By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN – Step aside JazzFest and Montreux Jazz Festival, Greenwich Village is about to get its own jazz festival starting this June, according to reports.
In honor of its 30th anniversary, the Village's esteemed Blue Note Jazz Club will run the first-ever Blue Note Jazz Festival throughout the month of June at its location on West 3rd Street and Sixth Avenue, according to Blue Note’s website. The festival will also include additional concerts at Central Park's Summerstage and Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall, which is also the home of the famous Jazz at Lincoln Center festival.
The festival will also extend to other venues throughout the city, and have over 80 shows at Manhattan theaters including Beacon Theatre, Town Hall, BB King Blues Club and Grill, Highline Ballroom, Terminal 5, the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, and many others.
High-profile New York jazz greats Dave Brubeck, Chris Botti, Nancy Wilson and Bobby McFerrin will headline the club's first festival.
The festival will also reach out to younger audiences by including contemporary non-jazz acts on the lineup, including the hip hop/soul band The Roots, Duncan Sheik, and Cowboy Mouth, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"Over the past five years, we’ve adapted to changes in music," Steven Bensusan, president of Blue Note, told the Journal. "We’ve paired hip hop and jazz, for example. We want to mix up the elements."
Blue Note hopes its festival will stand in for the New York Jazz Festival, which is on hiatus this year, the Journal reported. If the performances are successful, however, the show may make more appearances in the future.
"This isn’t a dead industry," Bensusan told the paper.
The full Blue Note Jazz Festival schedule is available here.
