Carnival of Soul

Longmont Jazz Association President Tim Ellis knows what you probably think about his jazz festival.

“People tend to think only people go to jazz festivals are hardcore jazz fans,” he said, “and that we are not looking to do anything but please hardcore jazz fans.

But while he acknowledges that might have been true — at least to an extent — of the 21-year-old Longmont Jazz Festival in the past, he wants the public to know the festival’s present and future will be defined by a different sort of vision.

It’s a vision that Ellis said was inspired, in part, by his youth, growing up in New Orleans, where “a guy who plays trumpet or saxophone or trombone in the band” was just as popular as the football players.

But he’s found that people in Longmont tend to view jazz with a bit of a different attitude.

“It’s a whole different animal down there [because] people are really proud to be musicians,” he said. “Coming up here, we are trying to show jazz isn’t just for your mom and dad and grandma and grandpa. We want to show that jazz spans a lot of different generations — and it spans a lot of different types of music that were either inspired by jazz or that jazz itself spans into.”

It was with that aim in mind that the association’s board curated this year’s lineup, which features both the more typical festival fare of the past featuring bands like the Flatiron Jazz Orchestra and After Midnight Jazz Band, but also such groups as Conjunto Colores, a Latin jazz band that Ellis describes as “off the hook.”Then there’s Funk Knuf, a jazz-based funk band out of Boulder that will close the festival on a particularly danceable note when they begin playing at 7:40, just when the festival would typically be winding down in the past.

“Last year as our last bands were finishing, we noticed we had about 500 people in the street and they wanted to dance more, but we were done,” said Ellis. “So this year we said, ‘Let’s go a little past nine and give those people something to stay for — and hopefully leave them wanting more for next year.”

Perhaps no performer at this year’s festival exemplifies the future of both jazz and the Longmont Jazz Festival quite like Rico Jones and CounterCurrent, a Denver-based group that is seeking to inject jazz with new vitality.

Saxophonist Rico Jones, whose passion for movie soundtracks led him to pursue jazz, describes the band as playing “original compositions which draw from the traditions and incorporate improvisation.” However, the band also adds influences from funk, R&B, soul, electronic music and rock — particularly heavy metal so to “really represent contemporary music.”

Jones said the band’s interest in incorporating elements of so many different genres into the music stems from a desire to produce music that feels “fresh and relevant.”

“If you are a … musician and all you look to for inspiration and information is other artists that practice the exact same thing you do, it’s a lot harder to make music — or art, in general —that feels original or has a different perspective,” Jones said. “It ends up being stagnant and derivative because you are only making music from one perspective.”

However, the band has a new goal that they hope will become apparent during their 6:20 p.m. show at the festival: Get attendees on their feet.

“Not only is this music that we are presenting supposed to be intellectually stimulating and interesting from a listening perspective,” Jones said, “but it’s also supposed to be music that can really be danced to. It’s supposed to get people moving.”

The addition of a more diverse range of artists and approaches to jazz is just one of several changes Ellis and the board made to the festival with an eye toward improving the experience of attendees. They also moved the start of the festival from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. because of past issues with daytime heat, and they invited more non-profit companies to have booths at the festival to help strengthen community ties. These ties are a major priority for the board, which will be presenting a Longmont high school student with a scholarship for music lessons, Ellis said.

But even as the festival changes, Ellis said the board is committed to maintaining the traditions that have made it what it is. Those include a traditional second-line brass band parade that kicks off the weekend with a Friday event.  Members of the community are invited to march behind a jazz band that will head down Main Street at 6 p.m. Friday, starting at La Bella Vita in Longmont.

Then there’s the festival’s admission cost, or more accurately its lack thereof.

“This is a free festival,” Ellis said. “So if somebody’s sitting at home on Saturday there’s absolutely nothing keeping them there.”

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If you go

What: Longmont Jazz Festival

When: 1 p.m.-9 p.m. Saturday (full schedule and line up at longmontjazz.com

Where: Fifth Avenue between Main and Coffman Streets in downtown Longmont

Cost: Free

More Info: longmontjazz.com