Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, a two-week residential high school summer institute for advanced study in jazz performance, takes place at Bard College in mid-July and offers locals a number of opportunities to hear great jazz performed by both the Jedis and the Padawans. Jazz at Lincoln Center, for those not in the know, is code for the great curatorial and canonical energy of one Wynton Marsalis, who, between his work as trumpeter and bandleader and as jazz theorist, historian and educator, is perhaps the single most influential figure in jazz of the last 50 years. (The fact that he is also an utterly elite classical trumpeter and pure murder on Baroque trumpet concerti is just gravy of the most delightful kind.)
All of which is to say that the great Wynton – a fixture on campus in past Summer Jazz Academies – seems not to be so much in Annandale this year. Still, the Jazz Faculty is shot through with greatness of his own choosing. The Summer Jazz Faculty concert takes place on Saturday, July 20 at 2 p.m. in Bard’s Olin Hall. It costs $25 to see this octet of absolutely cream-of-the-crop players. On Sunday July 21 at 2 p.m., the student ensembles perform music by Coltrane, Monk, Hancock, Ellington and more. Tickets cost $15. The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, joined by trumpeter Kenny Rampton, perform at Olin Hall on Saturday, July 27 at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $25. Finally, in the jazz equivalent of an orchestral gala, the Summer Jazz Academy Big Band Finale rocks the curtain close on Sunday, July 28 at 1 p.m. Tickets cost $15.
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, July 15-28, $15-$25, Olin Hall, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, (845) 758-7900, https://fishercenter.bard.edu/jazz
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