Carnival of Soul

Experience the Best of the Montclair Jazz Festival this Friday August 21, Saturday, August 22 and Sunday, August 23.

The Montclair Jazz Festival, produced by Jazz House Kids has been the highlight on the August music calendar for the past 10 years. New York City region’s largest jazz festival, last year’s two-week award-winning jazz fest welcomed more than 250 artists and over 15,000 music fans including 12,000 at its Grand Finale 10th Anniversary celebration in Nishuane Park. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 MONTCLAIR JAZZ FESTIVAL has been re-imagined as a three-night virtual “Best of” Watch Party featuring iconic performances from the archives.

Curated by Artistic Director Christian McBride and Executive Producer Melissa Walker, the Best of the Montclair Jazz Festival will be streamed on Facebook, YouTube and the Montclair Jazz Fest website, August 21-23 at 7:30 pm ET.

WBGO’s Gary Walker, one of the hosts of the Grand Finale in Nishuane Park (along with actor S. Epatha Merkerson), opens each “Best of” night, with Christian introducing all the performance segments. Each full set runs about an hour for three hours of music a night.

Here’s the lineup:

Friday, August 21

1. Dee Dee Bridgewater + Memphis Soulphony (2017)

2. George Coleman Organ Quartet (2016)

3. Eddie Palmieri and his Afro-Caribbean Jazz Sextet (2019)

Saturday, August 22

1. Cyrus Chestnut Trio (2017)

2. Bettye LaVette (2019)

3. Christian McBride Big Band (2015)

Sunday, August 23

1. Joey DeFrancesco, Christian McBride and Mark Whitefield (2019)

2. Paquito D’Rivera (2015)

3. Jazz House Collective – Art Blakey (2019)

The audio portion the Best of the MONTCLAIR JAZZ FESTIVAL will also run on Sirius XM’s “Real Jazz” station (Channel 67) on August 21, 22 and 23 at 3:00 pm.