The First Williamstown Jazz Festival Brings Arturo Sandoval and Jazz Royalty to Three Venues
Three days, world-class headliners, and a festival MC who ran San Francisco's legendary Keystone Korner for a decade.
Friday–Sunday, September 11–13 | Williamstown, MA
Jazz in the Berkshires launches the inaugural Williamstown Jazz Festival this weekend, spreading performances across three venues over three days. National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Todd Barkan serves as festival MC.
Barkan's own resume gives the festival credibility from the start. He opened San Francisco's Keystone Korner in 1972 and ran it for more than a decade, turning the North Beach club into a room where, in Barkan's telling, pirates, poets, truck drivers, and corporate high-rollers sat shoulder to shoulder with the greatest musicians in jazz.
He went on to a Grammy-winning career as a producer with credits including Dexter Gordon and Miles Davis, and spent over a decade as programming director and emcee of Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
The festival opens Friday evening at the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance with the Brandee Younger Trio at 5pm—Younger, in 2022, became the first Black woman ever nominated for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition, and has worked with Common, Lauryn Hill, John Legend, and Christian McBride—followed at 7pm by Ms. Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton. Fischer, a Grammy and Oscar winner who spent 26 years touring with the Rolling Stones.
Saturday runs a Jazz Film Festival at Images Cinema starting at 11am, followed by Steve Turre's All-Star Band at 6pm. Turre, a trombonist and seashellist who's played in the Saturday Night Live band since 1984, brings James Carter, Eric "ELEW" Lewis, Corcoran Holt, and Herlin Riley to the stage. The Cookers close out the night at 8pm, a heavyweight post-bop lineup featuring Eddie Henderson, Azar Lawrence, George Cables, Billy Hart, Cecil McBee, Donald Harrison, and David Weiss.
Sunday shifts to the Clark Art Institute at 11am for regional acts—the Berkshire County Youth Jazz Ensembles, the MCLA Jazz Ensemble, and Richard Stanmeyer & Company—followed at 2pm by a conversation between Lenox native and University of Vermont professor John Gennari, author of "The Jazz Barn: Music Inn, the Berkshires, and the Place of Jazz in American Life," and drummer-archivist George Schuller, moderated by Barkan. The day moves to Chapin Hall at Williams College for the Wanda Houston Quartet at 4pm and Kris Allen's Triangle Offense at 6pm, closing with Arturo Sandoval & Nonet at 8pm. Sandoval, a protégé of Dizzy Gillespie, has become one of the most widely recognized guardians of jazz trumpet and flugelhorn on the planet.
Organizers acknowledged in a note posted to the festival site that the dates overlap with Rosh Hashanah, calling it an oversight that won't be repeated.
Tickets and full schedule at jazzintheberkshires.org.
Written by
After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
