The four-day 2010 Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho, Moscow, from February 24 to 27 includes student performances workshops by jazz musicians and educators and evening concerts featuring many professional jazz musicians. Three of the festival’s artists this year have been nominated for Grammy awards.For aspiring jazz musicians, the festival offers some new workshops and clinics. Workshops include beginning and intermediate improvisation for horn players; rhythm section tips and tricks; rehearsal techniques; bass line construction; and editing chords for middle school piano players, among other selections. The workshops will be held alongside the long-standing artist clinics that feature the sights, sounds and experiences of life as a jazz musician.
The festival’s student performances and artistic clinics are free and open to the public. Tickets to the Young Artist Concerts, held on three afternoons of the festival in the ASUI-Kibbie Activity Center, are $5 and available at the door.
For 43 years at the University of Idaho, the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival (left in the photo is the Festival’s Artistic Director, John Clayton) has brought jazz masters together with elementary, junior high, high school and college students to share and celebrate this truly American art form. It has featured hundreds of musicians from around the world, including China, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Peru, as well as students from Canada, Japan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
Jazz greats who have performed at the festival include Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Mulligan, Dizzy Gillespie, Dianne Reeves, Stan Getz, Carmen McRae, Diana Krall, Wynton Marsalis and Sarah Vaughan and Diana Krall.
For more information about top events in Idaho, take a look at the Top Events USA selection of the annual main festivals and events in Idaho at www.topeventsusa.com/state-events-idaho.html
For more information on the 2010 Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival visit http://www.uidaho.edu/jazzfest.aspx