12th Annual Coltrane Jazz Fest Overflowing With Grammy-Winning, Groundbreaking, and Influential Artists

High Point, NC – Keb’ Mo’, Dave Koz, Terri Lyne Carrington, Chucho Valdés, Samara Joy, and the Yellowjackets head a lineup of Grammy Award-winning, renowned artists for the 12th Annual John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival (JCIJBF) happening Sept. 2-3, 2023 in Oak Hollow Park during Labor Day weekend. This year’s presentation includes the most diverse blend of music styles that cross a variety of contemporary, traditional, and improvisational jazz and blues genres. (Please scroll down to watch the trailer.)

Performing Saturday, September 2, 2023:

Dave Koz & Friends Summer Horns

Dave Koz brings the 2023 rendition of the Summer Horns, his popular live smooth jazz ensemble. This year the ensemble features Candy Dulfer and Eric Darius — two saxophonists who amassed their own impressive reputations in the smooth jazz genre. Vocalist Maysa will appear with the ensemble. She is well known as a member of the group Incognito, as well as, for her work as a solo artist. A platinum-selling artist, Koz has racked up nine Grammy nominations,12 No.1 albums on Billboard’s Current Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, and numerous world tours.

Chucho Valdés

Over his 60-year career, the legendary Afro-Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés has won seven Grammy and five Latin Grammy Awards. He made his early mark as the founder, pianist, leading composer, and arranger with the small big band Irakere (1973-2005). With its mix of Afro-Cuban ritual music, Cuban dance music, jazz, classical music, and rock, Irakere marked a before and after in Latin jazz. While he remained with Irakere until 2005, Valdés launched a parallel career in 1998 both as a solo performer and a small-group leader where he continued to break new ground and break down stringent music categories.

Samara Joy

Samara Joy, the 2023 Grammy Award-winner for Best New Artist is the 23-year-old vocal sensation already being compared to Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald. She is only the second jazz musician ever to be awarded the Best New Artist Grammy. She also won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her September 2022 release, “Linger Awhile.” Jazz Times magazine named Joy the ‘Best New Artist’ for her debut, self-titled album released in 2021.

Norman Brown

Grammy Award-winning jazz guitarist Norman Brown sees his music as a way to serve the world. He has been a requested artist by Coltrane Jazzfest attendees in past years.

Throughout his 30-year career, Brown earned two Grammy Award nominations, one of which resulted in a win for Best Pop Instrumental Album in 2002 for “Just Chillin,” a plethora of chart-topping albums and platinum-selling recordings.

Mr. Sipp

Castro Coleman aka Mr. Sipp,” the Mississippi Blues Child,” blew fans away when he performed at the 2019 Coltrane Jazzfest. Nominated for the 2023 ‘B.B. King Entertainer of the Year’ category at the forthcoming Blues Music Awards, Sipp has released four blues chart-topping albums including the 2021 release “Sippnotized.”

 

Performing Sunday, September 3, 2023:

Keb’ Mo’

Five-time Grammy Award-winning blues icon Keb’ Mo’, whose career spans almost 50 years, stands as one of the most accomplished and respected artists working in contemporary roots music today. Described as a living link to the seminal Delta Blues, the singer, guitarist, songwriter, and arranger has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards. In addition to his first win in 1994, he has won three more Grammys for Best Contemporary Blues Album, “Slow Down,” “Keep It Simple,” and “TajMo,” the 2018 collaboration with Taj Mahal. In 2020 Keb’ Mo’ won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album for “Oklahoma.”

Terri Lyne Carrington and Friends

Jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, the 2023 Grammy Award winner for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for her release “New Standards, vol. 1.” will perform with a group of artists she selected. Joining Carrington for the special Coltrane Jazz Fest performance will be harpist Brandee Younger, flutist Nicole Mitchell and three vocalists: Lisa Fischer, Michael Mayo, and Michelle Coltrane. Each artist is known for having a cutting-edge, innovative approach to music. Part of the performance will be in tribute to the work of Alice Coltrane and Woman Composers featured on the New Standards album. Alice Coltrane, the wife of the saxophone great, was also a pianist and composer.

Yellowjackets

Throughout their storied,43-year history, the Yellowjackets have recorded 25 albums, and received 17 Grammy nominations; the most recent being the 2023 Best Instrumental Jazz Album nomination for “Parallel Motion.” The group won two; Best Jazz Fusion Album for “Politics” and Best R&B Instrumental Performance for “And You Know That.” They’ve performed countless sold-out tours and enjoyed worldwide critical acclaim and commercial success. Weathering numerous personnel changes, but never sacrificing craftsmanship or musical integrity, the current group includes keyboardist Russell Ferrante, saxophonist Bob Mintzer, drummer William Kennedy, and bassist Dane Alderson.

Matthew Whitaker

This is the second appearance at the Coltrane Jazz Fest for Matthew Whitaker. He was 17 then and has since expanded his mastery and reputation as a consummate musician. He has recorded three albums, “Outta the Box” in 2017, “Now Hear This” in 2019, and his latest, “Connections,” released last year. This sixteen-track collection is a bold declaration of his maturity as a player, composer, and bandleader. In both 2019 and 2020, he won the ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers award for his compositions, Emotions and Underground.

UNCG Spartan Jazz Collective

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) Spartan Jazz Collective is a collaborative group of faculty and students founded in 2012 to function in the mentorship tradition of the bands of Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and Horace Silver. Faculty members mentor a rotating cast of students in bandleading, arranging, and rehearsal technique, while focusing on specific jazz artists for each semester. This year they will play the music of Lou Donaldson.

Donaldson, now age 96, is a famed alto saxophonist who attended North Carolina A&T State University in the 1940s. He played with many of the jazz titans including Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Art Blakey.

The John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival (JCIJBF) honors Coltrane, a globally revered jazz saxophonist, composer, and High Point, NC native son who graduated from William Penn High School, now Penn Griffin School of the Arts in the city. Ticket information and festival details are available at coltranejazzfest.com.