#Iowa city jazz fest series#

St Paul was the world’s epicenter of jazz June 24-25. And we had crowds that easily rivaled past festivals, not only at the Main Stage at Mears, but in those smaller venues as well. And when his planned 2020 headliners were not available for 2022, he nevertheless created a festival worthy of its legacy by featuring artists on course to be the legends of the future.įor 2022, we had a lot of new venues including new sites blocks away in downtown St Paul we had new venues in Lowertown where COVID and other factors forced closings of former jazz friendly spaces like the Black Dog.

#Iowa city jazz fest series#

When safety concerns continued into 2021, Heckler worked with Crooners to hold a series of “virtual festival” concerts to keep both live and streamed jazz going in early summer, and brought a somewhat scaled-down festival to St Paul’s Mears Park in September. When COVID pre-empted the festival in 2020, Heckler and sponsors created “Jazz Fest Live,” a series of concerts brought to an even larger audience through live streaming. The common denominator, aside from the music, has been the vision and leadership of Executive Director Steve Heckler. Each has its own energy as well as a range of music that (usually) falls within the broad idiom of “jazz.” The Twin Cities Jazz Festival has persisted since 1999, through thunderstorm washouts, city politics, economic downturns, and now a pandemic. I’ve been to my share of jazz festivals in the past 20 years, from small city parks like Burnsville and Apple Valley (MN) to the biggest free fest of all, the Detroit Jazz Festival. Steve Heckler, festival founder and director

Mears Park overflowed with jazz fans Saturday night, rocking with the sounds of the Treme Brass Band.