Yes, kids, it’s DC Jazz Festival time again come next Wednesday, June 10, and your humble correspondent will have coverage. Lots of it. So this week’s Setlist (following two weeks’ hiatus for a much-needed vacation) will cover a mere six days of jazz before the festival commences. Hope it’s enough to keep you excited.
Saturday, June 6 Of course, it wouldn’t be a pre-festival Setlist without some of the official pre-festival events. Enter DCJF’s “Jazz ‘n Families Fun Days,” the pre-fest free weekend of music and activities for all ages at the Phillips Collection. The kids can take part in a scavenger hunt, art projects, storytelling, and an instrument petting zoo. The galleries are all open, and feature one of the festival’s coolest ideas: musicians wandering around the exhibits and responding to works on their instruments. There’s also the Phillips’ Music Room, which throughout the day is hosting performances by area musicians. The lineup includes violinist David Schulman and his band Quiet Life Motel; bassist Herman Burney and his trio; Trio ESP; the Antonio Parker Quartet, and the Allyn Johnson Trio. It begins at noon at The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street NW. Free.
Monday, June 8 Tenor saxophonist Elijah Jamal Balbed, who frequently uses all three of those names, has a crackerjack new CD out by the name of Lessons from the Streets. There’ll be a review of it in next week’s City Paper, but for the moment, what you need to know is that it features the extraordinary vibraphonist Warren Wolf, a regular on the Baltimore/D.C. scene that’s causing quite a stir of his own in the larger jazz world. The saxman and the vibist, both classicists of a sort (not strictists, mind you), do exemplary work together on Streets, and seem to have generated enough chemistry that Wolf is now guest-starring with Balbed’s JoGo Project. JoGo is a hybrid in the truest sense, a fusion ensemble that makes a unique brew of go-go (Balbed was in Chuck Brown’s last band), jazz, rock, and R&B. Say, how would you like to hear this band, with Wolf, in a prestigious venue for no admission? They perform at 6 p.m. at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, 2700 F Street NW. Free.