The festival will run from 3 to 10 p.m. at Veterans Plaza, 1 Veterans Pl. in Silver Spring. It is a several-block walk from the now-reopened Silver Spring Metro Station, and there is plenty of public parking in the area.
Cuban pianist and composer Chucho Valdés leads another great lineup for this year’s festival. He has won seven Grammy and six Latin Grammy Awards and is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz.
The Silver Spring Jazz Festival began in 2004 with local jazz great Keter Betts and Silver Spring’s own smooth jazz star Marcus Johnson as headliners. The festival has featured a variety of well-known, popular performers, with jazz styles ranging from New Orleans-style big band to contemporary jazz, smooth jazz, straight-ahead jazz, Latin jazz and more.
The festival schedule for Sept. 7 will include:
The Silver Spring Jazz Festival began in 2004 with local jazz great Keter Betts and Silver Spring’s own smooth jazz star Marcus Johnson as headliners. The festival has featured a variety of well-known, popular performers, with jazz styles ranging from New Orleans-style big band to contemporary jazz, smooth jazz, straight-ahead jazz, Latin jazz and more.
The festival schedule for Sept. 7 will include:
- 3 p.m. Second stage: Feedel Band
- 3:30 p.m. Main stage: Dupont Brass
- 4:15 p.m. Second stage: Eric Byrd Trio
- 5 p.m. Main stage: Paul Carr and the Jazz Collective
- 6 p.m. Second stage: Todd Marcus Quintet
- 7 p.m. Main stage: Marcus Johnson presents Crank + Flo
- 8:30 p.m. Main stage: Chucho Valdés Quartet
- Feedel Band: This Ethiopian Jazz Band is based in Washington but has played all over the world. Its sound can best be described as East African jazz, a merging of 1960s R and B and funk grooves with traditional Ethiopian minor key scales. The band is led by Araya Woldemichael on keys, Moges Habte on tenor sax, Panda Manurung on drums and Derrick Cooper on bass.
- Dupont Brass: The brass-driven rhythm group from the heart of DC, Maryland and Virginia. Born out of the musical halls of Howard University, this once humble quintet of music scholars has blossomed into a dynamic 10-piece force, featuring brass, a rhythm section and vocal prowess. Their journey began with humble origins, as they busked in Metro stations to fund their education, but has since catapulted them onto prestigious stages across the nation.
- Eric Byrd Trio: For more than twenty years, the Eric Byrd Trio has traveled the world as enthusiastic ambassadors of jazz. Rooted in swing and bebop, the Trio also embraces gospel and the blues as core elements of its expansive performance style. The trio takes a rigorous, modern approach to standards and original compositions, playing with great acuity within the broad and rich jazz tradition.
- Paul Carr and the Jazz Collective: Paul Carr is an award-winning saxophonist, educator, and founder of the Jazz Academy of Music and director of the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival. Paul is passionately committed to the education of children and young adults, particularly as it relates to the preservation of jazz. As founder of the Jazz Academy of Music, he hosts summer camps and jazz ensembles for kids throughout the year. The Houston native has made himself indispensable to the Washington area jazz education and concert scene. He has toured Russia, Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Central and South America and has shared the stage with many of the greatest names in jazz. Paul has appeared frequently as guests of Presidents at the White House.
- Todd Marcus Quintet: One of the few artists worldwide to focus on the bass clarinet as a main instrument in modern jazz, Todd leads his small and large ensembles. His straight-ahead playing and compositions swing with fiery intensity balanced with delicate introspection. His music offers a strong melodic sensibility, draws from elements of his community work, and often incorporate the Middle Eastern influences of his Egyptian-American heritage.
- Marcus Johson Presents Crank + Flo: Crank + Flo is a jazz and gogo mesh, for those who love a different sophisticated gogo experience. Internationally famous, homegrown star Marcus Johnson will lead the energetic performance. Marcus plays a blend of contemporary jazz stylings and hip-hop and rhythms. He describes his music as “instrumental R&B with a D.C. bounce.” Marcus began playing the piano at age nine and, from that point, he wanted to “create classics, not just hit songs.” Marcus is a founding member of the Silver Spring Jazz Festival.
- Chucho Valdés Quartet: The Latin jazz legend has pushed boundaries in pursuit of new expressions in Afro-Cuban music. His influence in the genre is immeasurable, his work establishing the standard by which younger generations set out to create their own interpretation of Afro-Cuban jazz. Chucho’s musical education included formal studies and countless nights on the best stages in Cuba as the pianist with his father Bebo Valdés and his orchestra Sabor de Cuba, and with the seminal Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna. Chucho is perhaps best known as the founder, pianist and main composer and arranger of Irakere, a landmark ensemble in Cuban music. Chucho led Irakere for more than 30 years, but since 2005 he has focused more on his personal career, highlighting his work as a pianist and leading small ensembles.
- 2024 Chucho Valdés Quartet
- 2023 Dee Dee Bridgewater
- 2022 Delfeayo Marsalis
- 2021 COVID-19 (no event)
- 2020 COVID-19 (no event)
- 2019 Arturo Sandoval
- 2018 Dianne Reeves
- 2017 Lao Tizer
- 2016 David Sanborn
- 2015 Al Chez and the Brothers of Funk Big Band
- 2014 Preservation Hall Jazz Band
- 2013 Branford Marsalis
- 2012 Sergio Mendez
- 2011 Marcus Johnson Project
- 2010 Aaron Neville
- 2009 Allen Toussaint
- 2008 Mingus Big Band
- 2007 Arturo Sandoval
- 2006 Spyro Gyra
- 2005 Wynton Marsalis
- 2004 Keter Betts and The Marcus Johnson Project
