Jazzin'

By Tim Roberts

The final free jazz concert of the summer comes to us later this month, just as the janitors prepare the mythic task of sweeping out the West Wing of the Kentucky State Fair and Freddy Farm Bureau gets dismembered, swaddled in plastic, and stashed in a closet. Students will have been in school for more than a week, morning stop-and-start traffic patterns will return. In short, our summer will be fast a-closing. . .but not without music.

Jazz in Central Park is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, August 26 and 27, from 5:00 to 11:00 p.m. both nights. The event's organizer and producer, Ken Clay of the Kentucky Center for the Arts, has announced the lineup for this year's version of the festival, which seems to blend traditional with Latin sounds, and even some artful solo flute.

On Saturday, August 26, the festival begins with the Hugh Petersen Quartet, followed by the Jazz Prophets, then a flautist singularly-named Galen, and finally, from Cuba, Jane Bunnett and the Spirits of Havana.

On Sunday, August 27, the Ron Jones Quartet opens the show, followed by the Jerry Tolson Quartet, the Roy Meriwether Trio, then the Joey DiFrancesco Trio closes out the two-day event.

The festival will be at the C. Douglas Raney Amphitheater in Louisville's Central Park. Admission is free. Shows begin at 5 p.m. each day. There will be gift vendors and lots to eat and drink. This year's festival is brought to us by the City of Louisville Board of Aldermen, James Marshall and Associates, Jefferson County Judge Rebecca Jackson, and C-District Commissioner Darrell Owens.

From the "I Guess It Must Be the Saxophones" Department – The June, 2000 issue of Esquire contains a piece called "153 Things a Man Should Know. . .About Sex," a fold-out list of tips, hints, and uncommon sense about, well, sex. It's part of a semi-regular series Esquire has featured over the past two years containing the stuff a man should know, knowledge that may not have been passed down by the tribal elders or may have been forgotten during the beer-hazed days of post adolescence. So far they've already given us line-item, fold-out lectures on style and marriage. So this one was obviously inevitable.

One item of interest to regular readers of this column states, "Jazz fans, gun owners, public-television watchers, concert attendees, and those who lack confidence in the president are among the most sexually active Americans."

Personally, I can include myself in three of those five categories. But that doesn't mean I feel the sudden need to drive to the closest pawn shop.

"Jazzin'" columnist Tim Roberts knows you have better things to do, but he's glad you stopped long enough to read this anyway. He invites you to send your jazz-related dispatches to tim@troberts.win.net, or to his attention to the editorial offices of Louisville Music News.