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The Newport Jazz Festival enters its 70th year this summer. Starting Aug. 2 and running through Aug. 4, the festival’s lineup is an inclusive and eclectic musical selection that defies genres.
Top acts include André 3000, Kamasi Washington, Elvis Costello, Samara Joy, Artemis, Stanley Clarke, Kenny Barron, Terri Lyne Carrington, Ravi Coltrane and the super-group Dinner Party. The festival’s musical director is once again bassist and composer Christian McBride. McBride’s generous spirit and his ability to hear music as a force of nature, rather than a set of rigid categories, inform the lineups.
On Friday, Aug. 2, Washington will perform music from his many albums. As unpredictable as he is melodic, in May this year he released “Fearless Movement.” The composer and saxophonist’s fifth album integrates his capacity to embrace universality of music as well as his love of harmony. Well known for having written the soundtrack for “Becoming,” the film of Michelle Obama’s memoir, and being the closer in the Showtime series “Homeland,” Washington is a musician who crosses musical boundaries.
Terri Lyne Carrington Photo: Tracy Love
The Newport festival remains committed to more traditional forms of jazz, of course, that are essential to exploration. On Saturday, Aug. 3, Artemis performs. The all-female ensemble features pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller and tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover.
Harpist Brandee Younger appears on Friday, vocalist Samara Joy on Saturday, and Christian McBride’s Jam Jawn, featuring Dianne Reeves, on Sunday.
A highlight of the festival takes place on Saturday, when Carrington, Coltrane, Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci perform in honor of “the legacy of Wayne Shorter.” Arguably, the spirit of Shorter, who died in 2023, can be heard in much of the music played at Newport and beyond.
Harpist Brandee Younger Photo: Kyle Pompey
“There is no separation between the person of Wayne Shorter and his artistry,” drummer and composer Carrington told the Banner. “Wayne’s music opens us to fully embracing the artistry of humanity. It’s a window to the soul. The music expands your boundaries and shows you possibilities that you may not have known were there. It’s expansive.”
Although Shorter is well known for having performed with progenitors of 20th-century music, from Art Blakey to Miles Davis, his oeuvre defies categorization. As a co-founder of Weather Report, Shorter brought jazz into new realms, and on albums such as “Speak No Evil,” he created sounds that seem as true as what occurs in nature.
“Wayne’s compositions are very, very innovative and groundbreaking,” Pérez told the Banner. The composer and pianist played on four pivotal recordings in the Wayne Shorter quartet. “He defined and created new structures, and pushed the boundaries of jazz. He worked to establish mastery of being in the moment,” he said.
Two of the most innovative acts at Newport this year are André 3000 and Dinner Party.
André 3000 is best known for being the co-founder of Outkast, the hip-hop duo he established with Antwan Patton, known as Big Boi. André 3000’s most recent re-lease, “New Blue Sun,” however, is a recording of ambient music featuring him on flute alongside other instrumentalists. One can sum up the album’s bravery by noting his wonderfully ironic song, titled, “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.”
Dinner Party, comparably, takes its cue from whatever is out there aurally, and the results are smooth, rough, tight and playful, with rich vocal harmonies providing ad-ditional structure. The group is made up of Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Ter-race Martin and 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit).
While the bad news is that the Newport Jazz Festival is sold out, the good news is that you can get on the waiting list on the festival website and also find tickets through various agencies.
You can also catch these artists all over New England in the months ahead:
André 3000 is at the Wang Theater at the Boch Center on Oct. 30. Artemis will be at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts on Oct. 5 and Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Oct. 6. Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci (with Brian Blade and Mark Turner) are at the Groton Hill Music Center on Oct. 20. Samara Joy performs at the Berklee Performance Center on May 3, 2025.
The Newport Jazz Festival, as one of the three most important jazz festivals in the world, has always reassured listeners in their musical passions as well as taken them to places unexpected. The 70th year of its founding continues those traditions.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said it best: “The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”
