In case you haven't heard, last year WXXI taped a number of performances at the Rochester International Jazz Festival in High Definition and will be presenting the six part series to premiere May 27 at 7 p.m. with an hour-long program on WXXI-TV and WXXI-HD.  The series will continue on June 7th, the day before the 2007 RIJF at 8 p.m., where five Festival concerts will broadcast in a special evening. The program includes five half hour performance programs featuring Karrin Allyson, Mose Allison, Cedar Walton, The Charlie Hunter Trio and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Each half hour program was recorded at the Eastman School of Music’s Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, New York. The first one hour special program was recorded over the full nine days of festival in June 2006, which should be a great overview of the 5th Annual Rochester International Jazz Festival. With nearly 600 artists and more than 200 concerts in multiple venues, the upstate city of Rochester, New York is a world jazz capital. The series will also air on over 75 PBS station across the country, with more to follow, spreading the sights and sounds of Rochester a little further than the airwaves carry WXXI.

It took awhile to recover from my own experience at the 2006 version of the Rochester International Jazz Festival and then, as those of you who read this blog, my time for posting was severely limited by other commitments and I never really ran across reviews from outside of Rochester.  Recently, however, I ran across the review "Rochester International Jazz Festival Comes Of Age: A Report on the 5th RIJF" published on AllAboutJazz.  In the July 25th review, Robert Iannapollo (a local writer and part-time staff at the Bop Shop) writes:

With its fifth edition, the Rochester International Jazz Festival has come of age. With attendance up 20% over the previous year, the event has become a boon to local businesses and an event of civic pride, one that the city can get behind. More importantly, it has done so while still being an event of artistic merit, one that doesn’t sell its audience short.

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. . . It’s hard to believe this is all happening in an upstate New York city that has been through some genuinely difficult financial times with its major industries moving to cheaper climes. The RIJF is not cure but it’s a healthy bit of infusion this city needs.

Of course, I’m not naïve and I can’t see urban planners calling for jazz festivals as the remedy to decaying urban centers. But it seems to be helping Rochester, bringing in people from the suburbs who are spending money AND having a good time. And with Nugent pulling quality music from all ends of the jazz spectrum, there’s a strong creative pull in what is really quite a creative city with a strong, unique blend of various musical, visual and literary arts.

Iannopollo's article and a 3-part review also published on AllAboutJazz together form a great overview of RIJF 2006 and a worthwhile read.  This festival is developing into one that is gaining respect and interest worldwide.  Before and during the festival this blog had hits from all over the world and there were many languages spoken on Jazz Street during the 9 days.  While, like Iannapollo, I don't think it is a panacea for what ails Rochester (that runs much deeper), I think that it has the potential to be a catalyst for change, especially downtown.

You may be familiar with Jason Crane through his stint as a on-air host on WGMC Jazz Radio 90.1, his Jason Crane Show weekly podcast about the arts and activism, his blog (which recently also went through a transformation), his activism and his Green Party run against longtime incumbent Lois Geiss's seat on the Rochester City Council.  What I didn't know until recently was that Jason Crane has been writing reviews for the jazz webzine All About Jazz.  I recently ran across Crane's review of the 2006 Rochester International Jazz Festival, which I thought had a great approach—make a mixtape.  As Jason writes in the review:

In fact, [the RIJF] had so much music that it created a bit of a problem for this review. How do you fit 9 days, 600 artists and more than 100 shows into 1,000 words? For the answer, we turn to the world of hip hop: You make a mixtape. If you could get bootlegs of the performances from the festival, the following tracks would be the standouts. So put on the headphones of your mind and check out these new classics on your very own Rochester Improv Mixtape.

Although the choices still must have been difficult, Crane lists 17 "tracks" of the standout performances of a broad range of performers at the 2006 RIJF.  It's a great way to present the diversity of the festival.  I have no quarrel with any of his choices and heard almost all of them during the festival.

Now if I can get all of these on MusicMatch....