Jazz@Rochester

As I noted earlier, it appears the local media has decided to jump on the bandwagon this year for the 2006 Rochester International Jazz Festival and with both feet. The City Paper has started its own jazz blog, which provides the music critics and other writers of the alternative weekly a mechanism to write and publish fresh content throughout the festival, instead of just a post-mortem and lead up. I’ve enjoyed reading their posts so far and think it’s great that City Paper is adding its voices. An example of why this is valuable is that while Ken, Seth and myself had nothing but praise for Charlie Hunter Trio’s performance, Frank De Blase at City had another perpective:

Opening day and Mother Nature sucked…and she blew. People who lined up all the way down to East Avenue to get into Charlie Hunter’s first show at Kilbourn Hall suffered the rain and wind for about two hours in order to suffer his long-winded soloing inside. He’s good. Hell, he’s great — but entirely too technical for me. I mean, would hitting one wrong note really kill you?

While some might interpret this as horning in on my space, I’ve never purported to be a jazz critic. I write about the experiences I have listening to live jazz in Rochester and elsewhere, try to link to information and sources (one of them being City…thanks), pull in a bit of fun, and, I hope, help bring people together around the promotion of live jazz and other music here in my adopted city of Rochestedr. A multiplicity of voices is what it’s all about. The more the merrier! That’s the whole idea behind blogging. Welcome to the blogosphere, City!

The Democrat & Chronicle is also jumping in with more coverage. In addition to the musings of Jeff Spevak (who is traveling the fest with a laptop) and John Pitcher, the D&C have a multimedia extravaganza in their online edition, including videos, a photo montage from each day, and podcasts of interviews with Pitcher and Spevak. There is a lot of content out there and it’s worth a look.