While I hope you all come here often during the Rochester International Jazz Festival, which starts running next week (June 13-21), to see whether I'm still able to form coherent sentences and check out some of the special stuff I hope to have on these pages, there are going to be lots of other sources in town to get RIJF content.  Some of them, like the City Newspaper, have already begun their jazz festival content and others, the Democrat & Chronicle, aim to begin it soon. I'm just one person (although I may have some help--at least my lovely wife Dianna), I have a day job (yes even during the festival) and I do want to have some fun and, most importantly LISTEN TO SOME MUSIC. This blog is not really a paying gig (yet), other than some karmic rewards and getting to know a lot of the great people associated with jazz and music in Rochester. 

As I reported in April, City has put together a Rochester International Jazz Festival Guide that includes short profiles of all of the artists and the festival itself, written by Ron Netsky and Frank De Blase. They've just started adding some additional short articles, interviews and other content like a profile of Dee Dee Bridgewater and an interview with the Bad Plus. For those of you who are new to jazz, check out Netsky's article on How to get into the music, which is a short guide to "accessing" the RIJF. I read today that the D&C will be kicking off their coverage this weekend. I think that the changes they've made in the last year have made it more likely that more of the links will be persistent, which I need to leave a link. I encourage you to check their coverage out, especially the photo and video collections and other special coverage. I'll link to it if I can.

Of course, there are other bloggers who will be at the festival most nights and writing about it in their blogs. Seth and Ken will be there and we hope to continue our "tradition" started last year of doing an occasional "Da Jazz" podcast.  We hope that Jason Crane will be joining us from time to time.  Perhaps others to be introduced here later?