The Guelph Jazz Festival is pleased to share the first wave of artists for our 2024 festival lineup. The festival returns 13-15 September with a full program, including Ticketed Concerts in local venues Royal City Mission (50 Quebec St.) and Guelph Youth Music Centre (75 Cardigan St.), free, outdoor programming at the TD Market Square Stage (1 Carden St.) and additional events to be announced in the lead-up to the festival through Jazz Around Town and Jazz in the Community programs.
Among these artists are leading figures of adventurous and experimental music from Canada and the USA, including Darius Jones fLuXkit Vancouver (US, BC), LAL (ON), Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio (US), Splendide Abysse (QC), New City Future Radio (US), and TEKE::TEKE (ON). Festival passes to access all ticketed concerts are available for $180 on TicketScene. Individual concert tickets for the announced artists can also be found on the Box Office page of our website. The full concert program and schedule, including the remaining ticketed concerts, will be announced in August.
Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music. A radiant manifesto of artistic freedom, fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred) brings together a composition in four movements written and performed by Jones on alto saxophone, long-time collaborator Gerald Cleaver on drums, and four Vancouver-based string musicians: violinists Jesse Zubot and Josh Zubot, cellist Peggy Lee and bassist James Meger. Darius Jones fLuXkit Vancouver will perform Friday 13 September, 9pm, at Royal City Mission.
LAL, Toronto’s downtempo soul saviours, is Rosina Kazi and Nicholas Murray. This Polaris Prize long listed electronic duo has built a catalogue of silvery, internationally-influenced electronica that insists that the dancefloor remain a place of resistance. LAL will perform Friday, 13 September at the TD Market Square Stage.
Luke Stewart has been called “one of the 25 most influential jazz artists of his generation” by DownBeat Magazine. He is a member of several earth-shaking ensembles, including Irreversible Entanglements and Heroes Are Gang Leaders. This polymathic bassist and creative catalyst with almost two decades on the Washington D.C. music scene, introduces Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio, featuring Chicago drum legend Chad Taylor and powerhouse DC saxophonist Brian Settles. Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio will perform Friday 13 September, 7:30pm, at Royal City Mission.
New City Future Radio is the first duo collaboration of longtime Chicago creative partners Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek. The two prolific multi-media artists contemplate community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people. NCFR finds the artists creating a natural but innovatively-assembled blend of the sounds, with Locks’s BME-style, sample-based sound collage creating compositional beds underneath the signature Orson Welles-like vocal delivery, alongside Mazurek’s Roland SP flourishes and arresting brass improvisations. New City Future Radio will perform Saturday 14 September at the TD Market Square Stage.
TEKE::TEKE is a Montreal-based seven-piece assembled from countless splinters of Japanese folk, psychedelia, Brazilian surf rock, and other far-flung touchstones. Matching muscly intensity with moments of cloudy meditation—like a world-class high jumper finding bliss at the apex of their leap—the group frame expressive compositions with regal flute, rich horns, ecstatic guitar, and a thumping rhythm section. TEKE::TEKE will perform Saturday 14 September at the TD Market Square Stage.
Splendide Abysse is a quartet led by Montreal musician Philippe Lauzier (bass clarinet ~ composition) featuring Belinda Campbell (prepared piano ~ dx7), Frédérique Roy (accordeon ~ voice) and Carlo Costa (drums ~ percussion), all of whom Lauzier has worked with in duo formations in the past. Amid aquatic timbres, often altered by instrumental preparations, the ensemble develops microcosms of delicately interwoven gestures and sounds that stand in impalpable buoyancy. Splendid Abysse performs Saturday 14 September at the Guelph Youth Music Centre.
We would like to take a moment to remind our amazing supporters that we have a donation campaign ongoing, where all donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, by the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, up to our goal of $6000. Donations above $500 get a free festival pass. Thanks to the generosity of our donors and sponsors, there has never been a better time to Donate & Double Your Impact.