This morning, before the assembled "throng" of media types, John Nugent and Marc Iacona revealed the lineup of artists, new venue and other changes for the 11th edition of the Rochester International Jazz Festival, June 22-30. At least for me, this year's schedule is chock full of must sees and new artists who I'd love an opportunity to hear (Nugent's "it's not who you know, it's who you don't know..." effect kicking in). Good thing I'm planning on taking the week off for a change!  New this year is a smart-phone app that will appear some time in May and a new Club Pass venue Hatch Recital Hall in the Eastman School of Music, which will feature all-acoustic solo and duo performances. The lineup at Kilbourn Hall is full of must sees for me, so you know where I'll likely be each afternoon—waiting in line for the first show with a beer. Over the 9 days of the festival, XRIJF will present more than 1000 musicians, performing in more than 300 concerts at eighteen venues in and around Gibbs ("Jazz") Street.  

To kick off Jazz@Rochester's coverage I was going to take a look at the "grid," in broad strokes, and lay out some of my picks and "must sees" early, and I did draft one over the course of the past hour, but the computer gods had different plans (I'm having an annoying problem with random reboots that lost the whole thing) and it all disappeared in a puff of electrons. So, as I only had a short bit of time to do it (I have a flight tomorrow at 6am), I'm going to hold off and point you to the XRIJF redesigned site listings, which can be configured in different ways, such as a list of the artists with links to their bio and other information, or in a day-by-day lineup. Check it out there and then come back here later for more.

Later I'll do my traditional posts setting out my jazz itinerary for each day of XRIJF, filling out the info available at least on my "picks," which are admittedly idiosyncratic. I'll have lots of other coverage as well, including the "tweets" of artists who are appearing (see the Jazz@Rochester on Twitter tab, I'll be adding the list to the widget soon and building a list of the artists who tweet as I find them).

It's gonna be a great time June 22-30. Hope to see you there!  Tomorrow, however, you'll get listings that are closer to "home," the live jazz in and around Rochester Thursday through next Wednesday.