The 45th annual Detroit Jazz Festival ran Labor Day weekend, August 30 to September 2, 2024. Hart Plaza, Campus Martius, and the new Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center on Wayne State's campus.
Free admission. Detroit Jazz Festival Brian Blade, the two-time Grammy-winning drummer, served as artist-in-residence. The opening night was supposed to be the centerpiece.
A harp belonging to Alice Coltrane was set on the Hart Plaza Carhartt stage for opening night. The harp was a gift from her husband John Coltrane, delivered to their Long Island home shortly after his death. PBS It had been restored and brought to Detroit, where Alice Coltrane was born.
Harpist Brandee Younger was set to play the instrument for the first time, alongside Alice's son Ravi Coltrane and the Detroit Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra. The piece was titled "Translinear Light: The Music of Alice Coltrane," Detroit Jazz Festival after Coltrane's 2004 album that ended a long hiatus from commercial recording. The weather had other ideas.
Severe thunderstorms tracked toward Hart Plaza on Friday afternoon. With lightning a few miles south along the Detroit River, festival director Chris Collins made the call to move both Friday night performances inside, broadcasting them as livestream-only from the Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center.
The festival had developed the broadcast capability during the pandemic. It came back into use sooner than anyone expected. All About Jazz The next three days ran outdoors as scheduled.
Christian McBride & Inside Straight. The Billy Childs Quartet with Sean Jones. Kyle Eastwood led the Detroit Jazz Festival Symphony Orchestra through new arrangements of his father Clint's film scores, with interview segments from the senior Eastwood.
The Vibraphone Summit with Warren Wolf, Joe Locke, Jason Marsalis, and Chien Chien Lu. Joshua Redman with Gabrielle Cavassa. Detroit Jazz Festival The festival is the world's largest free jazz festival.
Twenty-six percent of its audience comes from out of state. Detroit Jazz Festival The Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center, the new building at Wayne State, is named after the late Detroit philanthropist who rescued the festival from financial collapse and was sometimes called the "Angel of Jazz." Her endowment continues to fund the festival.
Up to 85 cents of every donated dollar goes directly to programming. Alice Coltrane's harp came home that weekend.
Location: Hart Plaza and Campus Martius, Downtown; Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center, Wayne State University, Midtown
