A wide variety of music planned for the 15th Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival

On this episode of The Art of the Story, Janis Burley Wilson presents the lineup at the 2025 Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I Doug Doyle with the art of the story is
Little Son.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
From the Father Test Things that no Weather can do.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
As a single.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Anya jazz Master d D. Bridgewater will be just one
of the many headliners at this year's fifteenth annual Pittsburgh
International Jazz Festival, co presented by high Mark, Blue Cross
Blue Shields, the festival runs from September eighteenth through the
twenty first. Janie Burley Wilson, President and CEO of the
August Wilson Center for African American Culture, has curated the

(00:43):
Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
This year is really special for me because we have
such a diverse lineup. We have straight ahead jazz with
people like Branford, Marsalis, De D Bridgewater, Farren brownn Evans.
We also have blues with Kingfish, who is returning at

(01:07):
the ripe old age of I think twenty six now,
and the first time that we presented him, he didn't
even have an album out. He was like eighteen years old.
He hadn't I don't even think he graduated from high school. Yet.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
As long as time keeps tick in as long as
people have to cry when I see the love once
leaving singing less goodbye. I believe if he's blues, I'm

(01:47):
never gonna die.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
We also have Caribbean infused jazz with Etty and Charles.
We have Ellen Brick who is from Venezuela. We have
R and B with the great Eric Bennet. We also
have new artists, new voices like Michael Mayo, Hikepin Guele,
and we have the great Kenny Blake, who is a

(02:13):
Pittsburgh staple, but he's been he plays, you know, he's
played all around the country. So there's a lot of
really great artists that are performing. And then we're also
doing a special tribute to George Benson, who is from
Pittsburgh with Dan Wilson, who is our artist in residence.
We've commissioned him to reimagine some of George Benson's classics

(02:34):
and he has a special guest, Jonathan Butler. So the
artists lineup is it's great. So I'm looking forward to
all of those performances. But we also have some other
things that we have added into the mix.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
This year.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
We are we launched our inaugural Jazz Poster contest, and
we have submissions from all over the world and so
that's exciting. We're going to print the winning poster. There
will be a winning student artist and also a professional
artist for this contest. We also have a new all

(03:07):
star band, the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival All Star Band
that's made up of young musicians, high school musicians, so
they will be performing.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Janis Burley Wilson will once again be on this year's
Jazz Train to Pittsburgh, traveling from New York which stops
in Newark and Philadelphia, and that training trip is run
by a pianist or in Evans. This year, WBGO Singer's
Unlimited Host Janie Siegual and Leslie Harrison will also be
on the train, performing and mingling with the passengers. You
can find out much more about the Pittsburgh International Jazz

(03:39):
Festival and the Jazz Train at wbgo dot org. I'm
Doug Doyle. WBGO News