My So-Called RIJF Plans….
I’m going to start a series of posts to ponder the artists I’m going to try to catch on each night of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. While I always “plan” in this way (can I say “always” yet?) by setting up a matrix and trying to get the most bang for my seventy-five (and climbing) bucks. However, I often end up taking a different approach once I’ve “hit the ground” so to say. You catch snippets of conversation in the interlude following a 6:00 pm show about this or that performance that cannot be missed and, sometimes, it leads you in a different direction. You get to a venue for one performance and find that the line is snaked so far that it is easy money that you will be turned away and miss this performance and all the others. While that is thankfully not usually the case (it helps that I like some of the more obscure stuff), keeping your ears open to other opportunities is part of the experience that is RIJF.
I’m not going to spend a lot of effort on linking to sites about the artists as the RIJF folks have done such a good job of doing that already. If you are not familiar with a particular performer or want to hear what they sound like, just click on their link in the line-up. If you have broadband and some speakers, you have no excuse. Try out some that you haven’t heard of before; they may become your new favorite.
Let’s start with Friday, June 9th. It’s hard to believe it is next week. Since it’s a Friday, I’m going to be in the mood to leave work early and head straight over to the festivities to see how they’re shaping up. I’ll see John Nugent running around with two cell phones stuck in his ears, making those last minute decisions and trying to ensure that those crucial first few hours go off as well as possible. I hope that he gets a lot of return volunteers as they have clearly learned more about how to do things as the years have progressed.
So, here we go:
Well, that’s MondayFriday. We’ll see how it actually goes….
