Sponsor of the Newport Jazz Festival

img 8058 1The 64th annual Newport Jazz Festival at Fort Adams State Park is the international highlight of the year for jazz enthusiasts. It continues to be sponsored by Nataxis Investment Managers. George Weins's creation of this historic music icon has influenced jazz musicians and aficionados around the world. The lineup of artists was far and wide in reflecting the soul of jazz in full Wein style. Jazz means "I Dare You." georgeweincharleslloyd2018

The Festival warmed up on Friday with the Diva Jazz Orchestra and set Newport ablaze with Living Colour and R+R=Now. The full list of performers can be seen below. Many of the NJF artists, such as Jon Batiste, Anat Cohen, Joshua Redman, Michel Camilo, Grace Kelly and Gregory Porter, have played at Fort Adams before, and returned again due to popular demand. Festival goers got another chance to catch their act and see these master artists evolve.

On Saturday, Pat Metheny and his quartet, returned with a heroic set played early on the Fort Stage to a loyal crowd. Laurie Anderson and Christian McBride requested the crowd collectively scream for ten minutes and had so much impact that some college students on the shuttle bus home were talking about how they will never forget that cathartic moment and it seemed like a turning point in our country's collective history. Laurie Anderson is the wife of the late, great, Lou Reed. 

George Wein lovingly wrote to Jazz Fest enthusiasts in the months leading up to the show about his request for the creative and esteemed Laurie Anderson to play with Christian McBride (NJF PRESS RELEASE, 2018): 

When Christian McBride told me he had been playing in duets with Laurie Anderson, I asked him if it might be possible to get Laurie to appear at the Newport Jazz Festival. I have felt for many years that Laurie would be an interesting and formidable addition to what we do at Newport.

At my request, Christian called Laurie and happily advised me that she was willing to play with him. Laurie has always been extremely selective about where she performs and I take it as a compliment that she will be at Newport on August 4th, appearing on the Fort Stage in the afternoon.

Laurie Anderson is loved and recognized today as an influential artist and her projects are conceptually fascinating. I personally find it difficult to describe her work, so I will quote Jessica Gelt from the LA Times:

“The question is not ‘Who is Laurie Anderson?’ but rather "Who isn't she?" Her new work ping-pongs between themes and ideas as swiftly as the artist herself dons the various hats that constitute her multifaceted identity: high priestess of poetry, demon on the violin, sculptor, filmmaker, multimedia creator, digital entrepreneur, inventor, pop rocker, avant-garde historian, widow of the late and great Lou Reed.”

~George Wein, 2018, Newport Jazz Festival, Wein Machine Notes. 

Christian McBride responded in kind: 

I’m particularly excited about the great iconoclast Laurie Anderson, who will also be making her Newport Jazz Festival debut. She will be joined in a set of improvisations by cellist Rubin Kodheli and a bass player I can’t remember. Some Irish cat.

~Christian McBride, 2018, Newport Jazz Festival. 

It was Charles Lloyd's 80th birthday during Jazz Fest weekend and The Charles Lloyd New Quartet was challenged by George Wein to play with as many artists as he could as part of a Wein Machine birthday giftimg 8278. Mr. Lloyd celebrated his 80th birthday with the Newport Jazz Festival for all three days with a different group each day. Friday, he performed with his group, Sangam. On Saturday, he brought his longtime quartet with Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers and Eric Harland. lucindawilliams2018And Sunday, he collaborated with singer/songwriter, Lucinda Williams, for a blues version of genius. To see a full photo album of this performance click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Andra Day brought light, beauty and artistic vision, as she sang the popular hit, "Rise Up" to a swell of crowd voices. She was among the world class vocalists present at Jazz Fest, including Gregory Porter, José James, Jazzmeia Horn, Charenée Wade, Alicia Olatuja. The Louis Cole Big Band brought style and delight to the Harbor Stage.

jonbatisteJon Batiste and Stay Human were at Jazz Fest in years past, but Batiste told the overflowing crowd who stood in the pouring rain, that George Wein told him he liked his piano playing and requested he come to only play piano, which he did. Batiste was not alone, however, as he was surrounded by about 40 students from a local jazz camp who were proud to share the stage with him. He also is smitten by Mrs. Wein's delicious omlettes, which seemed to sway him to play piano more than anything else. We caught the Bill Withers tribute celebrated by Jose James and it was iconic. The Storyville stage brought jazz “chamber” groups. Dynamic young pianists such as Mathew Whitaker, Isaiah Thompson and Emmet Cohen dazzled. Trumpeter and vocalist Jennifer Hartswick and guitarist Nick Cassarino, packed the soul and emotion of a full band. Helen Sung and tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman brought a unique set of piano and tap to Storyville.img 8152 1

Newport Jazz welcomed first timers GoGo Penguin, Marquis Hill, Sonnymoon, Nicole Mitchell, the Black Art Jazz Collective.img 8158 Nicole Mitchell's Dusty Wings presented an orchestra like experience to the Harbor Stage, sparkling with flute in ensemble. At the Quad Stage, Jazzmia Horn had the crowd mesmerized with her stunning vocals and stage presence, while GoGo Penguin rocked the house with the new generation of jazz funk. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Gregory Porter had been at this Quad Stage in years past, then on to the Fort Stage, where he has stayed for his last two performances. It is Mr. Gregory Porter who is closest to our hearts in the Newport Jazz Fest. Every time he performs, more positivity is opened to the world.

For more photos of Gregory Porter click here. gregoryporter2018

 

 

 

 

 

 GEORGE CLINTON AND PARLIMENT FUNKADELIC George Clinton at the Newport Jazz Festival 2018Did we mention that Jazz means, "I Dare You?" This year, the Newport Jazz Fest announced, "the undisputed living king of funk and pilot of the Mothership, George Clinton and his P-Funk All-Stars!" In waiting for the legendary George Clinton to dawn the Fort Stage Sunday afternoon, I found a space within the crowd. I can't tell you how many times I heard a fan say, "I don't know what to expect". Mr. Clinton opened the show with immediate adoration for the fans. His smile is as electric as the funk masterpieces he created decades ago. img 7872He brought a confidence to the new generation of funk leaders as the stage became more and more populated with talented musicians, dancers and rap, funk vocalists. P FUNK to mesmerized the crowd! Legendary favorites, Atomic Dog, Give Up The Funk, Flashlight, among others, brought a psychedelic buzz to the crowd that did not stop. It was this One Nation Under a Groove vibe that we all needed to understand how music brings us together. 

For the full photo album of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic click here. 

GEORGE CLINTON/NJF PRESS RELEASE: 

On Sunday, August 5, a Mothership commander will land on the Fort Adams stage when the 76-year old vocalist, songwriter, producer, bandleader, icon and Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame Inductee George Clinton and his supergroup, the Grammy Award winning Parliament Funkadelic, perform for the first time at the Newport Jazz Festival® presented by Natixis Investment Managers. In support of his latest CD, Medicaid Fraud Dogg, and part of a landmark, worldwide tour that will end with his retirement from touring in 2019, Clinton is sure to bring the funk and more to Narragansett Bay.

"I had to get this music out there," Clinton said in an interview posted on the website www.consequenceofsound.net . "I felt real creative urgency to give the world this, right now."

Simply put: With the exception of James Brown, Clinton has done more than anyone to elevate and expand the African-American music genre known as funk, first with his R&B vocal group, The Parliaments with their 1967 hit, "(I Wanna) Testify." In the next decade, Clinton - who first formed the band as a doo-wop group in his hometown of Plainfield, New Jersey where he worked in a barbershop - expanded the group, moved to Detroit, where he briefly worked for Motown and with some independent local labels. As a songwriter, he augmented the group's music, with a funkier edge, drawing from Brown and Sly Stone, with touches of Afro-psychedelic, talismanic iconography. Parliament featured colorful characters like the square, non-dancing Sir Nose D'Voidaffunk, who was the nemesis of Starchild, his polar opposite who always knew where "The One" was. And, there was the Mothership - an Afro-American version of the Apollo Moon Module that literally landed onstage, where Clinton as "Dr. Funkenstein" would emerge from the ship, exhorting his funketeers to "give up the funk."

Throughout the 70s, Parliament produced a number of R&B hits, including "Up for the Downstroke," "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off The Sucker)," "Aquaboogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)" and "Flash Light," from their equally impactful albums including Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome, The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, Mothership Connection, and The Motor-Booty Affair. With the jazzy horn lines supplied by saxophonist Maceo Parker and Pee Wee Ellis and trombonist Fred Wesley - all from James Brown's groups - Parliament set the bar high as one of the most influential ensembles in 20th century music.

As Parliament was to funk, Clinton's other equally influential ensemble Funkadelic was the Black answer to rock. The group's roots go back to 1964, when it was a touring band created to back The Parliaments. The band, which was named by the group's original bassist Billy Bass Nelson, came into its own as a distinct entity from Parliament, even though there was some overlap and interchange between groups with the same musicians. And though both groups were next to none in terms of dance grooves, Funkadelic was more guitar-oriented, abstract, and daringly political.

Its classic albums including Maggot Brain, America Eats Its Young, Hardcore Jollies, Uncle Jam Wants You, and One Nation Under a Groove, yielded several singles including "(Not Just) Knee Deep," "Standing on the Verge of Getting It On," "Comin' Round the Mountain," and "Cosmic Slop." Guitarists Garry Shider and Glenn Goins, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and vocalists Walter "Junie" Morrison (who also played keyboards) and Philippé Wynne of The Spinners, were some of the stars that made Funkadelic the premier band that it was. With Clinton at the helm, his groups sang and riffed on a number of subjects that included extraterrestrial life, The Bermuda Triangle, Egyptology, drugs, Atlantis and the inner city, drawing from any musical source he deemed worthy.

"I'd bite off the Beatles, or anybody else," Clinton told Rolling Stone. "It's all one world, one planet and one groove."

Parliament and Funkadelic were but two of Clinton's ever-growing cadre of groups, which included Maceo Parker Horny Horns, the all-female outfits Parlet and the Brides of Funkentstein, bassist Bootsy Collins and his Rubber Band and The P-Funk All-Stars. In the early 80s, after long, legal battles with record companies, Clinton became a solo artist, with his most successful single, "Atomic Dog" becoming one of the most iconic videos of all time. Clinton was also a force beyond touring and recording. He wrote the theme song to The Tracey Ullman Show, hosted the HBO series Cosmic Slop, and he appeared in several films including Prince's Graffiti Bridge, and House Party. Clinton's influence on pop music and hip-hop is massive. Prince, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur and Digital Underground have sampled, and have been inspired by his music, and Clinton was a major influence on the rock group, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Brit-rocker Thomas Dolby, among many others. Clinton also guest stars on the track, "Wesley's Theory," from Kendrick Lamar's rap masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly, and in 2014 published his memoir, Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?

When Clinton steps on the Newport stage, he'll do so, with six decades of funk and Black rock under his belt, with a new generation of funkateers, poised to carry "The One" onward and upward. "This is to let them know that "Atomic Dog" and "Mothership Connection" are not the end of the story, Clinton told Consequence of Sound. "So when you see Medicaid Fraud Dogg, you'll see Sir Nose is still out there ... and Dr. Funkenstein is out here inoculating people with the funk." Newport, get ready.

Additional Artist Biographies via NJF Press Release: 

The Newport Jazz Festival has showcased some of the finest bandleaders in jazz from Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck, to Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams and Miles Davis. Make your way to The-City-By-The-Sea where the 2018 edition of the festival will present a cache of leaders who move the music forward while paying homage to its roots.

The 82-year-old, Memphis-born, Harold Mabern brings five decades of unadulterated, straight-ahead swing to the stage on Saturday, August 4, powered by his propulsive and personable pianism that, according to former Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins, "marries McCoy Tyner's clustering modality with rippling asides that stem from [Art] Tatum." Inspired by the legendary Phineas Newborn, Mabern grew up gigging with future greats like trumpeter Booker Little and saxophonist George Coleman. As a sideman, he's worked with everybody from Miles Davis, Lee Morgan and Wes Montgomery, to Stanley Turrentine, George Benson and Betty Carter. Since 1968, he's recorded over 20 albums as a leader, including his last three on the Smoke Label. Among them was his well-received 2014 CD, Afro Blue, which featured vocalists Gregory Porter, Norah Jones, Kurt Elling and Jane Monheit. Mabern's work as an educator is as equally impressive as his improvisations, as evidenced by his sojourns at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and William Paterson University, where he mentored a young, Coleman-influenced, tenor saxophonist, Eric Alexander - an invigorating improviser with a firm grasp of the tradition. This swinging and satisfying master/apprentice relationship has been mutually beneficial, especially with Mabern as a sideman on Alexander's 2016 and 2017 CDs, The Second Impression and The Black Cat. There is no doubt this dynamic duo will make Beale Street talk when they hit the Newport stage in swinging sympatico on Saturday, August 4.

The 57-year-old, Wilmington, Delaware-born, pianist, composer and bandleader Matthew Shipp's supreme reign as one of the most influential musicians of the avant-garde dimension of the music, is in large part due to the mentorship of Robert "Boysie" Lowery, who counted the legendary Clifford Brown as one of his students, and Philadelphia guitarist Dennis Sandole, who taught John Coltrane. With that firm foundation, along with his mystic brew of Bud Powell's boplicity, McCoy Tyner's power and Sun Ra's iconoclastic ideas, Shipp moved to New York in the 80s after studying at The New England Conservatory of Music, and - in the ears of many critics - picked up where Cecil Taylor left off. Shipp's staggering, 60-plus recordings as a leader run the gamut of configurations - but he primarily worked and recorded with trios and quartets, especially with drummers Guillermo E. Brown, Gerald Cleaver, and Whit Dickey, and bassist William Parker, along with saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and David S. Ware, and vibraphonist Khan Jamal. Joining Shipp in Newport on Friday, August 3, are bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, who complete the trio on hislatest critically-acclaimed CD, Piano Song.            

The esteemed New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley has been in his percussive prime ever since he burst on the scene in the mid 1980s. He's held down the drum chair in Ahmad Jamal's groups for three decades, worked and recorded with Wynton Marsalis for that same period, and was a founding member of Jazz at Lincoln Center. A member of a prominent family of musicians, Riley has performed on dozens of recordings as a sideman with everybody from Dr. John, Steve Turre and George Benson to Marcus Roberts, Cassandra Wilson and Monty Alexander. Riley is a literal, one-man conjuration of Congo Square, who downloads all of the Afro-Diasporic rhythms with all of their dancing diversity. Since 2006, Riley has released three CDs as a leader: Watch What You're Doing, Cream of the Crescent and New Direction. His forthcoming release is entitled Perpetual Optimism, and when he comes to Newport on Sunday, August 5, with pianist ELEW (Eric Lewis), saxophonist Marcus Strickland, bassist Russell Hall and Cuban percussionist Alexey Marti, Riley's Big Easy Beats will definitely bring smiles to the New England shores.

It's one thing to master an instrument. It's another thing to master a family of instruments. That's what James Carter has been doing since the 80s. Whether he's playing the tenor, alto, soprano or baritone saxophone, along with bass clarinet and flute, the 49-year-old, Detroit native (and cousin of violinist Regina Carter) has developed a signature, identifiable sound across the saxophone/woodwind spectrum, in a myriad of configurations and contexts. Carter has worked and recorded with a plethora of stars including Lester Bowie, Kathleen Battle, Herbie Hancock, Julius Hemphill and Christian McBride. He's also released more than a dozen albums that range from the intensity of Live at Baker's [Keyboard Lounge], and the classically-tinged, Caribbean Rhapsody, to At the Crossroads, the first recording of his Organ Trio, which he'll reprise on Sunday, August 5. Bathed in the shimmering sound of a Hammond B-3, Carter promises to deliver a dynamic performance that reaches from the most gutbucket blues to the celestial, post-Coltrane, sheets-of-sound and beyond.

No other musician has dominated and defined his instrument the way that the 63 year-old Missouri native and NEA Jazz Master Pat Metheny has done on the guitar since he began making his mark on the jazz scene in the 70s. With a firm command of the legacy of his musical forbearers - from Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall to Gabor Szabo, Tal Farlow and John McLaughlin - Metheny has worked and recorded with an A-list of musicians that includes Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, John Scofield, Brad Mehldau and Kenny Garrett. He's also created a guitar sound that is at home in virtually every musical format and genre. Metheny's albums display a wide berth of those styles, from the classic jazz fusion of Bright Size Life, the folk/rockish American Garageand Song X, the historic, harmolodic collaboration with Ornette Coleman, to the radio-friendly We Live Here, the extended-form masterpiece The Way Up, the ambitious, large ensemble, solenoid-syncopated Orchestrion, and the super trio recording Day Trip, with his long-time Mexican-American drummer, Antonio Sanchez and bassist Christian McBride. On Saturday, August 4 , Metheny brings his latest, international group of Young Turks, which includes Sanchez, Australian bassist Linda May Han Oh and British pianist Gwilym Simcock to Newport. Metheny also shares the stage with vocalist José James on Friday, August 3, at the International Tennis Hall of Fame at the Newport Casino.

Improvisers Assemble at 2018 Newport Jazz Festival/PRESS RELEASE: 

In a 2017 interview with the Providence Journal, George Wein, the legendary impresario and founder of the Newport Jazz Festival remarked that, "We can't all be Charlie Parkers or John Coltranes, but we can be creative leaders. Create your own group, your own sound, and add to what jazz is."

The 2018 edition of the Newport Jazz Festival presented by Natixis Investment Managers features a stellar assemblage of improvisers convening at Fort Adams State Park and the International Tennis Hall of Fame at the Newport Casino August 3-5, who provide impressive and evocative road maps to the future of jazz.

If you add up all of the years the individuals who make up Trio 3 - bassist Reggie Workman, saxophonist Oliver Lake and drummer Andrew Cyrille have been on the scene, it would be about 130 years. Collectively, they've worked with a virtual who's who of music, from John Coltrane, Art Blakey, and Yusef Lateef, to The World Saxophone Quartet, Meshell Ndegeocello and Cecil Taylor, to name a very select few. With Workman's Philly-bred, bone-deep baselines, Lake's searing, St. Louis-signatured sheets-of-sound, and Cyrille's Brooklyn-by-way-of-Port-Au-Prince percussion, this towering triad, has released nine recordings as a group, including their 2017 release, Visiting Texture. These three esteemed leaders come to the stage on Saturday, August 4, performing music clearly in the avant-garde genre, rendered in a unique form of "organic improvisation" as only they can deliver.

The Grammy-winning, Bay Area-born tenor/soprano saxophonist Joshua Redman, played at Newport with an all-star group, James Farm in 2011. He returns with a new aggregation entitled Still Dreaming featuring drummer Brian Blade (Joni Mitchell, Wayne Shorter, The Fellowship), bassist Scott Colley (Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, Pat Metheny) and cornetist Ron Miles (Redman, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz). This ensemble pays tribute to the seventies supergroup, Old and New Dreams composed of Ornette Coleman's ex-sidemen, including Redman's father, Dewey on saxophone, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell. The younger Redman's ensemble comes to Newport on Friday, August 3, no doubt performing selections from their new eponymously-titled CD, which bobs and weaves with Coleman's angular, harmolodic lines. In 1959, Coleman released an LP entitled Tomorrow Is the Question!. This group is the answer.

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis' Second Classic Quintet were two dominate small ensembles of the sixties, with saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter as the link between the two groups. The Black Art Jazz Collective - trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, (Ravi Coltrane, Cassandra Wilson, Greg Osby), tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffrey (Mingus Big Band, Monty Alexander, Abdullah Ibrahim), bassist Vicente Archer (Robert Glasper, Donald Harrison, Kenny Garrett), pianist Xavier Davis (Betty Carter, Christian McBride, Freddie Hubbard), trombonist James Burton III (Slide Hampton, Roy Hargrove, Ron Carter), and drummer Johnathan Blake (Kenny Barron, Tom Harrell, Jaleel Shaw) - brilliantly blends the best of Blakey's protean power and Davis' finessed, controlled freedom into their own unique sound. They come to the Newport stage on Sunday, August 5, performing music from their new CD, Amor of Pride. This swinging sextet bops with no nonsense, modern jazz, which never goes out of style.

Since 1954, the Newport Jazz Festival® has been a prominent showcase for jazz trumpeters to show off their chops - from Louis Armstrong playing "Blue Room" and Dizzy Gillespie performing "Manteca" to Miles Davis blowing cool on "'Round Midnight," and Wynton Marsalis putting his neo-classic nuances on "Black Codes from the Underground." In every era, the trumpet kings and queens have signed their sonic signature in this soulful setting, and this year's edition presented by Natixis Investment Managers, which convenes at Fort Adams State Park August 3-5, continues this grand and grooving tradition.

The Texas-born trumpeter-flugelhornist Roy Hargrove represented the cream of the crop of trumpeters who came after Wynton Marsalis in the Young Lions era of the eighties. His Grammy-winning, butter-rich trumpet tones encompass straight-ahead to R&B and hip-hop, and on Sunday, August 5, his quintet, featuring alto saxophonist/flautist Justin Robinson, pianist Tadataka Unno, bassist Ameen Saleem and drummer Quincy Phillips, will no doubt provide their fearless leader with the right moves and grooves that have kept him in the public eye for decades.

Chicago has been second to none in producing trumpeters of impeccable taste, as evidenced by Marquis Hill, winner of the 2014 Thelonious Monk International Trumpet Competition. His trumpet tones get their airlift from Donald Byrd's inspirational wings, and on Friday, August 3, he and his Blacktet - alto saxophonist Braxton Cook, pianist Michael King, bassist Jeremiah Hunt and drummer Jonathan Pinson - come to the stage to perform their wide panorama of genres, from hard bop, blues and beyond, which are heard on Hill's 2016 release The Way We Play.

Oakland's Ambrose Akinmusire also is a Monk Competition winner (2007). His first place finish in the recent 66th Annual Down Beat International Critics Poll confirms what many already know - that he's been one of the most intrepid improvisers and compelling composers in the last decade and a half, as heard on his 2-CD recording A Rift in Decorum: Live at The Village Vanguard. He's a sideman in Mary Halvorson's Code Girl ensemble on Saturday, August 4, and on Sunday, August 5, he brings his Origami Harvest with rapper Kohl A.D., keyboardist Sam Harris, drummer Marcus Gilmore and The Minos String Quartet to Newport performing music that spans from the vital center to the outer limits of jazz.

British Columbia's Ingrid Jensen, sister of saxophonist Christine, and a multiple winner of Canada's Juno Award, came in second place in that same Downbeat Critics Poll which, given that she stylistically comes from Clark Terry and Freddie Hubbard, should come as no surprise to anyone. With nine CDs as a leader, including her 2016 release Infinite, she performs with the super-ensemble Artemis on Sunday, August 5, which also features vocalist Cecile McLorin-Salvant, pianist/music director Renee Rosnes, saxophonist Melissa Aldana, drummer Allison Miller, clarinetist Anat Cohen and bassist Noriko Ueda.

All told, the trumpet is in good hands and in good company with Hargrove, Akinmusire, Hill and Jensen on the scene.

Newport Jazz Fest Hosts Youth Performers and Offers Scholarships to Teen Jazz Musicians Ages 15-18/PRESS RELEASE: 

The performance you hear in the earliest hours of the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival might be the beginning of careers by artists who will someday say their first gig was at Newport in an ensemble directed by a world-renowned jazz musician. The young performers, ages 15 to 18, who will open the festival on the Harbor Stage at 11:00 a.m., Friday, August 3, have spent a week at the Berklee Global Jazz Workshop at the Newport Jazz Festival, an intensive program taught by world-renowned faculty under the artistic direction of Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer Danilo Pérez and Managing Director Marco Pignataro. More than 40 students attended the program on full scholarships provided by the Newport Festivals Foundation and the Joyce and George Wein Foundation.

The Berklee Global Jazz Workshop is an intensive five-day program where students receive instrumental instruction, rehearse in ensembles, and jam well into the evening. They attend master classes on improvisation, theory, performance, and harmonic analysis. Their mentors are recent BGJI graduates. This year, students attended from more than 10 countries, including Panama, Chile, South Africa, Israel, Argentina, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, and Australia.

Natixis Investment Managers is the Presenting Sponsor of the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival and sponsors programs that help enrich the lives of individuals and preserve the cultural experience for future generations through music. In addition to Natixis Investment Managers, the Newport Jazz Festival also receives generous support from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, New Belgium Brewing and Eventbrite.

Newport Festivals Foundation fosters the legacy and expands the impact of its Festivals through educational initiatives that celebrate innovation while preserving the deep traditions inherent in Jazz and Folk music. The Foundation's goal is to offer opportunity, inspire through exposure and facilitate the collection of resources needed for musicians to celebrate and innovate. The focus on creating unique experiences to spark engagement is accomplished through a variety of initiatives, including instrument donations and performances at schools throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. For more information, please visit www.newportfestivals.org .