Houston Jazz Festival to Live-Stream Two Sets

Poster design displayed on the YouTube Web page created to live-stream the event being discussed, featuring a photograph of Art Blakey taken by Francis Wolff

This year the Houston Jazz Festival will return to the Miller Outdoor Theater for the final Sunday of the month. Those familiar with this event may recall that the 2019 Festival was a two-day offering with an evening concert at Miller on Saturday, September 21, followed by a “day until night event” at the Axelrad beer garden on September 22. This year’s Festival will consist of only one evening concert, but it promises to be a significant one.

The “main event” will be a celebration of Art Blakey’s 101st birthday, arranged in partnership with the Art Blakey Estate. The title of the set will be Message from Bu, presumably based on “Abdullah Ibn Buhaina,” the name that Blakey took during his brief conversion to Islam in the late Forties. The performance will be by Bu’s Jazz Messengers, a tribute band whose members call themselves alumni of the “University of Blakey.” Those “alumni” are Frank Lacy on trombone, Bobby Watson on alto saxophone, Valery Ponomarev on trumpet, and Curtis Lundy on bass. Tenor saxophonist Shelley Carrol will fill out the front line, and the other rhythm players will be Michael Palma on piano and Jerome Gillespie on drums. In addition, Carrol will provide an opening set, leading his trio, whose other members are Bobby Sparks on organ and Mark Simmons on drums. For their performance they will be joined by Justin McKinney (“Jay McK”) on bass.

The entire program will be live-streamed through YouTube. The Web page for the event has already been created. It will begin at 4 p.m. here in San Francisco (6 p.m. Central Time) on Sunday, October 25. As may be expected, this event is made possible through the support of both sponsors and members of the audience. Those planning to visit the YouTube Web page are encouraged to precede that visit with one to the Web page that processes donations to the Festival, managed through PayPal.