Josh Grossman's blog

Over the past number of years, I've been excited to hear the expanding cross-pollination between jazz and other genres - and particular with genres such as R&B, soul, funk and hip hop. On one hand, this interest is purely practical - with greater cross-pollination comes greater potential audience crossover, and, hopefully, a larger audience for jazz in general.

The 2019 TD Discovery Series Special Projects presentations kick off this Thursday, February 7 with Moodset at Yauca's Lounge and, in many ways, it's a great example of what the Special Projects are all about.

Is it too late to say happy new year? I'll risk it - happy new year!

HOLY MOLY IT'S FESTIVAL DAY I CAN'T WAIT FOR EVERYTHING TO GET GOING YAHOO!!

Just needed to get that out.

Okay, so, I'm a bit behind schedule. Who knew that the last day before a big festival could be such a circus? (Well, me, actually, but I was clearly employing selective memory...) But - we persevere.

On the surface, artists who play traditional jazz and artists who play free jazz (or close to free jazz) are on polar opposite ends of the musical spectrum. But every time I listen to one or the other, I find similarities which surprise me. To my ear, early Dixieland music - with its group improvisation, even if carefully structured - for example, can at times sound just as cacophonous as some of the freest jazz.

For the next instalment of "let's talk about a bunch of free shows at the Festival!" (needs a catchier name, I know), I wanted to introduce some of the outstanding emerging talent performing for free in Yorkville this year.

Okay - day 2 of trying to summarize every free show at the Festival. After a momentary brain freeze ("How exactly do I group together all of these shows?!"), I've decided that today's entry would be purely chronological - first things first, as the saying goes.

For opening weekend this year we were aiming for a party inspired by soul, funk and r&b. We've certainly got that on our OLG Stage on Yorkville Avenue...but if we look at the opening weekend's programming on the whole, we discover quite an interesting range of music! Let's dive in.

A few weeks ago, our Publicity team asked me to choose 15 picks from the more than 150 free shows we're presenting at this year's Festival. That's kind of like asking me to choose which of my 150 children are my 15 favourite. (Or is that a weird comparison?) I LIKE THEM ALL EQUALLY.

But. For the purposes of exploring the free shows you can see at this year's Festival, it's a good place to start. And so - here are my first 20 or so picks. (Because I couldn't even get it down to 15.)

You know how when you say to yourself "okay, self, this time you're REALLY gonna write blog posts every week" and then suddenly it's two weeks before the Festival and a whole lotta time has gone by since your last post?

Yeah, well.