Left: The Janglels perform in the Banquet Hall. Upstairs, in the auditorium, the Mount Rainier High School Jazz Band also perform, featuring tuba player Sierra Miller, a junior, helped by Band Director Mat Montgomery during her solo at the Highline Classic Jazz Festival on Saturday, March 10, a the Landmark in Des Moines, presented by Burien Arts.
So what does moving the Highline Classic Jazz Festival to the historic Landmark Event Center in Des Moines mean?
For festival goers it means more bands in two elegant auditoriums, dancing, jam sessions, and full dinner service.
“It will be more of a party atmosphere and less of a concert atmosphere,” declared festival founder and director Lance Haslund. “And it’s an absolutely fabulous bargain—11 bands for $35.”
The fourth annual jazz festival will be held Saturday, March 10 at the Landmark, 23660 Marine View Dr. S., from 3- 10 p.m. The event is a sponsored by Burien Arts.
Haslund acknowledges that there are many fine music festivals in the Puget Sound region.
“But this is the only place in the greater Seattle area that celebrates the first half-century of jazz,” he noted.
There will be New Orleans and Chicago style hot jazz, also known as Dixieland, plus Gypsy ballads, big band jazz form the 1920s, western swing and straight ahead classics.
Performers include Del Rey and Matt Weiner, Mt. Rainier High School Jazz Band, Pearl Django, Glen Crytzer and His Syncopators, Holtraband, The Jangles, Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band and the Jennifer Scott Trio.
Gail Pettis, the Earshot Jazz Society’s Northwest Vocalist of the Year for 2010 and 2007, will be there. Greta Matassa, who won the award in 2009, will perform with the Susan Pascal Quartet.
But what has Haslund especially excited is the “reconvening” for the Highline festival of the Echoes Of Harlem Jazz Band.
This group of likeminded individuals got together to recreate the pre-swing arrangements of the Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington bands from the Cotton Club days of the 1920s and 1930s.
“This is the stuff people were dancing to in Harlem in the 1920s and ‘30s.” Haslund declared. “According to the festival’s website, “No stock arrangements are used and each one is carefully transcribed from, and played in the style of the original recording.”
The group broke up 10 years ago but is reforming specifically for this concert.
The banquet hall stage will be dark as the Echoes of Harlem close out the festival in the main auditorium from 9:15- 10 p.m.
There will be dancing in the banquet hall and jamming in the living room. With a grand piano available, performers between shows can jam with festival goers. Attendees are invited to bring their instruments for the informal sessions.
E’J’s Catering is offering a full London broil and ginger sesame salmon dinner for $14. That includes a drink and dessert.
Tickets are $35 for adults, $30 for seniors and military and free for students 18 and under. Thirty percent off admission at the door with a donation of a used musical instrument to Highline Music4Life.
Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/218904.
