Jazz News: Five Points Jazz Fest applications open!

The 21st annual Five Points Jazz Festival is now accepting applications to perform at the 2024 event, which will be held on Saturday, June 8.

Through the mid-20th century, Denver’s Five Points neighborhood was known as “Harlem of the West” due to the many world-famous artists that played and stayed in the Points. Over the past 20 years of this festival, Denver Arts and Venues Cultural Program manager Brooke Dilling has recorded nearly 500 performances. Crowds reach 50 to 100-thousand throughout the day, making Five Points one of the largest free, local artist jazz festivals in the country.

The committee will accept musician applications in English and en Español through November 30 HERE. (SOURCE: Arts and Venues Denver)

It’s “nomination season,” so let’s go deep inside the music business. Around this time of year, the Recording Academy (and the Motion Picture Academy for that matter) is accepting bids for nominations, and here at KUVO, we begin receiving mass e-mails and press kits from artists and record companies under the heading “for your consideration.”

The voting members of the Recording Academy are a pool of performers, songwriters, producers, engineers, instrumentalists, and other creators currently working in the recording industry.

The first round of voting closed last Friday, and the nominations will be announced on November 10. Three new GRAMMY categories will debut at the 2024 GRAMMYs: Best African Music Performance, Best Pop Dance Recording, and Best Alternative Jazz Album. That last new category – Alternative Jazz – that’s contains all the new, young jazz artists you hear on KUVO, especially on the Jazz Odyssey show.

Music’s biggest night – the Grammy Award show is on Sunday, February 4th of next year.

(SOURCE: Recording Academy)

News from Jazz at Lincoln Center…Saxophonist Sherman Irby has hooked up with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to premiere his new commission called “Musings of Cosmic Stuff.” Irby says fascination with the vastness of the universe inspired his aural paintings.   Tyson narrates the birth of the universe and some of its phenomena, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis perform the music live this weekend at the Rose Theater in New York. (SOURCE: Wyton Marsalis/Sherman Irby)

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