Indy Jazz Fest is finally here!

The gymnasium at Northwest Middle School (formerly a high school) was teaming with fourth graders from 15 IPS elementary schools on Tuesday, March 12 and Thursday, March 14, 2024. They came for a journey of “Jazz in the 21st Century,” a high-energy program about jazz and Indiana’s rich jazz history.

On Wednesday, March 6, 2024, a historical marker was dedicated to legendary, Indianapolis jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery on what would have been his 101st birthday. The ceremony featured speakers, a musical dedication performance, and the unveiling of the historical marker.

A quarter century on the music scene in Indianapolis, Indy Jazz Fest 2023 presented a lineup of concerts across two weeks in late September with a diversity of international, national, and regional performers, various venues across our city, and offering the many threads of jazz from BeBop to Latin jazz to touches of soul and even rock.

Pat Metheny’s solo concert last night will be one of those concerts talked about for years. Although almost impossible to truly describe in a word, it was spectacular. You could feel it from the crowd that lingered in the Clowes Hall lobby as their conversations attempted to share what they had just experienced. This audience was there for Metheny – the silence, the respect for no cell phone videos, and the deafening applause – this was an audience that knew who they had come to hear.

Two-time GRAMMY-winning jazz vocalist Kurt Elling and 7-string guitar phenom Charlie Hunter teamed up for the release of their album SuperBlue in late 2021 with grand success. Now on tour and making a welcome stop during Indy Jazz Fest, Elling and Hunter’s band hit the stage at The Cabaret on September 28, 2023.

Jazz guitarist Russell Malone and the acclaimed Indianapolis Jazz Collective played to a packed house at The Jazz Kitchen as Indy Jazz Fest heads into its final performances, culminating in the grand finale at TCU Amphitheater on Saturday, September 30, 2023.

Vocalist Lizz Wright mesmerized the sold-out audience at The Cabaret with her own blending of jazz, gospel, folk, and R&B in Indy Jazz Fest’s Sunset Series collaboration with The Cabaret on September 24, 2023. It was Sunday, after all, and there was that definite overarching gospel tone that Wright weaved across many of the tunes beautifully delivered that night.

Percussionist, drummer, singer, dancer, bandleader, songwriter, composer, and educator Pedrito Martinez and The Pedrito Martinez Group had the party swinging as Latin Jazz powered this fourth night of Indy Jazz Fest’s Sunset Series at The Jazz Kitchen on September 21, 2023. If you had been there, you could not have stood still.