Three Rivers Arts Festival adds jazz

This year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival will add 14 city blocks and a little more jazz to the… This year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival will add 14 city blocks and a little more jazz to the formula.

The jazz festival will be held in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, between Tenth and Stanwix streets, starting this weekend. While the Three Rivers Arts Festival extends over a 10-day period, June 3-12, the jazz festival will take place only during the first weekend of the arts festival, Friday through Sunday. The half-century old arts festival showcases art, music, dance, food and theater in Downtown each summer.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust anticipates that the free jazz festival will generate exposure for Downtown Pittsburgh, which includes six performance theaters, multiple art galleries, restaurants and shops, said Veronica Corpuz, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.“By having bookend events, there will be a connectivity of performances, art and fun throughout the entire 14 blocks of the Cultural District,” Corpuz said.

Officials for the Pittsburgh JazzLive International festival hope that the established tradition of the arts festival will draw Pittsburghers to the new jazz portion, saidJanis Burley Wilson, the director of jazz programs for JazzLive International.

Wilson began organizing the jazz festival three years ago, thinking that “it might be nice to expand the jazz program into a festival of music.” The prospects of the jazz festival have already grabbed international attention in the magazines DownBeat and Jazz Prime.

The Pittsburgh JazzLive International festival will feature the talents of the Blind Boys of Alabama, Center of Life, Roger Humphries, Sean Jones, Bettye LaVette, Les Nubians, Gretchen Parlato, Gregory Porter, Bobby Sanabria, Soulive with Nigel Hall, Tom Tom Club and local musician Chelsea Baratz. Each performing group features distinct elements to form a lineup that Burley Wilson says will “provide a broad spectrum of what is jazz.”

On Friday, JazzLive will kick off with the JazzLive crawl from 5:30-9 p.m. The crawl will feature 20 different venues throughout the Cultural District presenting live jazz music.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is also hosting walking tours during the jazz festival to familiarize attendees with the galleries in the Cultural District and to encourage families to return to the arts festival throughout the week.

Wilson hopes that the young and fresh featured artists will get people interested in the Pittsburgh jazz scene.

“After all,” she said, “Cleveland has a Jazz Festival. Why shouldn’t we?”

Local jazz musician Benny Benack III, of Benny Benack III and Friends, is excited to be a play trumpet during Friday’s jazz crawl and thinks the line-up will show the talent of Pittsburgh’s jazz scene.

“Pittsburgh’s jazz musicians are as good as it gets anywhere in the world, and to have showcases for that talent like the upcoming JazzLive International Festival and Jazz Crawl do wonders for keeping live jazz music alive,” the Manhattan School of Music junior said in an email. “There’s nothing like live jazz.”