The Twin Cities Jazz Festival is the highlight of the summer for me! It is a hugely popular outdoor festival held in St Paul with performance stages spread across the city but centered in Mears Park in the vibrant lowertown district.

I’ve played many gigs at the festival and every year I get to hear some of the best national and local musicians play their hearts out for big audiences. This year is no exception as I’m looking forward to hearing some Marsalises, an Alexander, a Franti and John Pizzarelli! Local heroes abound and there’s almost to many to list so just please make sure you go and check out some of the alternative venues so you can catch Davu Seru, Zacc Harris, Jt Bates, Cory Healey, Steve Kenny, Rodney Ruckus, Soloman Parham, Kevin Washington, Graydon Peterson, Mississippi and numerous others. It’s truly an awesome spectacle and shows off the embarrassment of riches we have in this jazz community.

The schedule is here: Hot Summer Jazz Festival

Here are the details for my three appearances – remember folks – IT’S ALL FREE!

 

Thursday June 23rd  Black Dog  sets at 10 and 11:30pm

Chris Bates Red5 – I’ll be leading my sextet in two sets of original music. We start at 10pm right after the main stage performance ends so make your way to the newly remodeled Black Dog for our set! We’ll be playing music from the ‘New Hope’ album a new tune or two and some select jazz selections. This marks the first time this group has played the jazz festival so don’t sleep on this one!

I’ll be joined by: JT Bates – drums, Brandon Wozniak & Chris Thomson – saxophones, Jake Baldwin – trumpet & Thomas Nordlund – guitar.

 

Friday June 24th  Healthpartners 6th Street Stage 7:15pm

I’m pleased and flipped to be playing with Clearwater Hot Club featuring Sam Militich on guitar, Gary Schulte on violin and Jay Epstein on drums. This will be a super swinging affair and sure to please the ears of fans who dig great standards and jazz classics! We go on in the hour leading up to Ellis Marsalis’ performance so stop on by!

 

Saturday June 25th  Custom House Stage @ Union Depot 7:00pm

Pete Whitman’s X-tet! This modern 10 piece band plays all sorts of amazing music from originals to jazz standards. Join me, Pete Whitman, Dave Milne, Dave Karr, Michael B. Nelson, Adam Rossmiller, Adam Meckler, Dave Hagedorn, Laura Caviani, Phil Hey and special guest vocalist Lucia Newell for a fantastic show.

After the jazz festival my schedule winds down a little bit before I go to teach at Shell Lake Arts Center but I’m playing:

Thursday June 30th  Reverie  9:00pm

Good Vibes trio plays it’s first gig in several months for Thursday Night Jazz at Reverie. We always have a blast playing the music in our library. Come check out our tales and tomes! Phil Hey, Dave Hagedorn, CB.

As always thanks for listening and supporting this little jazz life I lead! Much appreciated!

-cb