The third annual Grant Street Jazz Festival opens 11:30 a.m. Saturday and lasts until 11 p.m.
The event is free to all ages and features a variety of jazz musicians at high school, college and professional levels.
The first act will feature the Atomic Dog Brass Band as they march via the B-Line trail to the entrance of the festival at Grant and Kirkwood streets and to the main stage.
The band will be playing traditional New Orleans jazz as they march, and when they return to the stage at 4 p.m., they will switch to a rhythm-and-blues brass show, festival coordinator John Porter said.
“We’re really happy to have them on board,” he said.
Porter said he is also looking forward to this year’s headliner, Wayne Wallace. Wallace is a Jacobs faculty member in the jazz studies program. The five-time Grammy-nominated musician will perform with the IU Jazz Faculty Octet and again with a Latin Jazz Octet at the end of the night.
“It’s really exciting to have a musician of that professional caliber at our festival,” Porter said.
Porter said the main goal of the festival is to both educate and entertain audiences.
“We get to reach a demographic that’s not necessarily privy to jazz,” he said. “They can get a free sampling of what the Bloomington jazz community has to offer. There’s nothing to lose by walking into our festival.”
Alison Graham
11:30 a.m.-noon : Atomic Dog Brass Band marches to Grant St. Festival to open
12:05-12:50 p.m .: Craig Brenner
1-1:50 p.m. : Sara’s Swing Set
2-2:50 p.m. : Nate Johnson & the Keepers
3-3:50 p.m. : Danny D’s 8 Feet Deep
4-4:50 p.m. : Atomic Dog Brass Band stage show
5:10-6 p.m. : Stardusters little Big Band with Janiece Jaffe
6:10-6:40 p.m. : Trio Collective
6:50-7:40 p.m. : Jazz Fables Quintet and Rachel Caswell
7:50-8:40 p.m.: Monika Herzig’s Women In Jazz with Janiece Jaffe
8:50-9:50 p.m. : IU Jazz Faculty Octet (directed by Tom Walsh with Pat Harbison, Wayne Wallace, Ly Wilder, Luke Gillespie, Jeremy Allen, Steve Houghton and Michael Spiro)
10-11 p.m. : Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Octet featuring Michael Spiro on congas
