Sullivan Fortner will perform at the 2014 Sitka JazzFest with his trio.
This will be the 18th season of JazzFest. John DePalatis is the music instructor at Sitka High School, and co-director of the festival.
He says many comparable jazz festivals place a lot of emphasis on competition and judging.
Sitka’s JazzFest has an entirely different reputation.
“It’s as if someone has surgically removed all the stuff that is unpleasant and replaced it with artists and students rubbing elbows, talking, and getting to know each other. Learning from each other. The fact is that the life of a professional musician — while it may seem glamorous — often a festival like this means spending your evenings after the gig in your hotel, your Days Inn, whatever. And here, they really start to feel part of the community, with the people and students they interact with, and the things we have for them to do. And I know of no person who’s done the Sitka Jazz Festival who’s not wanted to be asked back.”
The headliners for the 2014 season include vocalist Carmen Bradford, Sullivan Fortner and his trio, saxophone player Eric Marienthal, guitarist Mike Dana, and trombonist Alan Ferber.
Ferber’s appearance — plus an abundance of trombone players in the various high-school and middle-school bands coming for the festival — suggested a special opportunity to festival co-director Mike Kernin.
“Trombone Factory — is that the name today? Trombone Mafia? We’ve got this great trombone player coming from New York, and part of the Sitka Jazz Festival Big Band is several educators and players who have come to town. So it just seemed like a perfect opportunity to have a mass of trombones on one stage.”
The one low note of this years’ JazzFest will be the absence of the Greatlanders, the US Air Force band of the Pacific stationed at Eielson in Anchorage. Federal budget sequestration last year forced the band to curtail its travel. The Jazz Festival Big Band — assembled from all the bands coming to Sitka for the event — will cover for the missing airmen.
This will be the second year of a new format for the three-day festival. The public can buy separate show tickets for the student performances and professional sets. There will be an all-festival pass, plus two free brown-bag lunch concerts at Harrigan Centennial Hall.
KCAW’s Melissa Marconi-Wentzel contributed to this story.
