of holiday songs, Christmas With You.)
Unlike Jones, who has a long-standing relationship with Blue Note Records/Capitol Records, Laufey has opted to stay independent — a clear sign of the times. Industry sources say she recently sparked a multimillion-dollar bidding war among major labels, but she finally decided to keep her business among herself, Gredinger and AWAL (which handles label services and distribution) instead.
“With the kind of music I make,” she says, “I make very individualistic choices. I’m very confident in my music. I know what I want, and my current team at AWAL has let me make those creative decisions. I’ve had a great time being independent, so I haven’t felt like I’ve been lacking anything. Making independent decisions is my main focus.”
In the future, Laufey Land’s borders are likely to only expand further. She envisions her sweeping love songs soundtracking musicals and films someday, like Harry Connick Jr., Jon Batiste and Sara Bareilles have done. The ultimate dream? A James Bond theme. “I’ll just keep on repeating that I want that, so it manifests itself maybe,” she says, smiling.
Batiste, who also knows what it’s like to move between jazz and pop music spaces, thinks she’s on the right track. “Laufey approaches all of these many facets [of a music career] with a great deal of prowess, deftness of craft and insight into how to connect with her community,” he says. “That will only continue to attract more curious listeners.”
“I think there are a lot of barriers to entry to listening to jazz… [It] can be very daunting,” Laufey says. “I’m lucky I was born into that world, but I’m aware of how scary it can seem. It seems like something that’s reserved for maybe older or more educated audiences. I think that’s so sad, because both jazz and classical music were genres that were the popular music of one time. It was for everyone. That’s one of the reasons I want to fuse jazz and classical into my own music: I want to make a more accessible space.”
Tony Luong
She points to artists like DOMi & JD BECK and Samara Joy, young jazz talents she admires who are actively evolving the genre today. “Jazz hasn’t gone anywhere — it’s actually, I think, gone into music more,” Laufey says, pointing to its influence on hip-hop, R&B and pop. “The amount of times I hear a pop song really hitting the charts and everyone’s like, ‘It’s so good’ — in my head, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s because of this jazz harmony that really draws you in.’”
Her own sound borrows primarily from that of the jazz greats of the 1940s and ’50s — one reason, perhaps, why her songs connect so well. As tracks featuring sizable samples or interpolations of older hits continue to rise on the Billboard charts, experts posit that the pandemic led to an increasing interest in songs that feel nostalgic.
Though Laufey’s work sounds quite different from, say, “First Class” by Jack Harlow, the same primal desire for familiarity and comfort is at the root of its appeal. “I think a lot of the sounds that she pulls from, every person has some connection to,” Gredinger says. “You would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t have some memory or relationship with jazz or classical. It’s a foundational experience most everyone has had, combined with modern, honest songwriting.”
And it’s the combination of those elements that create the foundation of Laufey’s own brave new world. One where true love is possible, every day is romanticized, major sevenths are essential — and all kinds of listeners are welcome.