One of Rochester's most popular festivals gets underway Friday night.
The Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival continues to attract a wide variety of talent and spectators.
It's the 14th edition of this festival that in recent years has attracted nearly 200,000 people during its nine-day run.
Organizers of the event like to say it's not just who you know, but who you don't know, since, in addition to the headliners, there are dozens of musicians that many local people may not have heard of, but can still get excited about as they discover some new artists.
One jazz veteran with Rochester roots, Gap Mangione will be among those appearing at the festival. He says you can tell how much variety there is just by looking at the ages of the musicians who are performing.
“Imagine from Herb Alpert to Joey Alexander, from 80 years old to 12 ! So it’s that kind of cross-section, just wonderful music, you can find pretty much anything you’d love to hear ! “
There are some new venues this year, including the Squeezers Roots and American Stage at the Sibley Building, and the theater at 440 East Avenue in the First Church of Christ, Scientist. And because of construction on the Inner Loop, the concerts previously held at the stage at East and Alexander are being moved to East and Chestnut.
One of the organizers, Marc Iacona says the festival is a great way for the Rochester community to be highlighted on a global basis.
“The world comes to Rochester for those nine days, it literally does now, I mean there’s people from all over the world not only musicians but people that do the festival circuit and we’re ambassadors for this community.”
The nine-day festival features more than 320 shows including more than 90-free concerts and over 1500 artists.
You can get updates throughout the festival on-air on WXXI, and online at wxxi.org and wxxinews.org
