Update: Montclair Jazz Festival Biggest Audience in History

Update:  Last Saturday, September 14, when Jazz House Kids presented the 15th annual Montclair Jazz Festival Downtown Jamboree it set a new attendance record. The Festival drew over 25,000 people up and down Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair.

Singer Melissa Walker closed the show and said, "I was beyond thrilled to see the region’s community come together to help us celebrate the Montclair Jazz Festival turning 15. It is a testament to the power of jazz to unite, bringing people together from all walks of life, young and old, and to literally dance in the streets with neighbors and strangers."

It's the most popular jazz festival in the greater New York area that’s free to attend.

It’s back to school time, and when I think of my days in college, I think of Jazz. The radio station at Temple University where I went to school had a Jazz radio station where I worked throughout my years there. It not only taught me about radio but also inspired my love for America’s only true art form…Jazz.

Jazz House Kids recently announced that Grammy-winning saxophonist Kenny Garrett has been added as a headliner to the 15th Annual Montclair Jazz Festival Downtown Jamboree. Other artists performing include Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton, Jerome Jennings and Ill Philosophy, Edmar Castaneda Quartet, the Steve Turre Sextet, Brianna Thomas, and the Montclair State University Jazz Ensemble, the Jazz House Collective Celebrating Sarah Vaughan featuring Jazz House Kids founder Melissa Walker. Nine-time Grammy-winning bassist, and the festival’s music director, Christian McBride will also perform with his quintet, Inside Straight.

Christian shared, “This year’s festival will be another joyous celebration of America’s greatest art form with some of the world’s greatest musicians and fans, many of whom have been supporters of Jazz House Kids and this festival since the very beginning 15 years ago,” The ones that aren’t are simply those we haven’t met yet.  Everyone who comes to our festival leaves with their love for jazz strengthened further.”

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The Montclair Festival is the largest free jazz festival in the region and the Downtown Jamboree will welcome music fans along nearly half a mile of downtown Montclair’s Bloomfield Avenue. There will be multiple stages, plus food and art vendors. This year’s face of the festival is Sarah Vaughan. New to this year’s jazz festival is the 15th Anniversary Celebration Block Party including New Jersey’s own DJ Prince Hakim for a funk and soul dance party.

The Festival welcomes all who want to celebrate America's rich history of jazz, youth development, and community building. For more information on how to get involved with Jazz House Kids as a volunteer, sponsor, vendor, business, or individual supporter, visit their website.

The Jazz Festival is happening on Saturday, September 14^th and more information can be found here.

July is here and it's prime season for Yacht Rock Songs. Time to sit back on your yacht, or ummm dingy, and listen to the smooth sounds from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, with temp hopefully right there as well. The seagulls cry the white caps slap against the fiberglass hull, and you hold your glass of buttery chard oh so gently while inspecting those bikinis. It's a tough job, but somebody's yachtta do it!

According to AllMusic, Yacht Rock is a broad music style and aesthetic commonly associated with Soft Rock, one of the most commercially successful genres from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Drawing on sources such as Smooth Soul, Smooth Jazz, R&B, and Disco. Meanwhile, common stylistic traits include high-quality production, clean vocals, and a focus on light, catchy melodies.^[6] The term yacht rock was coined in 2005 by the makers of the online video series Yacht Rock, who connected the music with the popular SoCal leisure activity of boating. It was considered a pejorative term by some music critics.

Furthermore, In 2014, AllMusic's Matt Colier identified the "key defining rules of the genre:"

This is 100 percent my own opinion. Top Ten does not leave a lot of room for error. I consider myself a pretty solid Yacht Rocker, and quite the musicologist. However, in the rare case you feel I make a mistake and leave off one of your Yacht Rock favs, have my people call your people and we'll get together off the coast of Island Beach State Park for some Sangria and Cheese, and a little Yacht Rock, of course!

By The By, Lovey, if you're looking for the perfect Yacht Rock swag to rock this summer, check this article out!

Plus if you need a place to dry dock and yacht rock, here's a spot that Yachts every Sunday all summer long!

The late great former front man of Stealers Wheel, had later solo success with this and a few other songs. However, there is no way Gerry could have known his Saxophone anthem balancing life and love while living in London, would go on to become the Stairway To Heaven of Yacht Rock.

If Baker Street is the Stairway of Yacht Rock, this most certainly is the Layla. A 1979 masterpiece about a boy and his sailboat that Cross has said was inspired by sailing with his older friend. Ridiculed throughout the 80s as a symbol of 70's schmaltz, it has found life and love as a Yacht Rock staple for a whole new generation.

The oldest of our Top 10, this song was released in the late summer of 1972, and immediately became a top 10 hit on the Billboard charts. It screams Summer, and beachy vibes, and of course the smell of Jasmine and  the line "July is dressed up and playing her tune" cannot be denied as all time Yacht Rock.

The song most people who know nothing about Yacht Rock, most closely associate Yacht Rock with. Now that's fine, and yes it is an all time great Yachtty classic, but think of it as your gateway drug to so much more: Next you'll be wearing a captains hat and a Hawaiian shirt.

The New England Patriots of Yacht Rock songs right here my friends. Too much of a good thing can be dangerous. Great band, great song, but it's flown way too far over the radar for way too long. Still, It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from singing along.

A few years before they were blessing the rains down in Africa, the boys from Toto were much sought after studio musicians. They helped good ol Boz on this 1977 super hit, that has gone on to become the go to song for doing Green Tea shots on the deck before the Saturday Night fireworks kick in.  And I quote: "Whoa Whoa Whoaoooo ooooo oooooo"

Old George really came through for the soft rock/jazz world with this 1976 classic. Plus it's the perfect Yacht Rock song for some early morning Mimosas and below deck nookie.

Kind of a toss up here between FM and Do It Again, but this has more of a party feel so I'm going with the kicking off of the high heel sneakers, and the grapefruit wine. Hey don't knock it til ya try it on the bow at sunset, baby!

You can have heartache, just as long as it has a good groove and doesn't bring the party down. Just ask Hall and Oates, they do it here to a tee. Talk to Isaac about your problems buddy, or whatever your yacht's bartender is named.

What can I say. The man is the muse of a genre. With apologies to great Yacht Rock songs like Brandy, What A Fool Believes, Couldn't Get It Right, and just about the entire catalog from Pablo Cruise, Ride Like The Wind is just captivating when you listen to it out on the bay doing 12 knots. Plus, at least we get our daily dose of Michael McDonald in!