The Wilkes-Barre Cavalcade of Jazz began Friday night with a starting event featuring live performances and some historical context about the Wyoming Valley’s jazz scene.
The starting event, held in the F.M. Kirby Center Chandelier Lobby, was just the first event of the weekend celebrating jazz music in Wilkes-Barre.
In addition to performances at local venues throughout the city over the weekend, the Grammy-winning musician Arturo Sandoval will headline the festival with a Saturday night show at the F.M. Kirby Center.
The Cavalcade of Jazz is a continuation of a past era when jazz music was popular in Luzerne County. Guest speakers Erika Funke and Marko Marcinko shared stories at the starting event, recounting the 1951 establishment of The Cavalcade of Dixieland Jazz, which has since ended.
The first Cavalcade of Dixieland Jazz, an event honored with a plaque on Wilkes-Barre’s Public Square, is sometimes considered the country’s first jazz festival. It even came before the historic Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island.
“Reviving this and revitalizing Wilkes-Barre’s jazz scene is very fitting,” said Marcinko, acknowledging the city’s rich history in creating the concept of a jazz festival.
Regardless of jazz, Alan K. Stout, executive director of the Luzerne County Convention and Visitors Bureau, stated that the festival will help improve the area's image for locals and visitors.
“If you want to portray a positive image of your community…” Stout said, “then the community members must feel positive about the community.”
Stout mentioned the recent announcements of other concerts in Downtown Wilkes-Barre, such as Starship’s free concert and the Rockin’ the River series, as opportunities to similarly enhance the area’s image.
The performing group at the starting event was the Joe Michaels Trio, led by the Kingston musician after whom the group is named. As a member of the close-knit local jazz community, Michaels planned to explore other live music options in downtown Wilkes-Barre over the weekend.
For most of Michaels’ career as a musician, the jazz community of the Wyoming Valley was overlooked, with the Poconos being the closest area with a clear interest in the genre. Now, with a jazz festival returning to Wilkes-Barre, musicians like Michaels have the opportunity to perform closer to home.
“Many musicians don’t perform in town because there aren’t many venues that welcome jazz, or there aren’t many jazz fans. So us jazz musicians usually have to travel outside the area,” Michaels said. “It’s nice to actually play a jazz gig in my hometown.”
And he did. Michaels and his bandmates started their set Friday night with a couple of Duke Ellington classics, marking the orchestrated revival of jazz music in the Wyoming Valley.
