Aspen Music Fest Puts The 'J' Back into JAS

June 21st, 2007 at 12:10pm Jessica Andrews 393

ASPEN, COLORADO (Post Time News)--After 17 years of hard work and local hospitality--and a variety of rock, blues, rhythm and blues, and even some jazz--Jazz Aspen Snowmass (JAS) is arguably one of the foremost summer music festivals in the country. This year’s lineup will include famous musicians playing through the weekend here at Rio Grande Park.

With dozen of artists and musical acts in town to kick-off the summer season like Herbie Hancock, Madeleine Peyroux, Earth Wind & Fire, Steve Windwood, and Angelique Kidjo and The Black Crowes with Marcus Miller, the JAS Festival will surely live up to its hearsay this summer of being one of the most diverse seasons of quality music in Aspen since it first started in 1991.

“We are very excited about this year's lineup,” said JAS public relations marketing and sponsorship manager Andrea Beard. “We have to take every day as it comes but so far everything seems to be falling into place.”

If this weren’t enough for the June Festival Performances, JAS has partnered up with Aspen Music Festival & School to present Wynton Marsalis and his ensemble, The Jazz at Lincoln Park Center Orchestra.

Marsalis is a New Orleans native who attended the Julliard School of Music at age 17 and will be conducting Congo Square at the Benedict Music Tent at 8 p.m. on Tuesday June 26th, 2007.

“We are very pleased to be teaming up with the Aspen Music Festival & School (AMFS) for the summer,” said Cheif Executive Officer (CEO) and President of JAS James Horowitz. “It’s a full circle experience that we hope will continue in the future.”

In fact, JAS began 17 years ago at the Benedict Music Tent with the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Horowitz said, “we are pleased to come back as a mature organization in full partnership with the AMFS, its exciting to think of the synergies our two organizations will create moving forward.”

Since its earlier years, JAS has branched out a bit appealing to a wider range of the community. Hosting performances like Earth Wind and Fire all the way to the Black Crowes and JAS After Dark shows that will take place at Belly Up this summer.

“We try to appeal to everyone in the community,” said Horowitz. “These performances encompass a wide variety of musical cogitation.”

With the return of a true Jazz company, Marsalis and AMFS seem to be bringing Jazz back into the summer lineup for JAS.

Marsalis will be returning to Aspen this summer after playing with JAS three times in the past with his Jazz At Lincoln Park Center Orchestra but will bring what has been called his greatest masterwork, Congo Square: a Tribute to New Orleans

“This is truly a monumental blending of cultures and voices coming together in Aspen,” said CEO and President of JAS James Horowitz. “[Marsalis] will lead his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and be joined by a nine-piece ensemble of Ghanaian drummers.”

Marsalis and his co-writers including drum master Yacub Addy conceptualized Congo Square shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Its purpose was to bring together the people again using a sort of cross-cultural narrative with a strong historical context.

“It’s about the integration of cultures and it’s about the innovation of coming up with new ways to relate and communicate to people, and also tradition, things that have existed and trying to maintain the best of them,” says Marsalis about Congo Square.

Although there are no actual recordings of the original music played at Congo Square in downtown New Orleans by slaves in the mid-1700’s to the late-1800s, there is a lot of confidence and commitment in the re-enactment of the music.

Other performances put on by both JAS and the AMFS include a July 19th and 20th recital with JAS Academy Artistic Director Christian McBride and bassist Edgar Meyer and a July 21 Summer Gala.

“There were many cultures and people coming together playing a lot of different styles of music," Marsalis said, "you can see how that music was assimilated into our culture, how the different forms of African and Caribbean music, and European music, came together to become American music….The music came together because the people came together.”

Entry Filed under: Music, Classical Music, Art, Aspen, Nightlife, People, Blues, Jazz, Post Time News, Aspen Music Festival, United Post