Opening night is here!

After nearly a year’s worth of planning, scheming, Facebook-ing, postering, emailing, worrying and listening to lots of great jazz music, it’s finally time for our fifth annual Steel City Jazz Festival! It’s so exciting to finally get to share all the great music we have in store for this week. Here’s a couple of things to keep in mind throughout the week:

• Advance tickets are available online for all of our concerts. Online ticket sales will close at 12pm the day of each show. Tickets should also be available at the door for each show; if we sell out in advance, we will do all that we can to spread the word so that we don’t have to disappoint you when you show up!
• If you are coming with a group and planning to buy tickets at the door, it’s recommended that you arrive early! Artword Artbar can get pretty packed (that’s part of the appeal) and it’s sometimes hard to seat groups together if you haven’t bought tickets in advance.
• Our Speaker Series is free, and no reservations or registration is necessary. As with our ticketed events, it’s recommended you arrive early to ensure you get a spot.
• Judith and Ron will be sure to remind everyone, but we’ll say it here too: if you park in the BMO parking lot across the street from Artword Artbar, you will very likely get a ticket. There is a public lot on Hughson behind the Cathedral, or on Mulberry just west of James N. There are also public lots on John St near Mills Hardware for our Friday night Kalabash performance.
• People are encouraged to bring instruments to Colleen Allen’s workshop on improvisation, but you also should not feel the talk is only for musicians. If you are a non-musician looking to learn more about jazz improvisation there will be plenty to interest you at this event!

See you at the shows!

Chris Ferguson
Director, Steel City Jazz Festival