This year the John Nugent, Marc Iacona and the folks at Rochester International Jazz Festival, with new sponsor Xerox, did the lineup announcement proud.  Instead of an email or press release, this morning the media, including yours truly, were brought together at the RIJF's newest venue, the 500+ seat Xerox Auditorium, for an announcement of the lineup for this year's festival.  It's going to be a good one.

As John Nugent put it, a music festival is "not just about who you know, it it about who you don't know."  As in past years there are familiar faces and complete unknowns, there is blues, world music flavors, a bit of Southern Fried Rock, some Nawlins' stuff and, of course, a sh*tload of jazz (it's my blog, I can say it...).

I'm not going to go into much detail here in this post as I will be doing that from now until June in the blog anyway and RIJF does a fine job of telling you all about it on through links from its artist lineup on the website.

All I'll say is that there will be the aforementioned new venue (which is going to be a great space).  The Nordic Jazz Now series at the Lutheran Church is back.  A new series will begin at Christ Church with some well known and up and coming jazz artists from the United Kingdom (to announce that, John joined on the web with two of the artists and the friend who help him set it up from Xerox's HQ in the UK). I'll be doing the usual as we approach, but thought I'd let you know that the lineup is out there so you can start doing this June Jazz grid instead of the one for March Madness.

You'd better think about getting your Club Pass.  Watch for more here, but go and check out the lineup on the site now.  Come back here and leave your thoughts in the comments. Nine days man...