A week has passed since the last note was played at the Rochester International Jazz Festival. Now that I’ve had time to rest, catch up on my day job, and let my thoughts on this year’s RIJF percolate a bit, I thought I’d share them before they go too stale. Let us know about your RIJF in the comments.

Change, Change, Change …

There were a lot of changes at this year’s RIJF … some good, some less so, and some just different. The festival’s producers, John Nugent and Marc Iacona, are juggling a lot of balls in producing the festival each year—getting a good foundation of support from sponsors and the city, finding the right mix of music, keeping everyone fed and lubricated—and they must experiment as conditions change. We know the changes we’re all going through right now and should expect that the pressures they exert on this for-profit venture is going to have an effect. This year’s changes, with Rochester Regional Health stepping into the named sponsor shoes, it appears that they may have found a sweet spot sponsor-wise, on the venue footprint and attendance, to keep the festival profitable enough to continue to make downtown Rochester come alive in late June.

The changes may not have had much effect on how many people came to the festival. A constant refrain I heard from from “jazz fest friends” (or “JFFs,” the people you see only or mostly at the RIJF each year), who would often ask “Do you think the crowds are down this year?”  According to the RIJF’s official tally of over 211,000 attendees, it was consistent with RIJF attendance since the pandemic, which has hovered above 210,000 attendees each year. I think that the increase in Club Pass cost, the higher cost of travel, and fewer international visitors all had a substantial effect, but something apparently offset those drags on attendance. While Club Pass venue attendance may have been down based on what my JFFs told me and my own observations, there also seemed to be more people who had come downtown to hang and catch some of the free music. Jazz Street was more open and felt less “owned” by the corporate sponsor. Rhythm Square was a nice chill spot to meet up with your own JFFs, eat some grub, and listen to some of Rochester’s amazing music talent. Sor, perhaps the numbers were there, but just in different places?

In my opinion, there were some good changes on the music side as well. From June 19th to the 24th Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre became a Club Pass venue allowing the RIJF to present more major jazz artists overall (or at least that was my perception). You’ll see below that I took full advantage of this change. No lines there; the same elsewhere. Even though I have a Media pass, I stand in line with other regular Club Pass holders. It’s just part of the experience that I enjoy (go figure …). Other than to get a wristband for an early Kilbourn or Max’s show or two, I didn’t stand in a line for more than 15 minutes the whole festival. Long-time RIJFers will remember waiting in long lines an hour before a show at a number of venues in addition to Kilbourn Hall (again, perhaps that was just my experience). Another great development on the footprint, especially given what I do here the other 356 days of the year, is that the new Wegmans Pavilion in Rhythm Square showcased our great local jazz and other bands with three different groups playing each night of the festival. 

On the downside, for those of us seeking different flavors and challenges for our ears, there were fewer reasons to use “international” in the festival’s moniker this year and less jazz that stretched my ears. I won’t spend much time on this as there are many reasons for this. I expect that recent restrictions have had an effect on the ability of artists from overseas to get work visas and have undermined support for sending overseas jazz artists over the pond. I miss the types of music that we used to hear at the Nordic Jazz Now and Jazz from the UK series (as do many of my JFFs). Last year there seemed to be a few more artists who were on the “out” side, but perhaps I missed some this year. The only other downside was occasional “gaps” where the timing of one choice left me few or no Club Pass options and I had a gap in time. Things change … and you adapt. I found stuff to do like eating, having a drink, hearing whoever was playing at the Pavilion.  I did get to spend more time at my “office” on East Avenue, Havana Moes,

New Voices

In some years my “coverage” of the RIJF has felt somewhat lonely. While there is no shortage of coverage of the festival in our local major media, a lot of it is just noise and little of it is “on the ground” coverage of the experience of attending this festival and hearing this music. I don’t write much during the festival for the site itself, preferring to focus on hearing the music and having a good time. Plus, due to the noise of major media with their “louder” voices, my traffic usually goes down during the RIJF. I do try to monitor what others are saying about the RIJF and record what I’m doing and share that on JazzRochester’s social channels. This year, to my delight, I was joined by a number of voices of people who, while not new to Rochester, its music or the RIJF, had new ways of sharing their thoughts and experience (and journalistic chops). These included Anna Reguero, a former arts reporter for the D&C, music historian, and educator with over 20 years of experience in the arts and arts journalism. Just prior to the RIJF, Anna launched a new site and newsletter, Rochester Overture, to provide Rochester with more independent arts coverage. Another voice came from recently retired award-winning D&C investigative reporter Gary Craig, who is a regular and avid attendee at the RIJF. Craig joined in the conversation about the festival with his new-ish Substack newsletter, through which he provided his takes on each night (and writes about local news and other subjects). WGMC Jazz 90.1 chief engineer Scott Fybush was also publishing his entertaining takes on each night at the festival on the station’s website and Facebook Page. There were others out there that I ran into too late, like the Rochester Beacon. Check them out.

What’s It All About? The Music, Of Course …

Throughout the festival, I am often asked “Who was your favorite?” or something similar. During the RIJF (and even after) that is a hard question to answer. Was it the discovery of a jazz artist who was off my radar? Was it a concert where the band had opened my ears to new sounds and ways of hearing jazz? Was it the opportunity to see an old master doing his thing? Was it hearing a new young lion (or lioness) that I’ve been listening to on the turntable (digital or not)? With that in mind, here are some of the highlights of the 28 concerts I caught during the 2026 RIJF.

On the first night I took my first foray into Kodak Hall as a Club Pass venue to hear the Danilo Pérez Trio. It was a piano trio at its finest, a deep conversation between three amazing musicians. Pérez, joined by his long-time collaborator John Patitucci and drummer Adam Cruz, played a set with a deep foundation in jazz tradition mixed up with a modern blend of the music of his Panamanian roots, Latin and African rhythms, and an occasional foray “out”. Pérez’s human rights activism showed through his musical choices, including a composition when he was in his native Panama with Dizzy Gillespie on a UN tour when the U.S. invasion began in 1989 (yes, they played the gig anyway) and a composition inspired by Angela Davis.

Later that same night, there was a Great Wall of tenor sax in Kodak Hall when Joe Lovano was joined by saxophonists George Garzone, Jerry Bergonzi, with Leo Genovese on piano, Peter Slavov on bass, and Eastman prof Otis Brown III on drums to celebrate the music and legacy of John Coltrane at 100. The surprise of the night was the appearance of a saxophonist of Coltrane’s day, Frank Tiberi, who at 97 can still blow a tune (and is the source of some tapes of Coltrane gigs around Philly and NYC from the 60s that are starting to be released on Impulse Records). Starting with a piece from Coltrane’s later days, Seraphic Light, the group moved seamlessly through a number of the master’s compositions. Tiberi joined Lovano on the beautiful Naima. Tommy Smith joined the group later as well as drummer Adam Nussbaum, who borrowed Brown’s sticks to trade some licks with George Garzone. 

On Sunday June 21st, again in the Big House, I heard trumpeter (and keyboardist and drummer) Arturo Sandoval with an 8-piece band. Sandoval had played a concert in that huge space (over 2,300 seats) in October 2014, and was not well attended, as a friend reminded me after the show.. He might have had some reservations in returning to that space. While Kodak Hall was not full for this concert, it was much closer than the mere 100s that showed up that night according to my friend. Sandoval and the band just burned through its opener. However, that was just a teaser, as Sandoval then asked the crowd to give the band their energy, saying the rest of the concert could go one of two ways: either “La Cucaracha” if they weren’t feeling it, or more of what we just experienced if we gave them the energy. It worked! In the middle of the first set Sandoval went into an extended and often scatted discourse on bebop (“you have to be . . . to bop”) that told the audience more about that music and its players than any lecture. It was a hard driving and exhilarating set. Not sure how the audience stayed in their seats, but it was Kodak Hall so … they did. I expect our feet were dancing, though.

On June 23rd, again in Kodak Hall, I heard the exhilarating first set of Hiromi Sonicwonder, which often left me gape-jawed. At her piano, Hiromi is like a child at play, her eyes laughing and smiling as she wheels around the Yamaha and other keyboards with gleeful abandon. The sheer audacity of her playing is also child-like … “Oh yeah? Can you do this?” But this is serious play for Hiromi and she is a serious talent. According to Anna Reguero, who interviewed Hiromi, she was actually somewhat restrained on Tuesday. But “Yes, Ramen!” really cooked. Her bandmates were all monsters on their instruments (Sonicwonder is a great name for this group). Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill complemented Hiromi’s fireworks with his own flights of fantasy on his horn and effects. Bassist Hadrian Feraud and drummer Gene Coye laid down the foundation on which all of this was built, but had their own fireworks. 

While he was not unknown to me due to his long work as the drummer in the band Living Colour, I really didn’t know what to expect when I made the decision to check out the Will Calhoun Quartet on June 23rd in the Temple Theater. What I got was a satisfying helping of high-energy jazz that took forays into more challenging and complex sounds while rooted firmly in the tradition. Of course, it was drums forward. Including Calhoun on some Nigerian drums (electrified) on which he laid down a beat that the others danced around. The group ended the concert with some Monk, which was a great coda to the group’s eclectic mix.

On June 24th, again in Kodak Hall, the vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Talk about an eclectic program! Salvant moved seamlessly between her originals, reaching back into some old blues, a 16th Century French song, and a chorus from the 500 B.C. Aeschylus tragedy Agamemnon that was set to music in the 1970s by the BBC. She brought the A-list with her, including her longtime collaborator (and partner) pianist @sullivanfortnerjr, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and Kyle Poole on drums. Fortner was, as usual, a monster on the keyboards, and his chemistry with Salvant make the two of them together more than the sum of their parts. In Kodak Hall, Salvant’s beautiful voice was magical.

You can add Chilean singer and guitarist Camila Meza, who I heard on June 25th in Kilbourn Hall, in category of “it’s not who you know, it’s who you don’t know” coined by RIJF Music Producer John Nugent. Meza combined amazing guitar chops–honed from years of plying the clubs of NYC, concerts and festivals–and a subtle and beautiful voice wielded as another instrument in English, Spanish and Portuguese. She brought a “music knows no boundaries” approach to her own compositions, incorporating folk of the Americas, pop and rock, and even classical influences, but her pieces and her playing were deeply rooted in jazz.

On June 26th, I ended the night with Trash Gadget, a trio with pianist Orrin Evans joined by Matthew Parrish on bass and Byron Landham on drums, three friends who have been playing together around Philly and NYC for 33 years. The concert reminded me of why I like to end a night of the RIJF at the Max of Eastman venue. It is a quiet space for hearing jazz in all its complexity, the dynamics of the sound, and the spaces between the notes, with an appreciative audience who are there to listen. That all was present in abundance with Trash Gadget at the end of the penultimate night of the RIJF.