International Jazz Day
For the second year, April 30th is International Jazz Day – and to celebrate there is a large celebration concert! With the success of last year the event has grown incredibly to be a major happening. This year the concert is taking place in Istanbul and you can actually live stream the event!
The site is hosted on YouTube, and will be streaming beginning at 9pm/Istanbul, 7pm/London 2pm/New York and 4am(May 1) Sydney. For those who can’t make the event, it will repeat a few hours later.
The spokesman of the event is UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Chairman and jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and he said that “It has been my dream that one day every year, jazz would be celebrated, studied, and performed around the world for 24 hours straight. A collaboration among jazz icons, scholars, composers, musicians, dancers, writers, poets, and thinkers who would embrace the beauty, spirit, and principles of jazz, all of them freely sharing experiences and performances in our big cities and in our small towns, all across our seven continents…”
Here are some of the musicians performing:
Herbie Hancock, Dale Barlow, John Beasley, Rubén Blades, Terence Blanchard, Igor Butman, Terri Lyne Carrington, Anat Cohen, Vinnie Colaiuta, Imer Demirer, George Duke, James Genus, Robert Glasper, Zakir Hussain, Al Jarreau, Bilal Karaman, Ramsey Lewis, John McLaughlin, Hugh Masekela, Keiko Matsui, Branford Marsalis, Pedrito Martinez, Marcus Miller, Milton Nascimento, Eddie Palmieri, Alevtina Polyakova, Jean-Luc Ponty, Dianne Reeves, Lee Ritenour, Husnu Senlendirici, Wayne Shorter, Esperanza Spalding, Joss Stone, Joe Louis Walker, Ben Williams, and Liu Yuan.
You can track events on Twitter with hashtag #jazzday, follow the event on Facebook, and check out more information about International Jazz Day at the official site.
Subscribe and watch the events on the official International Jazz Day YouTube channel!